Do you think the web will become less centralized in the future?

[cyberwaffel.wrl (dizzy)]

@ThunderPerfectWitchcraft Well at this point, I feel like going for a Kubrick level of perfection with decentralization would just be impossible. No matter how many servers we set up, no matter how many P2P networks we devise, all information comes from some person or place, and there will always be a time where it will go down. It's just not feasible to make a network where all information is permanent unless you engrave it on something like stone or throw it into space. Ive seen things like these networks where people make networks that are community led in Portland and Germany using protocols like "Classless Domain Name Anarchy" or whatever it was called, and Im all for more ways of Internet connections, but there is no way to beat entropy with out constantly adding more energy into the mix. What I dont like is how people are already giving up on trying to escape the corporate web when things like ActivityPub are doing so well. How about, if we want to really escape this stuff, we need to stop falling back on our previous assumptions and "break the mold" i.e. do something against the mold. The web revival is a good start, but its a repeat of what we've done before, which is still leagues ahead of social media, and I still love Neocities and Nekoweb and Web 1.0 Hosting, but we can easily innovate by revisiting some of the old ideas that people had like uhh.. it was called an African name. Like Zanzibar or something.
Tl:dr, I am not gonna call it quits, we should stop trying to be perfect. The real goal should be that we get info from A to B in new and innovative ways. And also, I want forums and web hosting and P2P and onion links and these new innovative protocols. I want the internet to be all this and more. and it doesnt need to be perfect because it's impossible to get something to be perfectly pure. What the internet should be is natural and intuitive, and we should be vigilant to keep it that way through setting up p2p stuff, servers, new protocols, etc.

but there will never be an end or an answer

Yeah, it reminds me of something I learned a couple years back. I saw these monks making amazing sand art with intricate patterns. Then they would destroy it. Why after all those hours of working would they destroy it? To show that everything, no matter how small or large, disappears eventually. It sorta changed my mind on how things work. I dont try to become immortal or appreciate every moment. Instead I just think merely existing is the best state.

[Tuffy!]

The internet of the 90s looked like a liberation [...] the first market place most people ordered something online from were not some small-time store, but Amazon or Ebay.

Which started as small businesses and paved the way for all the little niche online stores. Without them, a lot of people wouldn't have realized how to make money on the web by selling and shipping items.

I can remember the old Bezos telling a reporter that his old volvo? is perfectly fine and that he will keep using it even if he already is making millions with amazon. Now compare that to the new Bezos, which has transitioned to some kind of bond supervillain living on a mega-yacht  Money & fame ruined the game.

I'm not sure something as direct as the Forum Revival Movement will work, because, as @ThunderPerfectWitchcraft alludes, it's too focused on the medium in an a more general way. Humans are lazy and will choose what they perceive as more convenient.

One of the best things we can do to help decentralize the internet is to create and advertise spaces that offer some kind of value to people in a way they can understand. Ie. making specialized platforms and spaces that offer features and tools of expression more taylored to a specific field of interest.

The Forum Revival Movement is encouraging people to create and frequent specialized places a.k.a. niche forums. A lot of the younger generation doesn't know much about how great forums have felt back in the day. I think it is our part to let them know, spread the word and create new places or repopulate older forums again to offer them an active alternative to the big hubs like Reddit and such.

The fact alone that there are many active forums with users posting new stuff on a daily basis is a good thing. Spreading the word and engaging yourself in these forums or posting new stuff on more or less abandones places is a good start I think.

Managing and maintaining a forum yourself isn't a very easy task but posting to an existing one is.

We actually are helping the Forum Revival by just being here and communicating with each other, which I think is FUCKING AWESOME in itself 

Because communication is what the web is about. It is what being a living creature is about.

Honestly I dont really foresee anything getting better online for the most part. Probably, most people will continue to use the "central hubs" and just go about their life, giving up their ID and all when the time comes. Because nothing beats scrolling those addicive apps over and over until their brain it melted.

See, when their brain has melted enough, they will come to the conclusion that there is another facette of the internet that is more fun than the big hubs can provide. Places that don't censor, don't have ridiculous TOS. Places that don't encourage you to waste your time by doomscrolling and magically fucking with your brain chemistry.

I started to reduce my usage of big hubs and big tech in general. I'm detoxing atm and I don't think I will ever look back   

It can be quite difficult if you have to rely on promoting your service of products to a big audience though. If you have to make a living out of your online activity, sticking to the big hubs may still be the way to go. But I can see ways that point in another direction.

The web-revival isn't really interested in true decentralization either: Neocities ain't that different from conventional social networks in this regard; everything is stored on a single server, offered by one single provider - what it "sells" is rather the impression of independence (and charges a price for it: Compared to commercial web hosters, the supporter-tier of Neocities is rather expensive).Paradoxically, from what I read since joining this forum, many people stick to Neocities mainly for these "social features" that are forcefully connected to a certain centralization and dependence to the service provider.

While I havn't experienced any of the "social features" of neocities yet I can second most of what you have written here. Neocities is a nice playground, its easy to start hosting your website there but it comes with a lot of disadvantages. You don't own the domain (subdomain), they can cancel your membership or shut down their service at anytime.


People who take their web presence seriously will migrate to a TLD they own. You can still be engaged within the neocities community and even keep redirecting your domain to the neocities webspace but you won't end up losing your site/url this way (don't forget to backup  ). Some may finally end up paying some bucks a year to host on their paid webspace because being able to use server side scripting languages offers so much more flexibility.

This alone is a step towards decentralization. Own your stuff 

I believe what the Web-Revival (and similar movements, as truly independent game developers or non-commercial underground musicians) can achieve is to create alternative rooms, where the mechanisms and the forces of the hegemonic capitalist system are (at least partly and seemingly) annulled - but to do so, they have to exceed their own mediality: As long as the web-revivals most important message is the medium itself ("I made a website: It is about me, and why making websites is great"), it is only able to deliver a desire, but not to fulfill it.

This seems true to me as well. We should transport another message instead. Maybe that decentralisation is necessary, to keep the internet from the boundaries big tech and political parties are gooing to force upon the internet community. And that there are spaces people can come to, hang around and have fun beside the big hubs 

The web revival is a good start, but its a repeat of what we've done before, which is still leagues ahead of social media, and I still love Neocities and Nekoweb and Web 1.0 Hosting, but we can easily innovate by revisiting some of the old ideas that people had

What old ideas are you referring to?

we should stop trying to be perfect. The real goal should be that we get info from A to B in new and innovative ways. And also, I want forums and web hosting and P2P and onion links and these new innovative protocols. I want the internet to be all this and more. and it doesnt need to be perfect because it's impossible to get something to be perfectly pure. What the internet should be is natural and intuitive, and we should be vigilant to keep it that way through setting up p2p stuff, servers, new protocols, etc.

And of course, keeping in touch with other people. Start communicating more on a public and the private level. Start commenting on blog posts again, ask questions, put something up for discussion, provoke a reaction - write emails, get in touch with other people and share your thoughts. Not only on blogs, make use of forums and guestbooks as well.

I don't mind repeating myself: Communication is what the web is about.

Big Tech instead wants us to consume. They don't care about the communicative side which is what made the web big in the first place.


 
UNITED WE
    STAND

[AbsurdPirate]

God I hope so, I'm so done with the colonized-web. Everything feeling so homogenized. The internet used to be more fun, then we discovered we could monetize it, and then it all went downhill slowly afterward. It's like we can track the enshitification of the web to how fast our internet speeds got over time.

I wanna go back to the olden days

[grubbyfox]

See, when their brain has melted enough, they will come to the conclusion that there is another facette of the internet that is more fun than the big hubs can provide. Places that don't censor, don't have ridiculous TOS. Places that don't encourage you to waste your time by doomscrolling and magically fucking with your brain chemistry.

I started to reduce my usage of big hubs and big tech in general. I'm detoxing atm and I don't think I will ever look back 

I agree, but I would say, people on the forum here are the outliers. most people will never bother, and a lot of them will not even know what is beyond the central hubs. I even have friends who will scroll tiktok etc for hours, who will still defend it and say that nooo they're not addicted, and tiktok isn't addictive, they're in full control, and they only watch hobby related things etc. They grew up just as me with forums, engaging in internet with talking/discussions, chilling and vibing actively on forums. but they dont care to go back. because they have tiktok and short form content that they can passively watch. Even when I've tried to engage with my friends in making a small forum together, making websites etc, they may look at it for about a week and then they are back on tiktok "watching hobby content".

The ID thing isnt an issue here yet, but it may be later. I am really curious as to if my friends would be willing to give it up for their tiktok/short form content. Sadly, I do think they will. 

[Losertron_6000]

Ultimately I think there r 3 things keeping a "web revival" from happening on a larger scale.

1. The vast majority of younger people know about the problems with the modern internet but know alternatives exist so they continue to use or tolerate social media platforms and say "thats just the way the internet is" instead of pushing back.
2. Most of the current web revival isnt accessible for mobile users which is where most people spend their time on the internet. If we want to bring more traction to the movement we should look into making forums and stuff more accessible for mobile devices.
3. The "90s to 2000s" internet we remember only existed cause of computer nerds who were passionate about the internet. The avg person back then just wasnt online. both back then and now the decentralized internet only interested a niche of people and didnt really hit outside of that cause most people just dont care.   

I think as things get worse more people will try to drift and find alternatives but I just dont see it becoming more larger than the niche it is now. Hopefully I'm wrong tho I sorta wish I coulda experienced the internet in its hayday but Im just not optimistic.

[Melooon]

Apologies but I'm gonna go at you a bit here because there's a lot of common misconceptions in this post that Id like to answer for others reading this in the future; I promise I'm not picking on you

making forums and stuff more accessible for mobile devices

It doesn't tend to work like that You cant bend a medium to fit a format that it doesn't fit - mobile will always favor apps and apps will always favor high budget developers. On top of that mobiles are consumption devices, if you've ever tried to create something on a phone its a genuine struggle - you cant have a web revival without the ability to easily and actively create the web; viewing a site is not a real participation without also creating one.

emember only existed cause of computer nerds who were passionate about the internet. The avg person back then just wasnt online. both back then

This is really not at all true; the homepages of the 90s were largely created by regular middle class people (mostly Americans) with enough income for a basic PC - a large chunk of retirees who had extra time to build out a site, and a lot of women who were stay at home moms and needed a project. They were the often overlooked backbone of early web culture and they were also the people who moved to Facebook in the late 00s and ended the web era by doing so.

niche it is now. Hopefully I'm wrong tho I sorta wish I coulda experienced the internet in its hey day

wanna go back to the olden days

I promise you really don't want to go back Web craft is niche and it always will be - however the web revival today, I would say is more mature, more creative and generally more interesting than the web of the 90s ever was - for technical and cultural reasons, we have the benefit of building on 30 years of culture - we've out done the early web many times over. Whats much more interesting now is what we can do next.

[juette]

On top of that mobiles are consumption devices, if you've ever tried to create something on a phone its a genuine struggle - you cant have a web revival without the ability to easily and actively create the web; viewing a site is not a real participation without also creating one.

i still wish there was more of an effort for mobile compatibility cause while i dont commute anymore i used to be stuck in public transports for like 2 hours a day and i wouldve loved to get to explore the indie web more during that time but there was very very little that i could actually read on my phone so i would just refresh tumblr and discord on loop. and like i do have a computer at home so i did make my own website with it but i clearly couldnt have used said computer on a super crowded 7am train

not to mention computers can be inaccessible for a variety of reasons

[Melooon]

computers can be inaccessible for a variety of reasons

A big part of the web revival is about encouraging boundaries around technology use and accessing the web in a healthy way - there is a whole thread dedicated to where websites should be viewed - but yes, you were in a situation that didn't suit the web, that happens and the web (especially the smaller web) should not be everywhere in my opinion - its partly the limitation on its presence that gives that presence meaning.

As for more practical web revival-related things to do on a phone; read an RSS feed, write a blog post in your notes, draw, bring a gameboy and play some indie romhack, just be bored and have ideas - there are so many things outside the web that can tie back into the web when you are back online.

I just don't think that using the web as a time filler is respectful to the web as a medium or a creative force, it diminishes it instead of raising it up.

[Losertron_6000]

It doesn't tend to work like that You cant bend a medium to fit a format that it doesn't fit

And I agree!! I just think its a major factor keeping people from being invested.

This is really not at all true; the homepages of the 90s were largely created by regular middle class people (mostly Americans) with enough income for a basic PC

Er okay thats my bad with that word choice. I didnt mean that the decentralized internet was only filled with people who're super good with computers more that they had a passion for running their own websites/pages. People who didnt care werent super online.

[juette]

the web (especially the smaller web) should not be everywhere in my opinion - its partly the limitation on its presence that gives that presence meaning.

not everything can work for everyone for sure but if we really do want decentralisation then we also have to do some degree of "meeting people where theyre at". no one will leave mainstream platforms if there's nothing they can actually see outside of them

its fine for someone to only care about their own experience on their own website and not want to make a mobile-friendly view. but the "computer good phone bad" mentality that can be very common in small web circles is very exclusionary and kind of antithetical to a desire for the web to be less centralised

[Melooon]

"meeting people where theyre at"

I knows that's the logical path to follow, but it just doesn't work. You can look at tools and projects aimed at meeting people where they are; from corporate site builders to indie equivalents (there was one a few years ago but I'm totally drawing a blank on its name) - the problem is that like mobile aligned sites, they just end up not being great for anyone; they are diminished compared to desktop focused sites and they are not as compelling as tictok for mobile people. Meeting people where they are with something that's subpar doesn't help anyone - and if in the process of trying to do that you are making web craft less fun for yourself as the webmaster, then everyone looses.

Its not that the computer is good and the phone is bad; its that they serve different functions; a phone is not equivalent to a computer; its a more limited device (in some ways, not others!) and those limits are reflected on the media you create for it.

This is getting quite off topic from the subject of centralized or decentralized hosting spaces; since what were now discussing is centralized or decentralized browsing tools - but even that raises all sorts of fun questions! What if phones were all web servers? What if you could collect webapps from people as you street passed them? Instead of constant web pages at URLs, you'd could have mini documents that you can only see when your in a cafe with someone (Like AirDrop but truly open!). The point being, if you want a mobile web, make a true mobile web, one that's designed around the nature of mobile devices and expands their capabilities.

Including people is about inspiring them, its about lifting them up to be something and see something more than they believed was possible; its not about fitting things into a common denominator. People will grow to reach the things they want, you just have to show them that something is worth that growth.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Which started as small businesses and paved the way for all the little niche online stores. Without them, a lot of people wouldn't have realized how to make money on the web by selling and shipping items.

This is a common trope, but often not the full truth: Amazon was funded by a million-weight hedgefond from day one. Ebay on the other hand was really funded by an amateur, but got a relevant booster by "Benchmark" - the same people who also funded Uber - in both cases, much more money was available than a next-door-shop will ever have. And even if one of the "big platforms" that are around nowadays really started from zero, there is clearly a tendency for centralization within the digital economy.
All of this doesn't matter much for the average internet user: When they entered the stage, the moloch were there and the cream was shared out - the early adopters from the pioneer years are a tiny minority today.

Here around, small stores became much more rare; and the people I know of who do trading over the internet are dependent from the centralized platforms, and have to pay for using them - the internet didn't make it easier for small players, in the end.

[Tuffy!]

The ID thing isnt an issue here yet, but it may be later. I am really curious as to if my friends would be willing to give it up for their tiktok/short form content. Sadly, I do think they will. 

Me too, me too. They will try to force this crap upon all of us after the majority has adapted their way of thinking. A lot of people already don't seem to question it. But the ones who question it, should speak up LOUD. About the risks involved, about how bad this actually is for privacy and what upcoming data breaches featuring millions or at least hundreds of thousands of id copies leaked to the internet mean in terms of identity theft, fraud and the consequences it might have for the original id card holders.

not everything can work for everyone for sure but if we really do want decentralisation then we also have to do some degree of "meeting people where theyre at". no one will leave mainstream platforms if there's nothing they can actually see outside of them

its fine for someone to only care about their own experience on their own website and not want to make a mobile-friendly view. but the "computer good phone bad" mentality that can be very common in small web circles is very exclusionary and kind of antithetical to a desire for the web to be less centralised

I second that.

Instead of constant web pages at URLs, you'd could have mini documents that you can only see when your in a cafe with someone (Like AirDrop but truly open!). The point being, if you want a mobile web, make a true mobile web, one that's designed around the nature of mobile devices and expands their capabilities.

I LOVE this idea!

the problem is that like mobile aligned sites, they just end up not being great for anyone; they are diminished compared to desktop focused sites and they are not as compelling as tictok for mobile people. Meeting people where they are with something that's subpar doesn't help anyone - and if in the process of trying to do that you are making web craft less fun for yourself as the webmaster, then everyone looses.

This is very true. However, all websites should have a fallback for mobile users that at least lets them receive the information they might be looking for. I try to make my website work great on mobile and desktop but I have a long way to go. At the moment I didn't even have bothered visiting my site by using a smartphone once.

Amazon was funded by a million-weight hedgefond from day one.

Thanks for correcting me. I didn't remember this correctly. I just did a quick search. Bezos gave away 20% for 1 Million at some point when he was in need for money. At least he was in some struggle for money for his company. As a former hedge-fonds manager himself, he probably knew what he was getting into in terms of raising funds and what comes with it as a downside for the company owner(s).

[...]there is clearly a tendency for centralization within the digital economy.

Here around, small stores became much more rare; and the people I know of who do trading over the internet are dependent from the centralized platforms, and have to pay for using them - the internet didn't make it easier for small players, in the end.

Same here. The city centers around keep getting less and less attractive. Some online shops do quite well without relying on Amazon, Etsy, Shopify and such. But the majority relies on these bigger marketplaces and bends to their rules.

[juette]

they are diminished compared to desktop focused sites

theyre only diminished if the person making them chooses to make them diminished tbh, sure a smaller screen changes the way you display pages but it doesnt have to limit your creativity