5 ms·
The Internet Free Zone (1997)
- Zambyte 3y agoVery nice, I'm going to add the banner to my site :D
- rexarex 3y agoSo innocent and naive. Now we just sell the user data to advertisers.
- _madmax_ 3y agoI really like that the old web is making a comeback
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoA shop I worked for had a web 1.0 easter egg version of their homepage. Apparently there's a whole subset of Japanese only websites that still use web 1.0 design considerations. I've been tempted to learn Japanese just so I can experience the joy of being frozen in the 90s. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
- autoexec 3y agoJapanese websites often seem really busy to me. I'm not fan of narrow strips of content with excessive whitespace designed for cell phones but too much information/link/image density and it's overwhelming.
- code_duck 3y agoOne analysis I’ve heard of that is that Japanese is naturally a more dense language than English or other European languages, so the style seems more natural to native readers of Japanese.
- RajT88 3y agoThere may be more to it than just that. Japanese culture seems to value really busy spaces. Frantic pop music, blinking lights, and all that. Possibly not coincidentally, the most popular recreational drug in Japan is meth.
- 0xcde4c3db 3y ago> I've been tempted to learn Japanese just so I can experience the joy of being frozen in the 90s. When it comes to Japan, you can even double up on the '90s goodness by maintaining a POTS line with a fax machine.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoStop I can only handle so much nostalgia! Funny enough, I end up using a fax 0-1 times a year. Enough that I can just do it at work. Document scanning however is a different story. I do that enough times a year that I keep one on hand next to my laser printer (<3).
- macintosh-hd 3y agoWe need this back...
- aslfjiasf 3y agoIt's still there! You can use the banner.
- Pannoniae 3y agoI wonder whether we'll be seeing a return back to basics in terms of the internet/applications soon. I find it amusing how programs from the 90s can have much better usability, more features and better reliability than something released today in many cases. The optimist in me says that it will happen as almost everything popular becomes enshittified and unusable, so the "old" alternatives come back because they are just that much better, so a new cycle of innovation starts again. The pessimist in me says that it won't happen and in 5 years, we'll be using our computers as slightly larger phones and everything replaced with hyper-monetised, LLM-generated trash.
- sdsaga12 3y ago"Enshittified" is a valuable contribution to the lexicon.
- samplatt 3y agoApparently coined by Cory Doctorow in January this year - https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
- phlakaton 3y agoMaybe? A Gemini link just came across my feed the other day. It seems to be an underground scene, and its quirky protocol and format suggests it's going to remain an underground scene for quite some time. Back to basics is already available, in a sense, if you want it.
- indigochill 3y agoI hang out in that scene from time to time (particularly, the "tildeverse": https://tildeverse.org/ https://tildeverse.org/). IMO, it's necessarily an underground scene because mass culture wants big tech. It takes a certain awareness and commitment to principles to reject the convenience afforded by seemingly free everything that happens to be paid for by selling user data and all the other negatives that come with that (like engagement at any cost). True, there's a lot of free stuff in the tildeverse as well, but everything there exists because someone thinks it's cool and is willing to take on the financial hit to have it exist without asking for compensation.
- jacquesm 3y agoI think I qualify for a level 1 membership.
- autoexec 3y agoSomething like this would be pretty cool as a registry. I'd love to be able browse a bunch of websites that are all about creating and sharing instead of exploiting and profiting. A webring might be a good for the "old internet" vibe, but a search engine limited to sites that don't sell anything (including visitors) would be even better. I'm not sure this page would technically quality for the level 1 membership considering it has the "These Pages Created and Maintained using Arachnophilia" ad for Arachnophilia but maybe since it's on the same domain it doesn't count.
- pedrogpimenta 3y ago> A webring might be a good for the "old internet" vibe, but a search engine limited to sites that don't sell anything (including visitors) would be even better. Like marginalia[0]? 0: https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://search.marginalia.nu/
- manuelmoreale 3y agoThere's also http://wiby.me http://wiby.me and https://searchmysite.net https://searchmysite.net
- rus20376 3y agoIt has been a very long time since I even thought of this site, and the related CareWare license. I am happy to have the opportunity to bring it back into my mind! For further good feelings please see the author's Acracnophilia license. https://arachnoid.com/careware/index.html https://arachnoid.com/careware/index.html
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- idlewords 3y agoI love that it looks like a banner ad.
- pluto_modadic 3y agoI mean, I'll never sell my customer data... but I do charge for hosting so I guess I don't qualify...
- hedora 3y agoOne thing aged poorly: Level 2 means you don’t sell stuff or spam. Level 1 means you don’t violate user privacy and show ads. Selling actual stuff doesn’t seem bad, especially when compared to user tracking.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y agoThis immediately stuck out to me as a flaw. I don't have a problem with, e.g. small content creators selling hats with their logo on, but that site wouldn't be condoned by IFZ. But a site showing adverts for those hats would be okay? It seems backwards.
- rchaud 3y ago"Selling actual stuff" is why the Internet is awash in soulless SEO blog posts. The only reason to write them is to pull in search traffic from people looking for that term. And there's no reason to want to do that unless you want them to buy something.
- gbxyz 3y agoAside: Arachnophilia was the first editor I used for web page development in the late 90s as it was installed on every PC in my university's computer rooms. It's amazing to rediscover it now!
- drpixie 3y agoFrom before the internet was so overwhelmed by late stage capitalism that it's almost impossible to conceive of something not based on sales and/or advertising. "Those were the days."
- eru 3y ago> Over the past few years, the Internet has been almost entirely taken over by commercial interests. As if the other interests are better. Eg Russian trolling ain't a commercial interest, it's a geopolitical one. Or [politics](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-is-the-mind-killer https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-i...) in general. The web of 1997 was so much more innocent, when we mostly had to worry about those 'evil' commercial interests.
- re_riley 3y agoI wonder if www.emlia.org qualifies?
- User23 3y agoThe worst thing about the enshittified Internet is that government sites used to have the old free spirit of the 'net, whereas now they are as bad or worse than the commercial crap. For example, even in the late '90s you could still access the research reports on the DEA website. One of the more memorable ones was about the "Bay Area Organization" that their chemists determined was the source of virtually all LSD-25 sold in the North American market. Furthermore, the distribution network was found to travel with Grateful Dead shows. Another interesting observation in the report was that this organization was impossible to infiltrate, because unlike the narcotics traffickers who were money motivated, the Bay Area Organization appeared to be made up of true believers who wanted to share psychedelics for spiritual or mystical reasons rather than commercial gain. Needless to say this information isn't in any way surprising to anyone who was there, but that level of transparency from a three letter agency on the Internet is utterly unthinkable today. I wouldn't be surprised if some former members of the "Bay Area Organization" read this site. If any of you are, I hope that you are writing memoirs and will please publish them at a time you find prudent.