The internet has bridged the gap of 'lack of education' to become successful.

[sleepfirefly]

when you look at the times before, there are only a few
people who were educated few people only got into universities
and only the affluent ones got to study

most worked with labor but now times have changed
most of us do not even need to go out of our houses to earn
and provide for our families

if you are hard working enough and you utilize your resources well
you can achieve anything given you do it with perseverance

[wozzek23]

Education has become freely available across the internet now and all we need is some time to self study and gain the knowledge. Education does not only mean schools anymore. We can freely surf the internet and gain the same knowledge and apply for a few certifications to prove our knowledge. These certificates will have the same importance as most of the corporate will accept these certificates.


A small example will be of becoming a data analyst. We can spend maybe 2 or 3 years in school learning the basics and gaining the required certifications. But the same data analyst course can be studied over the internet and we can even get certified from giants like Microsoft and trust me, these certificates will be given more importance rather than your school degree as these certificates comes with hands on experience and that is what employer will be looking for.

[TheUltraElite]

I think many famous sites are regulated with reporting functionality to the users.

FB reporting is shit, never works with even softcore po*n content. IG is almost a grindhouse for young ladies showing off their bodies with a semi-escort site type app. There are very few uses of these sites anymore, educations groups are also spammed with shit and finding marketplaces on FB is a tiring and scammy task.

Sure thing is, you can post anything you can think of for a while but only to find out that your content have been deleted few seconds or minutes later because it is against the platform's TOS. With the rise of crypto, there should still be a good number of decentralized websites now, and this is the real ones that has no restrictions whatsoever.

Crypto based social media like Steemit is has a centralization from what I understood, correct me if I am wrong. Less restrictions mean more mature people should access it rather than kids.

With AI, I guess we are going to have more perfect and censored internet where you will find your preferred contents only as AI will filter out all others by learning from your continuous suggestions on what you need and what to be blocked.

I feel its going to opposite way and AI is flooding many sites with junk content and making this doomscrolling a more time consuming job. Then there will be a gradual control over this content but getting genuine human created content is going to be rare, at least for now.

[Kelward]

These are all generalized words. "Everyone makes money online," "post content and get a lot of money," etc. Why then is the number of poor only increasing? OP, can you give specific examples of mass "successful success"? Only a few earn, most earn nothing. And, by the way, the Internet, namely social networks, cannot replace a good education.

There will always be poor people no matter how easy money making becomes so internet is not a cure for poverty but nobody can deny that a lot of people are earning through the internet and it's treating poverty alleviating. I know a lot of people that markets their products through social media and they get a lot of patronage, if it weren't for the internet they wouldn't reach very large audience. Without going too far this forum is a place where members can earn money through participations in signature campaigns, if it's not for the internet we won't be having this discussions.

Most people that earns money one way or another through the internet don't necessarily use their school certificates, what is required is your skills, you can research on the internet and earn money from what you've learnt on the internet. Internet has made life easy and it's leaping a lot of smart people out of poverty.

[pusaka]

I doubt if the internet can help with how to read and write except one already has preliminary knowledge or someone that does.

It can, my most of English is learned from Internet and video games, you automatically pick up words and their meanings, just like one does from surroundings, you could also always Google to know meanings of words.

Yes, you're right, sir. I learned some of my lessons from the internet, especially language learning. I learned a wide variety of things there, especially things that aren't commonly taught.

I know someone who couldn't read or write, but after discovering the internet, he can now read and type. Although I don't know if he can write on paper, I think he should be able to, because he can now also type fluently on WhatsApp. I'm not sure if it's because of the internet or not, but I'm sure it's because he can do all of that after getting a smartphone.

[M47AK16]

Hard agree, I find myself being extremely grateful for the existence of Internet lately, without it I would have been likely nowhere (I was going to use 'probably' at first but then I figured 'likely' suited better); the opportunities I have gotten due to Internet have been immense, but due to my own stupidity, I have foregone a number of those as well, but that's on me of course.

Somewhere this can be a distraction as well. While playing games, you focus fully on playing the game and not actually learning new words. This can divert our mind and we will mostly be focused on the game. But even though, I too agree that internet is a great source of education and there is no debate about it. We can learn almost everything from the internet and learning English is just one of the perks.

We not only learn from the internet but we also save a lot of money because if we want to learn English from an offline source, it will cost us a decent amount of money but the same learning can be acquired from internet almost for free(not completely free though, we do have to pay our internet bills).

[o48o]

Information is power and before now you need to go through school to be able to aquire knowledge to work and become successful. Before now there were secrets to success that were exclusive to a few privileged elites but now you can get almost every information you need on the internet. The internet presents equal opportunities to everybody to search and learn what people go to school to learn and get information without necessarily consulting any professionals. School is no longer the reason why you cannot succeed in life.

A lot of people now earn money through the internet with their skills, they don't need to have a degree or come from influential families. A lot of people from poor backgrounds are rich today because of social media, the space doesn't know your background, what you need to succeed is your skills to give services that a perticular people wants and you get paid. With the internet it is no longer necessary that you must have a certificate to become successful, it encourages giving services directly and getting paid.

Getting a good education is no doubt important to become successful in life but if you are not privileged to get educated through school you can educate yourself through the internet. A lot of people are making money through social media contents, selling their brands through social media, working from their homes and earning money. The internet has made a lot of people successful that ordinarily would have been poor because they were not educated.

What's "success" in your vision here? Getting paid or learning new skills, or learning in general?

For sure, being poor and uneducated often go hand in hand, but being educated doesn't guarantee success either, or even that someone hires you. Getting your education from internet might help with some jobs, but often those require real certificate as well.
Because a degree is a packet of things, and some of them you might skip, as you thought it wasn't important for the job.
And in some cases, real degree / certificate in something says that you know what you are doing when things go wrong.

But secrets to "success" for privileged elites were always:

1: Being born to old money wealth
2: Have good connections because of wealthy circles like to mingle.
3: Education is just part of the package. You don't need to even do well on that.

[Solosanz]

Somewhere this can be a distraction as well. While playing games, you focus fully on playing the game and not actually learning new words. This can divert our mind and we will mostly be focused on the game. But even though, I too agree that internet is a great source of education and there is no debate about it. We can learn almost everything from the internet and learning English is just one of the perks.

We not only learn from the internet but we also save a lot of money because if we want to learn English from an offline source, it will cost us a decent amount of money but the same learning can be acquired from internet almost for free(not completely free though, we do have to pay our internet bills).

Oh man, this reminds me when I was young.

I play games and the language are full in English, it force me to find the meaning of every words, at that time internet was still expensive, so I use dictionary. After few years, I realize that I know many words and the meaning, even though I'm not able to pronounce the words correctly.

I don't know how the current generation will learn because they can use AI to translate it all and they don't have to learn anything in order to know the meaning.

[coin-investor]

The internet has made a lot of people successful that ordinarily would have been poor because they were not educated.

You still need to educate yourself on how to earn online to succeed. Many have tried, but onlya few succeed because of perseverance.

Yes, there are so many opportunities online. Still, you have to work for them, target your market, and build a good online reputation, because it's essential in your digital life and a weapon for many who succeed online. 

[Emjay24]

Like I've read sometime ago "Illiteracy isn't about not knowing, but not knowing where to access information when needed". The Internet has provided everyone an equal opportunity to access best information at reduced cost. Everyone that has a device that can connect to the Internet has little excuse to being ignorant and poor because information are in overload on the Internet space for every career of choice.

There are various free quality courses that companies looking to make their products known and used by more people. Are offering

I'm currently enrolled on GitHub copilot course and it has made my work easier.

Cousera have been recommending free good courses and some with financial aid to me which I don't even have enough time to attend to it all. Information is plenty on the Internet space, guys should use it to their own advantage and to skill up.

[GigaBit]

Undoubtedly, the Internet has now become the best medium for acquiring knowledge. Through it, a person can acquire good knowledge in all subjects starting from technical education. Apart from this, if a person wants, he can also earn money online. There is also an opportunity to get a degree online somewhere. But even after this, people acquire education from school. Because in some cases, it can be very difficult to acquire the same knowledge online as school education can help in acquiring good knowledge.