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I noticed today something I have noticed before and we should all bear in mind, when listening to Grayson Perry being interviewed on a podcast. He was talking about toxic debates online and he referred to 'the internet'. Purists think it's bad enough that the web has long been a synonym for 'the internet', but now it's now just social media that most people think of as 'the internet', which is a truly toxic state of affairs given the state of online discourse on such platforms and the controversy-for-clicks based algorithm-powered mire they are all in.

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Will Self refers to social networks as "Bidirectional Digital Media" and I wonder if the ability to post and comment was inherent in the medium from the beginning? Xanadu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu ?

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Well Usenet dates from 1979/1980

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