What do you believe is the single most important factor driving up the cost of living in Nigeria?

More importantly, it was also a place where you could find anything: that rare book, or the perfect pair of neon-pink tights, or a community for your unusual health condition. The underlying model of the internet was that it was decentralized, and everyone had the right to have a voice—even dogs.

Marketers realized they could use the internet to make money, but no one had figured out how yet. The original search engine included an index of all the pages on the web: you could literally browse the whole web if you were so inclined.

For those of us who were there, it was like the coolest club going, only everyone there was an oddball, nerd or another kind of outcast. Like all the best clubs, though, the internet didn't stay exclusive. Marketers did work out how to use it to sell things (mostly pornography in the early days), and the internet became a fact of life rather than a niche interest.

From consolidation to 'enshittification'

In the early 2000s, we saw another phenomenon: consolidation.

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