I would say before algorithms started showing us different content even if we are subscribed to the same feed(s).
DRM is hardly a problem unless you're using a handful of products, unskipable ads were hardly a problem before smartphones and their market stores took off, and spam was there since the Internet started.
What is new is that Facebook, Google, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, and increasingly Twitter are all showing us different content, and our personal preferences (things we follow) are increasingly irrelevant to the information we're receiving.
This all happened in this decade, and this is the decade where we started to fix instead of improve the web. I would point the breaking point somewhere around 2010-2011, when Google, YouTube and Facebook all decided to personalize the things we see.
DRM is hardly a problem unless you're using a handful of products, unskipable ads were hardly a problem before smartphones and their market stores took off, and spam was there since the Internet started.
What is new is that Facebook, Google, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, and increasingly Twitter are all showing us different content, and our personal preferences (things we follow) are increasingly irrelevant to the information we're receiving.
This all happened in this decade, and this is the decade where we started to fix instead of improve the web. I would point the breaking point somewhere around 2010-2011, when Google, YouTube and Facebook all decided to personalize the things we see.