For a simpler internet
The internet used to feel fast. Not just technically fast - purposeful. You opened a website, it did the thing it existed to do, and you left. Opening YouTube meant watching a video. Opening LinkedIn meant checking on your professional network. Opening a news site meant reading the news.
That's not what happens anymore.
Now you open YouTube and fight through an ad, skip another one, dismiss a notification prompt, close a sidebar recommendation, and eventually - maybe - watch the thing you came for. LinkedIn greets you with a feed of sponsored posts, "people are viewing your profile" nudges, and content from people you've never heard of, algorithmically surfaced because someone paid for the placement. News sites load seventeen trackers before the headline renders, then a cookie banner blocks the article, then a newsletter popup blocks the cookie banner.
Somewhere along the way, it took a wrong turn. And the pattern of how that happens is worth understanding - because it keeps repeating.
The layer of friction that wasn't there before
There's a category of thing on the modern web that exists purely to extract something from you. Not to inform you, not to entertain you, not to help you accomplish anything. Just to capture attention, harvest consent, or monetize the moment between you and what you actually wanted.
Consent banners. Newsletter popups. Push notification requests. Cookie walls. Live chat widgets. "Can I help you?" overlays. Autoplay video ads. "You might also like" carousels injected mid-article. AI-generated summaries of content you were already reading. Support bubbles that bounce in the corner.
Each of these was added by someone who had a reason. The consent banner is legally required. The newsletter popup converts at 2%. The chat widget reduces support tickets. The autoplay ad generates revenue.
But the user didn't ask for any of it. They came for something specific, and what they got was a gauntlet.
The cumulative effect isn't just annoying - it's a fundamental shift in what a website is. It used to be a place where you could do something. Now it's a place that does things to you on the way to letting you do the thing you came for.
YouTube as a case study
YouTube is the clearest example of a platform that had everything and chose more anyway.
In the early years, YouTube was remarkable. You searched for a video, you watched it, the next one started. The recommendation algorithm was basic but functional. Creators made things because they wanted to. The experience was clean enough that it felt almost neutral - a window to content, not a product in itself.
Then came monetization. Then came the algorithm optimized for watch time. Then came ads - one, then two, then unskippable, then mid-roll. Then came Shorts, injected into the feed to compete with TikTok. Then came channel memberships, super chats, and creator merchandise shelves. Then came AI-generated content at scale, flooding search results. Then came the homepage designed to keep you browsing rather than watching what you came for.
Each addition made sense in isolation. More revenue for creators. More revenue for Google. More engagement metrics. More growth.
But what it produced, collectively, is a platform that fights for your attention in every direction at once. The homepage isn't a menu - it's a slot machine. The recommendations aren't helpful - they're optimized to keep you watching anything, as long as you stay. The comments aren't a community - they're a moderation problem.
Clickbait, to be fair, was always part of YouTube - and not entirely without merit. A title that makes you think "I never considered that question" is doing something real. Clicking it is a conscious choice, a small act of curiosity you opted into. That's different from manipulation. Whether the video actually answers the question, of course, is a separate matter entirely.
The problem isn't that creators compete for attention. It's that the platform optimises for the click, not for what comes after it. A viewer who leaves satisfied doesn't look different to the algorithm than one who leaves frustrated - as long as they watched long enough.
YouTube didn't get worse because anyone wanted to make it worse. It got worse because everyone kept adding more, and nobody was in charge of subtracting.
The LinkedIn problem
LinkedIn is a different kind of failure. Where YouTube's decay is about algorithmic maximization, LinkedIn's is about scope creep - a platform that stopped knowing what it was for.
LinkedIn began as a professional directory. You put your CV online, connected with colleagues, and occasionally got recruited. That was the whole thing. It was useful precisely because it was narrow.
Now it's trying to be Twitter, Facebook, a job board, a learning platform, a content publishing tool, a CRM, a news aggregator, and an advertising network simultaneously. The iOS app reflects this: it's one of the heaviest, most resource-intensive apps on the platform. Background processes, constant notifications, location data, endless feed refreshes - all for a product whose core function is showing you a list of people you've worked with.
The feed is the most visible symptom. It's full of posts that perform vulnerability or inspiration for engagement, articles that restate obvious things with extreme confidence, and paid promotions dressed as organic content. The signal-to-noise ratio has collapsed. Most people I know scroll LinkedIn with a sense of mild exhaustion - checking in because they feel professionally obligated to, not because they expect to find anything.
Why the next generation always leaves
Every platform follows the same arc. It starts simple, grows rapidly because it's simple, then adds complexity to monetize that growth, then loses the simplicity that made it worth using in the first place, and then younger users quietly move somewhere else.
MySpace → Facebook. Facebook → Instagram. Instagram → TikTok. TikTok → whatever is next.
The pattern isn't about age or taste. It's about friction. Young people don't leave platforms because they're young - they leave because the new platform is less encrusted. It hasn't been optimized yet. It doesn't have five years of monetization decisions layered on top of the user experience. It just does the thing.
The tragedy is that the platforms that get abandoned almost always had a period where they were genuinely great. Facebook in 2008 was remarkable - a real social graph that made it easy to stay in touch with people you actually knew. Instagram in 2012 was beautiful - a stream of photos, nothing else. They were great because they were focused. They stopped being great when they stopped being focused - and when the ads moved in. Either personalized to the point of being indistinguishable from organic content, which erodes trust in everything you see, or unpersonalized and unskippable, which is just tax on your time. Neither serves you. Both serve someone else.
The established platforms see the drift happening and respond by adding more. More features to retain users. More content formats to compete with the newcomer. More algorithmic surface area to show you things you might like. But that's the wrong direction. The users aren't leaving because there's not enough - they're leaving because there's too much.
There's a term for what the incumbents are actually doing: cash-cowing. A cash cow is a product that generates reliable revenue without meaningful reinvestment - you harvest what's there rather than building something new. Harvesting a platform means extracting from its users: more ads, more friction, more dark patterns designed to drive engagement and conversions. The product keeps working well enough to retain most people. It just stops being good. And in being milked rather than grown, it creates the gap that the next simple thing steps into - with good intentions, a clean product, and no monetization layer yet. Until it does.
What it could look like
I'm not arguing for a web frozen in 2005. Faster infrastructure, better accessibility, improved search - those are real improvements worth having.
But the internet that works for users doesn't require new technology. It requires different intent.
A simpler internet looks like this: you open YouTube to watch something specific, and it helps you do that. The homepage is a search bar. Recommendations exist for when you genuinely want one, not to prevent you from leaving. The revenue comes from what you chose to watch, not from keeping you longer than you planned.
LinkedIn works as a professional directory again. You find a person, see their experience, connect, and leave. The feed is opt-in, chronological, and contains only posts from people you actually follow. Promoted content is labeled and separate.
News sites load in under a second. The article is the first thing you see. Cookie preferences are stored on your device, not re-requested with each visit. The newsletter invite is in the footer.
None of this is a technical problem. It's a business model problem. The platforms that became bloated did so because engagement drove revenue, and friction drove engagement. A different incentive structure - subscriptions, per-article payments, creator-direct monetization - produces a different product. Some of these models already exist at the edges: Substack, Patreon, Kagi. They're not dominant, but they prove the model works.
The technology to build simple, fast, respectful websites is exactly the same as the technology that builds bloated ones. The difference is what gets added, and why. A growth team that adds friction because friction converts. A monetization layer that loads before the content does.
The pockets where the better web still exists - small sites, open source projects, documentation pages, personal blogs - aren't technically special. They just don't have a growth team. The constraint is intent, not capability.