The old internet is still there. It’s just dwarfed by the colossal amount of shit piled up on the shit sites.

As a general rule, stick to free and open stuff because the motivation of the people doing it is to give to the community, rather than make money. Mastodon and Lemmy/Kbin rather than Xitter and Reddit. Just stay away from Facebook. There are lots of old style bulletin boards still around for various interests, and they are often more used than FB groups.

I stopped putting adverts on my sites ages ago because I hate them so much. I don’t want to be part of the enshittification.