The current owners of MySpace, the internet’s first popular social media site, have announced plans to relaunch the platform.

They’ve done the marketing, clearly: Millennials are a soft touch when it comes to nostalgia. The news of a well-remembered piece of the old internet returning has excited many in the face of the heavily tailored dystopic modern internet.

The modern internet, in all its endless outrage and anxiety-by-design algorithms, has created a yearning for what the internet used to be. The idea of MySpace’s return is symbolic of the cure for all our modern online ills, where social media can again fulfil its original intention of being a personal space to share things with those in our lives.

Likely MySpace’s return wouldn’t be anything of the sort, though. It would be lucky to be a small bit player in the social media ecosystem - if it even retains its initial user base after the novelty wears off. The problems with the modern internet do not start and stop with the choice of social media app; its problems extend from the realities of Silicon Valley, which has shifted the power of the internet into becoming the structural backbone of entire economies.

Read more from Derek McArthur:

The Library of Alexandria burns again: AI companies are destroying rare books in bulk

Movie studios are circling like sharks to buy the biggest online review platform

The UK........

© Herald Scotland