One of the cool thing, basically THE cool thing about the old internet was the exposure to a giant wide world with all different kinds of people and interests from all walks of life. It skewed technical, because you had to be technical to figure out how to work it. But once people got over an initial barrier it was cool, and it's not like there was anywhere else they could go if they wanted to reach whatever community they were into.
One of the problems with attempts to keep the "old internet" alive is that they still skew technical (because most of the people who are nostalgic for it are comfortable enough with those technical things), but now regular Joes have other options. They're not going to bother learning the technical stuff if everything else is set up to make it brainless and easy.
Moreover, since you HAVE to be technically inclined to build such a thing, the initial word of mouth and distribution winds up being constrained to the technical crowds. This makes the communities one-note and boring, so people just don't feel very compelled to stay.
The suggestion is that the old internet wasn't a pure technical bubble: although the barrier to entry made it more technical than average, it was still fairly diverse because the alternative to passing that barrier was staying off the internet entirely. Now, getting online is easy, and there are millions of alternatives to the techy corners of the internet. So nobody who isn't specifically interested in that stuff has any motivation to join in.
OTOH, today's "technical bubble" isn't really pure technical either - technology went from being nerds-only to full mainstream popularity, and there's plenty of both technologists with other side interests, and people from other walks of life with technology as their side interest.
I feel like you can have good UX and still preserve aspects of the freedom of expression, interest-based discussion, two-way dialogue, and the feeling of community and openness that the 90s internet had. But I agree that you do have to have these platforms compete with the giants and that's harder to do these days.
All I see is big "Download" links everywhere, that just go to a JS alert popup saying it's not out yet.
It looks interesting but with no way to preview the current communities or content before downloading, I'm hesitant to go through downloading, installing, and signing up to a new service, only to find out it's another Voat.
One of the problems with attempts to keep the "old internet" alive is that they still skew technical (because most of the people who are nostalgic for it are comfortable enough with those technical things), but now regular Joes have other options. They're not going to bother learning the technical stuff if everything else is set up to make it brainless and easy.
Moreover, since you HAVE to be technically inclined to build such a thing, the initial word of mouth and distribution winds up being constrained to the technical crowds. This makes the communities one-note and boring, so people just don't feel very compelled to stay.