I’d like it if there was a 3rd web. Not normie web, not dark web, but 90’s-2000 web where it felt like anything could happen and you needed some skill and willpower to get online. That way you had to earn it and so did the others, so there was a lot less marketing, propaganda and conspiracy theory on it.
I don’t know what the rules or parameters would have to be to re-initiate that now.
PS just like the joining process on Lemmy filters out the lazy people without much initiative to tinker and find new places to hang out before they are cool and streamlined.
Early 2000 web was the best web. Our student flat had just moved from dial up to ASDL so download speed felt incredible. I would StumbleUpon new an fantastic websites all night long. Play Flash games for hours. Or with friends, gross ourselves out on rotten dot com. TPB and Limewire to build my music library, but always seeding above 1 of course because sharing is caring. And not forgetting the chatrooms…
When Jack from Lost said “We have to go back!!”, this is what he was talking about.
You had to work for your series, movies and music. You had to know what you want to obtain it. You weren’t force-fed content you never asked for. You really think there’s no more good music? There is but being bombarded with the commercial sh*t makes you wary of searching more of it.
You had to work for it to get online and have stuff work, so you’d have to show determination. Which would mean you’d understand the value of access to information and communication. Now you’re bombarded with contradictory information pretty much constantly without even asking, accessing info isn’t the problem anymore, it becomes an effort to keep any focus or quality of information whatsoever. And that’s a soft skill.
And lastly, politics and big corporations now live on the internet with us. Their target audiences are those most intellectually defenseless people. But basically the whole internet has become centered around those. Because they can’t discern and are basically technologically illiterate and don’t understand how easy it is to feed them terrible commercials, propaganda and misinformation.
The internet becomes overregulated because of those users, and we get bombarded with marketing and politics because of them too. It’s become a shit show and all you can do is navigate and use it extremely selectively. Remember, these ‘normies’ are the parents of the 20-30 year Olds who once judged them for spending too much time on their PCs and phones.
So, we need a new internet community, with barriers against “normies”, so that only people with tech knowledge or friends of such can get in? Pretty much sounds like we’re already here. A few years ago I would’ve said “try the dark web” but TOR browser’s pretty much made that easy. Plus bitcoin’s way too volatile to spend now, and the eth rates are ridiculous. But, if you ask for shady, you get shady.
Nowadays, I recommend decentralized networks and self-hosting wherever possible. I personally can’t do it due to my living conditions, but as soon as I can break free of this place I will absolutely have the best home setup I can get at a reasonable price, and I’ll donate my excess compute time to BOINC.
People have to feel funded, safe, and comfortable to make stuff for free to share with others, right now everyone feels like they need to make the absolute most money possible.
What will make a more neutral internet is a better world. Our virtual one and our real one are pretty interlinked and one can not be poisoned without it spreading to the other.
The internet never used to be like this. It used to be full of shitty GIFs and under construction signs. Also don’t forget to sign the guest book and be impressed with the high hit counter.
Yahoo! Also ruled as a search engine.
I setup Adguard home on a rpi4 and run all our devices through its dns with all filters enabled ( Probably overkill tbh).
40% of our traffic is trapped. 40%!! we don’t do anything on internet beyond the usual but it’s interesting that a massive chunk of our traffic is just something tracking our movements.
If interested, our device are Google tv, couple fire sticks, iPad, MacBook and windows laptop. each one pretty much contributes to the tracking evenly and to their respective brand tracking urls, although msh.amazon urls are the highest scores.
I’ve always heard about this but I’m so uneducated in networking I have no clue what this is called or where to start. Any tips?
Pretty straight forward really, install Adguard home on a always on Linux box (rpi is our movie box) via https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome/wiki/Getting-Started and then update all your devices as per the setup instructions from the web app when working so they use the ip address of the rpi as their dns. I was surprised how easy it was to get running tbh.
Ain’t that the truth!
Current EDC,
Mozilla Firefox with:
- uBlock Origin
- SponsorBlock for Youtube…
- Dark Reader
- Video Background Play fix
Anyone have any other recommendations or better systems?
You could level up by adding uMatrix and plug any and all leaks of data, not just the big ones like ads and cookies. But then you’re a bit into control freak territory.
Clickbait remover for YouTube, Now with the new YT anti adblock policy with nasty Popups, Adblock Plus works better in YT than uBO to avoid this crap. You also can watch most YT videos sandboxed in Andisearch or on desktop with SMPlayer (Right click on the player and paste YT link in “Open > URL”). If you have an Google account, you can opt out your YT subscriptions and playlist (deselect all other in the list) and export this to Odysee (online service from IMDB), which is IMHO the best alternatve to YT (better are PeerTube and other decentralized streaming services, but not if you prefer a decent amount of videos)
bring back stumbleupon!
