...smaller communities
So like it was before the dawn of Reddit and social media?
Sign me the fuck up. I miss my dumb little websites with a dodgy layout full of terribly cropped gifs.
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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But how will we find any of these small sites with the dogshit search is lately.
Webrings, index pages, pure chance
I firmly believe that connecting people to their IRL friends is an important part of the potential of the Internet, as it is shown by Facebook, for example.
But I also believe there are people looking to connect with new people and finding a community where they can express themselves wholly. I think the current Internet is weak in this regard, weaker than it has been before, but I think it's possible to build a place where people can connect.
Pretty much. I should be able tobmake friends with any human on earth with an internet connection. That this is still hard is something we need to fix
I have a friends Discord I set up a year before Covid, and for about a year only 3 people used it, mainly to play some games together.
But when Covid hit, it obviously gained some traction. And now it's THE place I interact with friends since I've long ditched the likes of Facebook.
I keep going back and forth on whether or not to possibly set up a Mastodon server for friends. The hardest part would be convincing people to use it. But it could just be like our little shared space that could still interact with the wider world. It'd be kinda cool to have a Local feed be just people you know in real life.
A small friend group is best suited for chat programs (discord et al.) But if you want to expand the group a mastodon server is a good idea
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So the past of the internet?
The original web 3 was supposed to be a return to form of web 1, with the good stuff of web 2 and decentralized. Then cryptobros hijacked it
Yes and, We're taking it back.
https://about.flipboard.com/fediverse/how-to-get-started-in-the-fediverse/
There's more than just lemmy
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Sounds a lot like the past. And, actually, a bit like the current internet. Custom websites, feed syndication, etc. didn't disappear, they just shrank in the face of behemoth platforms.
"the future of the internet is likely its past..."
One might suggest that it should have always been that way.
The future of internet is you have to ask your government for permission before you can visit foreign websites.
There is no longer "Internet"
It will be suceeded by:
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Freedom Net (where "Antifa" is Banned, and you need a swastica armband to get access)
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Euronet (where UK just left, again)
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United Kingdom of Great Britain ~~and Northern Ireland~~ (they noped out of the UK, and re-re-joined the EU)
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Putin's #1 Digital Fan Club
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中华人民解放互联网 (People's Liberated Internet)
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And that's it, Canada and Mexico got Invaded by the US; while UK, EU, Russia, China all fought over the remaining of the world
(okay maybe my worldbuilding is ridiculous, but the world is collapsing and I want to write a story about my predictions of the future mm'kay? 😉)
Your worldbuilding is in SciFi classics tier, but it's missing all of the global South.
Australia is already more locked out, but its Internet can only exist in function of US.
I think the future of the internet is darknets for example Veilid.
The darknets are here, have been here, but are by definition: dark, so unless you're in one they're useless to you.
First rule of darknet membership: don't talk about the darknet.
Unless something's changed in the last few years, the darknet is too difficult for normies to use.
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We should be able to bootstrap activityPub to GeoCities websites. WordPress integration is taking a long time.
That's backwards, activitypub is higher level than websites. And you can literally make a website already and embed an activitypub stream
Basically forums
Bring them back! I for one would rather use a forum over a fucking Discord server any day of the week. At least forums are open, searchable and discoverable. Good luck finding the answer to a question you have that some poor sod like you may have also asked in a Discord server months or years ago.
God I hate discord.
Yes, but this time deep web forums that are unsearchable/unindexed so that information is lost forever! (Discord, telegram, matrix)actually that might actually be a return to web 1 forums before search engines were giant and all forum seach engines sucked ass 😂
The thing is that many people, myself included assumed most were dead and cannibalised by Reddit and Facebook groups. Turns out those specialised places have been running continuously on their own pace. Yeah, threads can still span hundreds of pages but in the end going through them makes you an expert on things overnight ;)
Oh my God, the Something Awful forums are still up: https://forums.somethingawful.com/
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Check out Neocities, a great community of indie web fans, built in the spirit of the old GeoCities sites.
Some really great sites there, it really captures that late 90's to early 2000's internet vibes.
US servers though... better self-host or use another non-US VPS.
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It is for me, but I have my doubts that the majority will avoid the corporate-owned spaces.
They're getting so shit people will have no choice. They're already leaving one alienated group at a time
Depends on where you live, but in the US I think there will be a sharp divide between two general groups: a minority who put some thought into what they do, and the vast meme-ified masses who accept whatever is laid out for them.
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The future is the past!
Small communities where one can talk about specific subjects? Man there's something like that already and people can run it from their own computers too, forgot the name though.
The good old days of phpmybb
I think by now we have figured out the majority of people are garbage and you only want to spend time with a select group. Discord seems to have this figured out.
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I wasn't too early, but I joined reddit around the Dota 2 beta, so circa 2012, and damn the site became more and more garbage the more people it had, most comments became nothing but karma farming one liners, references or snide shit.
Communities grew into massive echo chambers, quality of discussions went down the drain.
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Real issue is how much effort are people willing to put to maintain those communities.
Thank fuck the corporate silo era is (slowly) coming to an end. And they tried so hard to turn it into TV 2.0.
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"Silos" that echo.
the title is the description of reddit/lemmy/etc
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