What do people mean when they say “the internet” in this context? The social internet of the 2000s?

I say this it feels unimaginative to me to say that the internet is dead. Social media? For the major platforms, sure. But the Fediverse feels alive and novel, and the Internet itself is certainly not going anywhere - could you imagine if email went away?

I don’t know, I am in large agreement that the internet has gotten worse, with that accelerating with generative AI. But I also feel like being driven away from Big Tech platforms has led me to learn more about how the Internet actually works and to discover topics and communities that I hadn’t before. Maybe the internet isn’t wholesale dead, just changing