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A niche, encrypted deep-web for cypherpunks to serve as a channel for La Resistance(tm) would be a web that had already lost any actual reason to use it. I use

A niche, encrypted deep-web for cypherpunks to serve as a channel for La Resistance(tm) would be a web that had already lost any actual reason to use it. I use the Web to talk to people, learn things, and explore cool stuff other people made. If those other people aren't using the niche crypto/stegano services, then what am I going to use them for? Yes, there will always be some way to have privacy online, if you're beardy enough and avoid using most popular consumer technology in favor of homegrown hackerly solutions. But a Web without the network effect is a Web that's no good at all for almost all the reasons I care. It'll be good for dissension, semi-legal activity, dubious porn, safety ... there's plenty of times that people need true privacy and security. But when your network's only good for that, then it'll still be dead in all the other ways that made the Internet so amazing.

arpa 8y ago
People made copies of "forbidden" material on x-ray photos. There was samisdat (underground press). There were anticommunist anecdotes told at night in soviet kitchens. And somehow these people managed to do that without explicit permission of their government, and even under the proespect of severe punishment: incarceration, torture, labor camps and death penalty in extreme cases. Thing is, it was worth it for people who did that. Now, ask yourself: is the web as important to you that you would start using deep web, steganographics, etc., or are you just a consumer who just needs mass production? Because facebook and google and their services are here to stay: they're bigger than china and you need not worry about them; me - over the years of them fighting the web it has lost only one thing: its' individual freedom. Thing that you call the network effect, i call the tvisation of the web: there are no blogs, no self-hosted material, no homepages, only content "channels" owned by the select few: facebook and google. It has, for me, no appeal of the early, wondrous thing, only ad-riddled cancer. And so, my friend, the web is already dead in that aense, but it will continue evolving, and what i hope for is that some iteration of niche cyberpunk web will bring back the wondrous thing that was before.

arpa 8y ago

People made copies of "forbidden" material on x-ray photos. There was samisdat (underground press). There were anticommunist anecdotes told at night in soviet kitchens. And somehow these people managed to do that without explicit permission of their government, and even under the proespect of severe punishment: incarceration, torture, labor camps and death penalty in extreme cases. Thing is, it was worth it for people who did that. Now, ask yourself: is the web as important to you that you would start using deep web, steganographics, etc., or are you just a consumer who just needs mass production? Because facebook and google and their services are here to stay: they're bigger than china and you need not worry about them; me - over the years of them fighting the web it has lost only one thing: its' individual freedom. Thing that you call the network effect, i call the tvisation of the web: there are no blogs, no self-hosted material, no homepages, only content "channels" owned by the select few: facebook and google. It has, for me, no appeal of the early, wondrous thing, only ad-riddled cancer. And so, my friend, the web is already dead in that aense, but it will continue evolving, and what i hope for is that some iteration of niche cyberpunk web will bring back the wondrous thing that was before.