“Nature in Descending Regions” by Walter Levi Yaggy (1893).
There is a growing discontent around the current state of the World Wide Web.
Web 1.0 felt like a place of freedom and creativity. Maybe I’m being romantic, for sure had to have its issues… But remember the whimsical sites in Geocities, the simplicity of email discussion lists or the anonymity of IRC?
That air of innocence has vanished. For good. A few decades later it has become a dystopian trap of surveillance and censorship, where governments and platforms gorge on our attention and personal data and force-feed us ads and fake news. The web today, as most people experience it, is a horrible place.
This has been discussed for a while, but 2024 has seen a peak of discussions and contributions to this topic. I suggest three converging causes to this renaissance of the web: the late stage of enshittification of the platforms; the revival of the personal blogs (and podcasts) during the covid pandemic; and the nostalgia of the generations that enjoyed the old web as teenagers and are now in their 30s and 40s.
This is an on-going collection of essays, articles, projects and manifestos about what went wrong and what to do to make it right.
§The disenshittified internet starts with loyal “user agents”
By Cory Doctorow, 7 May, 2024.
A web browser that’s a “user agent” is a comforting thought. An agent’s job is to serve you and your interests. […] A “faithless” user agent is utterly different from a “clumsy” user agent, and faithless user agents have become the norm. Indeed, as crude early internet clients progressed in sophistication, they grew increasingly treacherous. Most non-browser tools are designed for treachery.
§Reweirding the Web
By John Allsopp, 3 May, 2024.
More than at any time in the last decade or so I feel there’s a desire for this more personal web, and the tools and ideas to make it happen. So reclaim your little plot of the web, make it a bit weirder, a bit better. And connect with others who are doing likewise. It’s what drew me to the Web 30 years ago. One of the best decisions I ever made.
See also the The Disenshittify Project, 30 April, 2024.
§We can have a different web
By Molly White, 1 May, 2024.
Many yearn for the “good old days” of the web. We could have those good old days back — or something even better — and if anything, it would be easier now than it ever was.
§We Need To Rewild The Internet
By Maria Farrel and Robin Berjon, 16 April, 2024.
Ecologists have reoriented their field as a “crisis discipline,” a field of study that’s not just about learning things but about saving them. We technologists need to do the same. Rewilding the internet connects and grows what people are doing across regulation, standards-setting and new ways of organizing and building infrastructure, to tell a shared story of where we want to go. It’s a shared vision with many strategies. The instruments we need to shift away from extractive technological monocultures are at hand or ready to be built.
§A manifesto for small, static, web apps
By Ross Wintle, 17 February, 2024.
Static first/only, No login, Don’t store user data, Use the smallest JS library possible, Use web standards as much as possible, Use simple build steps that won’t break, “Done” is a goal, Zero-maintenance (and easy maintenance) is a goal, Don’t minify, Be accessible.