In the early days the internet was a free, egalitarian space for anyone to surf. Now, commercial interests rule – but users do still have some control.
  • @[email protected]English
    47•2 months ago

    Creating a closed network on the Internet where any commercialization and domination are prohibited might help?

    Something like Tor/freenet/I2P, but less shady (I know it’s not meant to be like this), open and accessible to anyone.

    Edit: I remembered about gemini protocol, where you get

    lightweight online space where documents are just documents, in the interests of every reader’s privacy, attention and bandwidth

    Perfect for the new better internet, huh?

    For Android/iOS users, there’s a client called Lagrange on F-droid and Testflight

    • @[email protected]English
      5•2 months ago

      TIL - there is something called Gopher and Gemini. Looks interesting, will read more on it.

      • @[email protected]English
        6•2 months ago

        Neither is all that great in practice.

        Gopher has many problems as a protocol. The original versions of HTTP had much the same problems, such as closing the connection at the end of a transfer rather than having a length header or a signal that the connection is actually done. HTTP went on to fix most of those problems, but Gopher never got the chance. Gopher+ started fixing it up, but it was a victim of bad timing. The Mosaic browser was released shortly after Gopher+ and everyone started switching over. To my knowledge, nobody has ever implemented Gopher+ on either a client or server. Not even after over 20 years of a “revival” movement.

        Gemini intentionally limits things, such as not having inline images. This is supposed to be done to keep out methods that have been historically used to track users, but things don’t work that way. I can just as easily send my logs to a data broker without using a pixel tracker if that’s what I want to do.

        In the end, you can just use HTTP with a static web page, zero cookies, and no JavaScript. That’s what I ended up doing for my old blog (after offering a Gemini version for a while), including converting a bunch of YouTube <iframe> tags to linked screenshots so you don’t even get YouTube cookies.

        • @[email protected]English
          2•2 months ago

          That’s been my take on the whole ‘use gopher/gemini!’ bandwagon. Nice idea, but the solution to the problem leads to more problems that need solutions, and we’ve come up with solutions to those, but on other protocols.

          And I mean, if I stab someone in the face with a screwdriver, the misuse of the screwdriver isn’t in some way specific to the screwdriver and thus nobody should use screwdrivers.

          Same thing with all the nonsense a modern website does: HTTP is fine, it’s just being used by shitheads. You could make a prviacy-respecting website that’s not tracking you or engaging in any sort of shifty bullshit, but someone at some point decided that was the only way to make money on the Internet, and here we are.