I'd say we're nearing the end of an era.

I think it's actually pretty fortunate that the world managed to survive the Cold War without nuclear war breaking out. I wonder about humanity as a whole. Was it inevitable that humans would reach reach the sort of spot where we're at today? Lots of people have stood up over time against evil, and managed to triumph. I hope that happens this time too. I think the challenges faced have been different with every era. And I think that right now, in America at least, what we're seeing is a slow-motion version of things that have gone on in other countries--evil winning. We're able to decide how to face that, and hopefully stop it.

Anyway, are you in the EU SoCo? I'm in the Pacific Northwest, and I have to say that some of the issues you pointed out above don't seem applicable in my life or those of the people I know. "Youtube only plays for about a minute before hanging for 3 minutes." I haven't had this issue. I HAVE noticed a lot of other issues with Youtube. The last two years or so it seems like they've been steadily removing functionality and making the platform worse--I think it was around a year ago that they stopped showing the date a video was released without you having to click the description first, and a few days ago shorts stopped showing you a text pop-up of the video title when you mouse over it. But I haven't had a problem with videos hanging anytime the last few years. And we just switched internet providers.

And let me offer you a few bits of light and hope: I'm trying to switch from Linux right now. I've been using Windows for decades, but yeah, as you said it seems to be getting really bad right now. And, have you ever used the Brave browser? I can't say I'm an expert, but I don't believe it's as bad as Firefox or Chrome. At least I don't think it is.

I'll also add: I think much of the problem is that everyone's been allowing China to take over the technology and everything. America and the rest of world do so much manufacturing in China that we've lost more and more control of the products we get. I think people need to start building networks with their friends, buying/selling/trading things locally.

I do think Amazon and other big sites are questionable, but some are better. You may want to try Azure Standard for food. Granted that their products and the products on other sites are expensive--

But you said "The first step is to acknowledge it is not working, what is not working, and why. People too quickly skip that" A huge part of the reason we're finding ourselves in all the problems we're in is because we've gotten used to purchasing things that have lower price, instead of higher quality. And who gave the lowest prices? Southeast Asia and China. I mean, sometimes cheap things are worth it. But we've just taken it too far.

America still has many of the quality companies and factories and employees and things. We could still come back from all this.

But like I said, our current era is fast coming to an end. I don't know what the next one is going to be like.

But I will say that I think quality is generally better than quantity. Hopefully that can make a difference, in the long run.