How to Revitalize the Internet

Neonriser

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Okay everyone, I have heard your complaints about everything that's wrong with the Internet. Now, let's hear your ideas on how to improve the internet.

To me, decentralized social media (i.e. Mastodon) and having the power to make our own websites on Neocities, leprd.space, and other free webhosting services are a start.
 
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Noct

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The return of independently owned websites, platforms, etc. Most people run their communities on centralized platforms. It's digital serfdom. We need more landlords and less serfs
 
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Neonriser

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The return of independently owned websites, platforms, etc. Most people run their communities on centralized platforms. It's digital serfdom. We need more landlords and less serfs
That sounds like a brilliant idea! I'm very glad that there are people out there on the internet interested in such things. If you can't eat the rich, then empower the poor!
 
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kultra

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Mastodon and plutoroma or whatever is filled with the same memes and "content" as twitter. Even with best intentions to make a new community you're still stuck advertising on cancer platforms because of how search engines function now.

A critical element that separates new vs old was how people discovered webpages. Honestly the meme-y culture has also homogenized it as much as the platforms have. I think communities should have a bigger push for original content tbh, beyond the personal profile that I see trending on neocities.
 
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R@pture++

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This is an off the cuff idea so bear with me; what if there were more apps that forced or encouraged you to engage with the real world? a la Pokemon Go. I didn't even play Pokemon Go and people would come up and ask if I was the one in their gym, etc. etc.. Encouraged interaction with real, physical life.
 
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Too many people are clout chasers and trend followers, almost nobody is a trend setter. More trends need to happen and also people need to stop recycling memes so much.
 
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Shrug

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I think the most important and hardest to accomplish step would be to decentralize the internet. If we could split up sites like Twitter, Facebook, >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk, etc. into smaller communities I think we would see a lot more meaningful interactions. I like posting on this site because there's a relatively small amount of people and I like getting to know you all.
Another issue, in my opinion, is that people seem to make content with the goal of making money rather than just doing it for fun. I really miss the internet from when I was younger and everyone seemed to be creating and sharing things just because they wanted to.
I guess I don't really have any ideas to accomplish this stuff, it's hard to compete with these giant corporations that have algorithms designed to keep you glued to their sites.
 
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vaporwavemaster1

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このような独立したフォーラムを支援し、参加することは非常に重要だと思います。独立したフォーラムが初期のインターネットの大きな部分を占めていたことを覚えています。フェイスブックが目の前で崩れかけている今、より多くのトラフィックがフォーラムに向けられると思います

マークゲーム.png
 
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There are other networks out there, but people dont want to use them because they are so afraid of the scary terminal.
Gopherspace
Geminispace
etc..

If you truly want a new internet then splitting off the current poisoned internet and starting a brand new network with fresh ideas and no javascript is your best option.
 
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I really think going back to decentralized networks, blockchain social media, using web like Gemini.

Getting rid of central large companies
Lets team up and make a website on Gemini space. With our own based client and server in glorious GPL2.
 
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Fyren

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It's an idea that i have no clue on how to actually put into practice, but i think the first and foremost goal is - what Shrug mentioned as well - to disincentive the role of financial gain on the internet. I strongly believe that big business is the major contributing factor to the internet's decline. A good example would be video streaming platforms. I really dislike Youtube with a passion, but i can't deny that most of the reasons i dislike it for have to do with matters that they have no choice but to comply with, or are things that grew out of social fads. Copyright/Intellectual property trolls, censorship (whether that be compliance with state censorship in certain nations or simply shutting down particular ideologies out of fear of backlash) , vloggers/influencers pushing sponsored content with malicious intent, etc. Centralizing all that video and audio content on a single website makes it prone to being chased down. Smaller video hosting service sites don't really get that problem as much. Small fish in a big pond.

Back in the day, content was mostly provided as a pure hobby or passion project at no or little financial incentive with a few exceptions here and there. Production quality was naturally low, but at the very least more genuine.

Reducing financial incentives should, hopefully, also lead to less of these problems, and a more decentralized internet as a whole.
 
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roxytonic

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The return of independently owned websites, platforms, etc. Most people run their communities on centralized platforms. It's digital serfdom. We need more landlords and less serfs
+1 to this idea, and also have easy quoting/transposing from other independent sites so we can really talk with each other well. i think reshare + comment is an underrated feature that's been sadly twisted into just another way of dunking...instead of taking a comment out of context, take a comment and scaffold newer, better context around it...oops, there i go.
To me, decentralized social media (i.e. Mastodon) and having the power to make our own websites on Neocities, leprd.space, and other free webhosting services are a start.
lots of talk about decentralization in the thread. i do think that's the way to go, but in the case of Mastodon specifically, their federation is something of a middle ground between pure distributed decentralization, and centralization. people sign up for instances, and they're "dialed into" that instance. so while they can communicate with any other individual and/or server that's federated, they're still reliant on the admins and maintainers of that instance. on the other hand, Mastodon makes it pretty easy to move to a new instance, so maybe you can host a personal instance in the future if you want more control? :)

1635838162312.png
 
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Alright! How do I start?
We need to first decide on some of the technologies like the programming language and grow from there. We also need the design document for gemini and some information on whats the data needed to successfully make calls/requests in geminispace.

This will be a difficult climb normally only undertaken by a team of skilled professionals, but we can pull it off. This is our moon landing.
 
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Jared

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We can start by removing 90% of internet users
After that, remove most websites
Basically, we'd have to rebuild everything from scratch
"The internet is dead, and we're the ghosts haunting the graveyard. God that's depressing" -Mister Metokur
Hmm I'm interested , how would we conceivably do this?
 
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