I had felt the same in 2015 when I got banned from Facebook for not providing my real data (they asked me to provide a photo of my ID which I thought and still think was silly). But then I realised how good it was for me (as a user) and started thinking maybe we should aim to go back to the 'small Internet'. By this I mean small forums, maybe chat rooms or something of that sort. I often go back in memories to the late 90's and remember how I felt using the Internet back then. Of course this is nostalgia, but sometimes I wonder if I can build something to get that feeling back.. like island of the 90's internet
The "smol Internet" movement is what you're looking for. Returning to smaller online communities using things like Gopher, Gemini, fediverse, pubnixes, etc.
I think about this too and know it’s mostly nostalgia too. I’m curious about community organized LANs and running older tech. I also concede that almost no one actually wants to run this shit so it seems very unlikely anyone would want it.
