StumbleUpon, a tool that led users to random websites, had a stranglehold on millennials in the 2010s. Its influence echoes through everything we do online.
StumbleUpon, a tool that led users to random websites, had a stranglehold on millennials in the 2010s. Its influence echoes through everything we do online.
This is all true and I agree, but a big piece of the story that’s missing is access. People online were mostly demographically adjacent. The walled gardens sprang up for the same reasons you see more walls in places with high economic disparity.
The “utopian” attitude described in the article was a natural response to lack of representation. Society wasn’t actually as far along as millennials thought.
That utopian vision is achievable. There’s just more work to be done than we thought.