Invasive tracking and pay-for-play search engines has broken the internet. It’s time to reclaim our independence with the Small Web.

  • MudMan@fedia.io
    7·
    20 days ago

    Who is “we”?

    Technoactivists can’t even get people to use free software when it works and there’s like five of us over here in AP land.

    Who is out there willing to create a movement to go back to navigating an page index or a webring? In what universe? Multiple governments freaked out about TikTok because the data was going to the bad spies they didn’t like and they STILL couldn’t get people off TikTok and into anywhere else.

    I mean, if you have a time machine I’d happily blow up Skynet and tell 90s communication scholars that they were right about every single thing they were saying about search engines and algorithmic content, but that genie got out of the bottle, regained his freedom from the kindly street rat-turned-prince with his third wish and is halfway through Disney World by now.

    • Vittelius@feddit.orgEnglish
      5·
      19 days ago

      For a lot of people it’s not even “going back”. They are either to young to have experienced the old web or did but bounced of it. There is a sizeable group of people out there, who went online for the first time not despite facebooks privacy invasive profile building but because of it.

      Lemmys default web UI doesn’t have a endlessly loading newsfeed. That’s a intentional design decision to help users spend less time on the platform. Because spending to much time on social media is bad for your mental health. So having friction points is a good thing.

      Except the competition doesn’t do that. So what is your average social media addict to do when they hit a friction point? They won’t close the browser. Instead they will go back to the commercial platforms.

      Some people like junk food. But creating addictive social media yourself isn’t a good option either