ShiverMeTimbers

When talking to other people and bringing up sources, it's common for them to say "I don't like that website" or "it's not trustworthy". On Lemmy, this is most commonly said about Reddit, where you will be questioned if you use it as a source of knowledge or show off something you did there. Wikipedia is another one.

However, the other day, me and a friend noticed something. The most discredited websites all correspond to the most neutral websites. Minus its overt traditionalism, Reddit is pretty neutral and doesn't promote a specific leaning. Wikipedia is another one, as the whole point of Wikipedia was that it could be a source of knowledge made by the people and for the people. Recently ChatGPT became something a lot of people consult, and nowadays you get a lot of ridicule for mentioning things like asking it for advice or going to it to check on something. Quora is a fourth example, in fact it currently has a "spammy" reputation that I don't see the inspiration for. I don't know, this all seems too big a coincidence in our world.

Do these websites (and other ones) really inspire being looked down upon as much as the people around you claim, and which ones do you have the most and least amount of issue with? And why?

Anyone know if this is a glitch?

I was reading a book, The Victorian Internet, which talked about how connected the Victorian era was, with wires stretching everywhere above the roads. It's probably exaggerated, but it got me thinking. There are many ways to engage in en masse interconnectivity. Computers, of course, are one of them, but we also have had, for example, messenger pigeons, drones we can send to different places, search dogs with an interconnected sniff system (I forgot what that was called), etc.

Suppose you had a civilization. Maybe it's on a planet whose environment interferes with the capabilities of a classic internet, or maybe it's a normal fantasy setting where the classic internet is cursed. However, the civilization still needs some kind of apparatus of interconnectivity. What's the best/closest thing you can think of as a replacement for the internet without it being the internet as we know it?