For months, Google has maintained that the web is “thriving,” AI isn’t tanking traffic, and its search engine is sending people to a wider variety of websites than ever. But in a court filing from last week, Google admitted that “the open web is already in rapid decline” (with regard to advertising, kinda-sorta)
Ok, well our backup is safe yeah ? So, good, it should burn down to the fucking ground,
Topple DNS tyranny, blow up the CDNs, let datacenters become dilapidated, let the 101 rooms go unstaffedAfter the fire maybe something not quite as malevolent will grow in the ashes
Well at least there’s the fediverse, onion routing, nostr ID management, simplex and others. It’s not quite a Plan B, and definitely takes some effort, but is much much better than nothing.
I tried TOR earlier this year, and the 3 minute pageloads that timeout 3/4 of the time, were very off putting.
I hope we can do betterSounds like the Internet in the 90s.
Nah, I had a 14400 bauds modem and even then it was never this slow
I went to the dread forum and maybe got 4 page loads in 15 minutes
simply unusable unless you really really need it and already know exactly what you need, where it is, and how to click as few links as possible to get there. And even then, reading single threads is an hours long task.Modem starts dialing up. Everything is going fine, attempting 28.8k negotiation… failed. Okay, now I’m listening to 19.2k negotiation… failed again? Ugh, ok, 14.4k… no? Jesus fuck. Please let me at least have 9600…
Edit: typoes
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Bye bye internet. Hello splinternet.
Essentially.
The fediverse, small-web, ubb-boards, xda, and parts of the darkweb, as well as places like 4chan all belong to a sort-of bound community.
Facebook, Google, Tiktok, Instagram etc make up the mainsteam internet with Tumblr and Reddit on the sidelines.
It’s getting worse, it even trickles down to software choices and piracy. Choose Linux and trust the community, run Kodi and fight constant update breakage on Youtube and corporate streaming solutions when Jellyfin and samba shares just work?
At what point does their world of influence become seemingly worse than ours by default and everyone just ignores them? Will the giants allow themselves to be ignored? I believe they will eventually make self-sufficiency impossible. Somehow, some day, you won’t have any of these choices and everyone will be nickle and dimed to death until the entire internet is an unskippable full-screen ad.
From some mobile-only average working Joes out there, that’s all it already is.
I’m from the 90s Internet. Geocities. Tripod. Webrings. My awesome gothy co-worker staying late after work to update her vampire fan-fiction site because hardly anyone had a computer and the boss let her use the company’s windows 95 machine.
We are categorically lazier as a culture now than then. I expect things to enshittify further until we collectively take responsibility and accountability for our own culture, engagement and entertainment online. As we used to. We need more stupid web tricks, this place used to have all sorts of public art and weird monuments to human quirkiness.
Until they take away from us the ability to purchase a 10$ domain, use DNS, and make HTML forbidden knowledge, anyone can be out there contributing. I realize, however, that most will not; I’ve recently started getting wide eyed stares of amazement because I have my own domain and use it for my email address, so we seem to be sliding further…
Not sure how we fix this.
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We really need to change the mindset about what the internet experience should be. I think everyone got too used to the idea of centralized services like Google search, Github, Discord, Twitter, reddit, and etc. and that didn’t turn out well. We need to go back to federated protocol based system instead. Let’s go back to the decentralized federated architecture of email, web, irc where no one corporate entity is the sole owner of said service. I think Lemmy and Mastodon are good start but we have to start replace things like Google search, Github, and Discord with decentralized counterparts. We have to learn from our past mistakes and start reconstructing a better internet infrastructure one piece at a time. It will take lot of effort and patience but it’s really the only way out of the mess we put ourselves into by being addicted to simplicity of centralized corporate controlled systems.
Prior to GitHub, everyone just hosted their own Git repositories. The nature of Git is pretty decentralised. And Linux kernel development still uses old-fashioned mailing lists for development co-ordination, rather than something like GitHub. I have heard before someone say the difference between Git and GitHub is similar to the difference between porn and Pornhub.
Prior to Discord, there was IRC.
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Lots of “muricans” hate discord too
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I hate that everyone fucking uses discord for everything, discord when I’m using it is strictly to game and for online game related activities.
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This makes me think that a big part of the solution is some sort of very low barrier to entry guide or product for self-hosting. Like something even a non-technical person can do. Imagine if it became the norm to have a little always-on device that serves up your personal website, instead of social media accounts…
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Yeah I know more than a few people fitting that description. But I do believe things can turn around. It’s less likely to make converts of people who already have that mentality, but things can resurge among new people and I think there’s a real movement there with tech literacy.
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We need a startup to just make and try to sorta standardize a mini pc product pre-installed with a proxmox-like setup with an easy web interface and self-hosted solutions pre installed. 5-10 apps for main internet service needs like email, social media, content hosting/publishing and personal media libraries.
Give it a cute name like “Web-Pal”, keep it open and Customizable for powerusers, watch the internet become a better place while you’re the household name for devices that are as essential as a router.
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Platforms keep getting shittier and more exploitative, while government thirst for control with things like Chat Control, OSA and whatever the US is doing.
The more we see of that the easier it becomes to market a “your internet services in a box” to a layman.
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Even browsing existing small to medium sized sites has become such a chore, with all these verifications and rate limiters as part of the anti AI scraper effort.
So many cloudflare verification checkboxes. So many Google sign ins. So many cross site cookies and tracking for even basic functionality.
Care about privacy and restrict browsing data even a little? Captcha hell.
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Especially since discoverability has pretty much gone down the toilet, between SEO and spam sites.
You’re not going to as easily find a new and interesting website, when the first few results are just computer generated regurgitated text, stuffed with ads by the gill.
Time to bring back the webring and every site having a “links” section.
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And then after all that have to read a page full of ego and and thinly veiled sales waffle just to find the tiny bit of info you are looking for.
You have to give up too much time and privacy to get little back. It’s not the internet we knew. It’s a hyper monitized sales board.
I miss being excited about what online would unfurl for me each day.
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