Then Web 2 came, and the algorithms ate the internet

Facebook, Google, Amazon and Netflix are now fiercely competing for, recording and monetizing every moment of your attention online, and “influencers” are a mass-market phenomenon operating on a global commercial scale. As the mega platforms’ control tightened, they bled away the internet’s original weirdness – its natural ability to surface the interesting and messy, the restless and far out.