There has never been a better time to be online
It is fashionable to say the internet is bad now. The internet is mostly fine, and the parts that are great have never been greater.
It's become normal to talk about the internet as though it's broken. The platforms are worse. The ads are heavier. The bots are louder. All true, all worth complaining about.
But underneath the bad layer, the open web is in unusually good shape. There are more personal websites than there have been in fifteen years. Static hosting is essentially free. Tools to publish your own thing have never been better or cheaper. The community of people making weird, hand-coded internet stuff is bigger and more international than it's ever been.
The trick is that none of this shows up in the algorithmic feeds, because none of it is optimized for them. You have to go looking. Once you do, the supply of good things is, if anything, overwhelming.
This is one of those periods that will look obvious in hindsight. The platforms are stagnating. The interesting work is happening at the edges. Pay attention to the edges.