15 ms·

Splitting the Web

332 points by bertman 3y ago

willywanker 3y ago
What do I do? Been blocking ads since I discovered it was possible in 1999, while on a shitty dialup and observing that banner ads loaded before the page itself. Back then I used a network level adblocker/firewall combo called AtGuard, which Symantec acquired later. Then moved onto AdMuncher on Windows for the next 15 years or so. Now I use Pale Moon as my primary browser - unlike Firefox that pretends to care about privacy while doing the opposite, this one, forked from Firefox 24 and maintained independently, does not have a shred of telemetry or analytics or 3rd party Pocket like bullshit that requires 50 different 'hardening' about:config tweaks to remove. uBlock Origin and eMatrix (a current fork of the discontinued uMatrix), both with an aggressive set of filter lists keep the web spanking clean for me. On Android, I've always rooted my phone to install AdAway, as a next level now I use AppManager (get it from muntashirakon.github.io) to disable advertising/tracking components within apps, and Google Play Services itself. Youtube being a special case, I use ReVanced Extended. Took some doing, but now I've managed to happily use whatever the corporate web throws up minus every piece of track advertising/analytics/tracking crap that they throw at me on either laptop or phone/tablet. Occasionally I look at the uBlock Origin logs and shudder to see all the crap that got blocked. Tl;dr - I don't have to turn hermit and seek out indie websites exclusively when I'm able to extract exactly what I want from the mainstream web. Ultimately, your devices belong to you; you have to take back control over what gets sent to it.
8chanAnon 3y ago
From the article: But, increasingly, I feel less and less like an outsider. It’s not me. It’s people living for and by advertising who are the outsiders. They are the one destroying everything they touch, including the planet. They are the sick psychos and I don’t want them in my life anymore. My thoughts exactly. Like the author, I don't have patience for glossy websites anymore. If a site needs third-party JS to be usable then I'm gone. I won't put up with 15mb downloads just to read some content (Twitter included). The web is not so much splitting in two. We are simply saying "no more" to the exploiters and grifters. Eventually, they will have to learn to eat with the commoners or eat by themselves.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- skydhash 3y ago
  I’m moving to Firefox as my main browser, and the amount of sites that break because of me blocking JavaScript (with ublock) is staggering. I can understand SPA being JS only, but simple blogs and other content sites, no.
  - sodapopcan 3y ago
    Using NoScript has been pretty eye-opening. I've come to learn that most of the time I'm happy unblock the primary domain. If the site doesn't work I'll look for a clearly-named CDN. If I can't identify one or, worse-yet, there is some kind of cdn.some-domain.com and unblocking that still doesn't make the site work, then I'm out.
    - 8chanAnon 3y ago
      I've stopped using NoScript because it was breaking my own apps. It was fine until Mozilla changed something in Firefox. The problem is that NoScript inserts a lot of JS into the web page and some of that JS gets broken by some sort security lockout. It may be a bug in Firefox and maybe it's been fixed but I wasn't satisfied with NoScript anyway. I'm now using uMatrix. It doesn't insert JS on every active element (just at the top) so it avoids buggy behaviour. The main thing I like about it is that it only blocks cross-origin scripts (NoScript blocks everything by default, including same-site).
      - sodapopcan 3y ago
        Good to know! I have seen how it injects JS into every page but so far it has not messed with my development, but I do use uBlock so I'll look into using it as a NoScript replacement as less the fewer plugins the better. Thanks! I do also use my hosts file for stuff that will never, ever, ever get a pass, like google analytics.
      - 3y ago
jakelazaroff 3y ago
> It feels like everyone is now choosing its side. You can’t stay in the middle anymore. You are either dedicating all your CPU cycles to run JavaScript tracking you or walking away from the big monopolies. You are either being paid to build huge advertising billboards on top of yet another framework or you are handcrafting HTML. Is that happening? I feel like there's a ton of middle ground, and it's only ever expanding. My personal website isn't a huge JavaScript app tracking my visitors, but I wouldn't really call it handcrafted HTML. I'm involved with a bunch of communities that aren't overly corporatized but don't take a big principled stand against it either. I prefer Maggie Appleton's diagram of the web [1]. The click-obsessed corporations are what she calls the "dark forest of the clear web". But below that there are email newsletters and RSS feeds, there are personal blogs and digital gardens, there are communities run on Discord and Slack. [1] https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest
- chomp 3y ago
  Well, her analogy is more for protected areas where you can hide from lifeless, aggresively public areas and where you can consume (presumably) more authentic content. It doesn't work well in this case for e.g. "cozy web" because places like Snapchat are definitely harvesting your interactions. Whatsapp is literally Facebook. The author of this article is more ranting about the "commercial web" in this case. They don't seem to have the same level of appreciation for some of the corporations that Maggie does.
  - jakelazaroff 3y ago
    That’s why I feel like the author is trying to force a square peg into a round hole. WhatsApp is literally Facebook, but all my messages are end-to-end encrypted; I don’t feel like they’re tracking me the same way I do on Instagram. Meanwhile, plenty of people’s blogs have all sorts of nasty tracking shit. People love trying to fit things into dichotomies, but reality is always a lot messier.
    - rakoo 3y ago
      Whatsapp doesn't know what you're talking about, but facebook stills increases its power and presence if you use it
bruce511 3y ago
I get where the author is coming from, but I feel like his conclusion is reductionist. Yes, on the one extreme you have Facebook, and the other extreme is say Mastodon, but there's also a huge middle way which is well populated. This week I've browsed hacker news, Wikipedia, done some research for an upcoming trip, kept up with OpenSSL and Jquery (yeah, that's still around, and still useful.) I bought some waterproofing (direct from the manufacturer), looked up nearby steel manufacturers, and looked up the phone number of my electrician (on his site). In cases where I feel I might be tracked, I just open an incognito browser [1]. Mostly though (apart from news) I don't really find myself on sites driven by advertising. If you spend your day on social media, news sites, or buying everything online, then sure, I get it, you're gonna get tracked. But that's really (for me) a tiny part of my browser history. Everyone is different I guess. [1] yeah I know, tracking is more than cookies, but I see so few ads anyway I haven't even bothered to load an ad-blocker. Then again, I'm not on social media...
- hightrix 3y ago
  Replied to wrong comment
- palata 3y ago
  > Everyone is different I guess. If you are not on any social media and not logged into google, then you are really in a very small minority.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  > I bought some waterproofing (direct from the manufacturer), looked up nearby steel manufacturers, and looked up the phone number of my electrician (on his site). Perhaps a little side tracked here, but the internet has basically become useless for DIY projects lately. We're renovating and needed some advise on which kind of paint to use for a particular project and we have given up on using the internet for advise. SEO, bad translations and straight-up scams have prevent us from finding even the most basic information. Instead we just go to the paint store and ask there. They also know exactly what kind of paint, wallpaper and tools are available and don't recommend stuff that's can only be shipped from the US or China. So congratulation, we broke the internet and we now back at consulting local experts in physical stores.... Brilliant.
spansoa 3y ago
> The link I clicked doesn’t open or is wrangled? Yep, I’m probably blocking some important third-party JavaScript. No, I don’t care. I’ve too much to read on a day anyway. More time for something else. Only on a rare occasion does surfing with no JS actually hamper my surfing. If a site needs JS, I make a rare exception and whitelist it temporarily with uBlock Origin. I have a dedicated browser profile for sites which require JS and I need to be logged in, like Amazon, Gmail, Reddit, etc
klabb3 3y ago
It’s the monopolistic companies aka mega corps that really restrict individuals and stifle innovation. In the small-mid sized space, there are shitty actors but they’re easier to avoid, and don’t require resorting to living in a cave. They are competing with each other in the traditional sense of the word. They’re not on a mission to extinguish. This is not unique to tech, it’s everywhere. Private actors that become the size of countries switch to playing zero-sum games, by acquiring and consolidating. It’s always bad for the consumer.
- jfengel 3y ago
  In what way do they stifle people? I had the impression that for the most part they just ignored small fry. If you want to boot up a server and point a DNS address at it, knock yourself out. You can't "innovate" on Facebook's site, but why would you want to? People go there to do Facebook things. Your own web site is limited primarily by your imagination. (And occasionally the law, but that requires some pretty extreme stuff.)
  - klabb3 3y ago
    > You can't "innovate" on Facebook's site, but why would you want to? People go there to do Facebook things. Parents use Facebook to schedule activities for kids. Governments and companies use Twitter to announce things to citizens and customers. So they are, as they claim, in a sense a digital townhall. But with arbitrary restrictions on access, both in terms of opinions and expressions and in terms of clients they don’t want you to use, or APIs they don’t want you to call. > for the most part they just ignored small fry Very small, yes. But as soon as you’re bigger, they’re gonna want to eliminate you, peacefully of course. Acquisitions are probably the first tool, then it’s get uglier if that doesn’t work out. Anyway, details in all its glory, but the trend as you grow larger is to play dominance games, which is another term for zero-sum. That’s not the only thing they do of course, but the trend is overwhelming.
gumby 3y ago
Key insight: > It’s a bit like all those layers of JavaScript and flashy css have been used against usability, against them. Against us
shaunxcode 3y ago
Apparently I joined this movement decades ago on accident? I lurked Reddit on occasion but even that is dead to me now. Mastodon is awesome. It does need door game support though.
- beeburrt 3y ago
  Door game?
  - pschuegr 3y ago
    I assume this means something to do with onboarding
  - npongratz 3y ago
    Not GP, but probably referring to door games similar to those found on BBSes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBS_door#Door_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBS_door#Door_games
    - shaunxcode 3y ago
      Yep, exactly. The whole fediverse thing very much feels like a new iteration of BBS (which is a great thing!) and a big part of that was async/turn based games (often times you were restricted to 5-10 moves/actions per day). The great thing about it was it meant you spent more time thinking about your moves as you went about your normal day than being glued to your screen.
rodolphoarruda 3y ago
I like the text, but the author seems to indicate there is a fork in the road ahead. Take left to the open web (HTML, lessJS, etc.); take right to the commercial web (Fb, GA4, JS, Ads etc). I think we can easily have both options at the same time. If in the past we used to discuss our "work life" in opposition to our "personal life", I think we are at the point now of discussing our "small-tech text based web presence" vs. a "big-tech click based web presence" as described. Not a big deal, I think.
EGreg 3y ago
As I’m blocking completely google analytics, every Facebook domain and any analytics I can, I’m also disappearing for them. I don’t see them and they don’t see me! Aww how cute. No, they can still track what you do. Remember Facebook Beacon and the outcry? It is now a reality. Facebook (oh excuse me, Meta) doesn’t back down after people vehemently react to Newsfeed, Beacon, Metaverse etc. Mark used to respond “Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.” before justifying what he did. That was when he was wet behind the ears — he doesn’t bother to do that anymore. Facebook changed our world, our ideas of the word Friend, of the word Like, etc. Whether you want to or not, these platforms controlled by a few people will reshape society unless we build open source alternatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon https://www.computerworld.com/article/2533161/facebook-s-beacon--returns--for-some-bloggers.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2533161/facebook-s-bea... https://techcrunch.com/2008/09/18/is-beacon-back/ https://techcrunch.com/2008/09/18/is-beacon-back/
- masfuerte 3y ago
  Beacon was client side. If you block access to facebook domains then they receive nothing.
  - EGreg 3y ago
    If a company has your first name, last name or other information, they can send it to Facebook Large corporations are buying this data, and even governments https://www.fastcompany.com/90310803/here-are-the-data-brokers-quietly-buying-and-selling-your-personal-information https://www.fastcompany.com/90310803/here-are-the-data-broke... https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-what-data-brokers-know-about-you https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-... https://www.dli.tech.cornell.edu/post/facebook-and-google-are-the-new-data-brokers https://www.dli.tech.cornell.edu/post/facebook-and-google-ar...
Kiro 3y ago
Reverting back to phone calls and visiting physical stores again? This person is living my nightmare.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I've largely been doing this (and more) for a few years now. It's seriously improved my quality of life.
- at-fates-hands 3y ago
  My kids are teenagers who have stopped texting almost altogether. They do more facetime and other video conferencing. When I need to get a hold of either, I actually call. Texting stopped working years ago as a means to get a hold of them. Both are going to be seniors and have told me all their friends have all but abandoned texting and besides facetiming, they spend a LOT of time on conference calling when they're mobile gaming. It would appear communications continue to evolve over time from generation to generation. I thought once texting took hold, phone calls would become obsolete. I guess not. There's a lot more interesting things they do with tech these days, but I was fascinated with how their communication habits have changes so rapidly even in their own short lifetime.
superkuh 3y ago
>People who try alternative networks such as Mastodon or, God forbid, Gemini. People who poke fun at the modern web by building true HTML and JavaScript-less pages. Mastodon is actually part of the "HTTP as a secure application delivery protocol" and is no longer part of the "HTTP as website document delivery" team. To me that seems the biggest split: self contained application versus hyperlinked documents.
- the_gipsy 3y ago
  I am ignorant of the underlying mastodon protocol, but couldn't there be a (mostly) HTML-only frontend for mastodon, or something like that? I really hated that about twitter too, that for reading a goddamn SMS-lenghty tiny text it couldn't just have been "prerendered" on the server, no, you have to fetch a million things and watch different spinners before you get at it.
  - steinuil 3y ago
    Sure, you can write or run your own fediverse server that renders HTML-only page, and every time you see a Mastodon link you paste it in your server's lookup form and browse it from there. Honk (https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk) is HTML only and very minimalistic. I'm sure there's frontends or clients for Mastodon that use less HTML as well, so you can also swap out Mastodon's default frontend for a less heavy one.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - doublepg23 3y ago
    GoToSocial exposes an API for basic frontends pretty much. https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial
  - aendruk 3y ago
    The awful thing about Mastodon is it used to serve inert HTML but this behavior was removed. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19953 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19953
butz 3y ago
Biggest issue will be to keep government and public services on the non-corporate web, as they probably jump ship for "security" reasons.
- reidrac 3y ago
  I hate when a official government organisation that has their own website still uses twitter and facebook to make important announcements. The assumption all citizens use those private services is wrong and dangerous.
  - butz 3y ago
    Yes, this. Of course, there are no alternatives. EU could probably promote some instance of Mastodon as mandatory.
    - sickill 3y ago
      Official Mastodon instance for EU institutions: https://social.network.europa.eu/about https://social.network.europa.eu/about
wewxjfq 3y ago
It's sad, really. The information people want to get out of the web hasn't changed - an article is still a headline with a few paragraphs, a product is still a name, a description and a price, ... it's all so dead simple, yet the websites became unusable.
simonbarker87 3y ago
I find it sad that people always want to go to extremes. It doesn’t need to be the “handcrafted HTML” vs “bloated JS” sides the author describes. For example, I dislike scroll jacking in most cases, however some level of scroll based animation or interactivity can be nice and make things feel a bit more interesting. Humans are wired to notice and react to movement, a slightly animated button to go alongside a click is satisfying due to this. The author rails agains the world of corporate internet only after clicks and impressions. They have done the same, except with writing pitting one side against the other ignoring that the choice isn’t binary, it is, like all things in life, a spectrum. But that doesn’t sell as well so, good vs bad it is.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  I'm one of the people who's leaning towards the small web, yet I don't go to these extremes. I use no adblockers, yet I use services that are part of the small web. I host my own webpage. However, if I need to use some part of the "common" web, I use that part. It just doesn't get used anymore. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, many news sites are distant places. I have nothing to block them, but my lifestyle pushed them out of my life. I'll continue scaling down until I hit that optimal point, but I won't go to extremes just for reaching that limit. Also, seeing the bad practices and anti-patterns help me to keep my knowledge about these things up to date. This way, I can recognize the patterns and I don't re-implement them get blindsided.
  - palata 3y ago
    Hmm from your description, you sound very close to the author of that article. What makes you think they are extreme and you are not? Genuinely interested.
    - sophacles 3y ago
      Not the person you asked, but framing it as "us vs them" and talking about having to choose a side... it's an extremist framing.
wilsonnb3 3y ago
> It feels like everyone is now choosing its side. You can’t stay in the middle anymore. You are either dedicating all your CPU cycles to run JavaScript tracking you or walking away from the big monopolies. You are either being paid to build huge advertising billboards on top of yet another framework or you are handcrafting HTML. This is only true because the UX of mastodon, Gemini, GrapheneOS, and other darlings of the non-commercial web crowd are so bad that the only reason to use them over commercial alternatives is ideological. Which, for Gemini at least, is intentional. So I guess I agree that the web is fracturing but the post makes it sound like some kind of battle between the commercial side and the 'tech savvy's side, as the post refers to it, when really it is just a minority of tech ideologues rejecting commercial tech, a tale at least as old as Stallman and not particularly interesting. Like the famous scene from Mad Men: Tech Savvy Web: "I feel bad for you, commercial web" Commercial Web: "I don't think about you at all"
- anthk 3y ago
  UX of Gemini bad? I've seen browsers with far more complex settings in average.
- palata 3y ago
  > This is only true because the UX of mastodon, Gemini, GrapheneOS, and other darlings of the non-commercial web crowd are so bad I don't know... many "commercial websites" are really, really slow. Slack, for one, regularly takes seconds to show me a few text messages. A big bloated website I absolutely hate is HelloFresh: I see how they may think it looks good, but loading it feels like I'm compiling a kernel or something. Facebook has an infinite wall, and regularly when I scroll it just makes me jump somewhere else (and therefore I lose this one post that was looking interesting in the middle of those ads). On the other hand, SourceHut may look "old", but it is so snappy, it's refreshing. And I find the UX really good. It just removes the glossy, useless UI stuff.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    It's common to assume around here that most people care about snappy UIs and corporations are just dumb and give in to designers who need to justify their paycheck, but... what if that isn't true? What if the people who care about load times in apps like Slack are a tiny minority, and the majority actually likes the "glossy, useless UI stuff"? It's easy for a native computer user who grew up with (or before) Windows 95 to dismiss the gloss as frivolous, but given that the glossy products constantly beat out the minimalist ones it's hard not to suspect that modern computer users have a different set of values.
skybrian 3y ago
Sometimes people complain about life sucking in very general terms. Other times they criticize specific things, one at a time. This post seems like a generic, zoomed-out sort of complaint, and that doesn’t appeal to me, because I’m not sure I learned about anything specific. I guess it’s about how it’s possible to stop using some business’s websites and interact with them in other ways? But which businesses? “Splitting the web” implies a big claim that other people do the same, but how many? I guess we don’t know since they aren’t tracked? Yes, there are patterns, but each website is different. Maybe websites should be judged for themselves? I don’t think it’s a good idea to stop using a website I like due to generic concerns like this.
- palata 3y ago
  Well the article describes a feeling which is shared by many (me included). It is interesting (again, at least for me) to see that others feel the same way. > I don’t think it’s a good idea to stop using a website I like due to generic concerns like this. I think that the idea is not to philosophically decide to stop using some websites. It is rather that some of those websites have become unbearable, and the author says that they won't make an effort anymore. I tend to do the same, and I guess many people do that too: if I start loading a website and it takes forever, or it lags, or it seems like a big spam, I don't spend 10 minutes checking if my feeling is right or not: I just close the tab.
  - skybrian 3y ago
    The author writes about actively blocking things and that's not something that just happens, it's something they chose to do: > Yep, I’m probably blocking some important third-party JavaScript. No, I don’t care. Occasionally I will try to help someone with a lot of browser extensions installed who is confused about why some website doesn't work and does care, and the first thing I will recommend is creating a fresh profile with no extensions and seeing if that works. Meanwhile, I tend to browse with fairly vanilla settings, so I'm not going to see the problems they see. I do see ads sometimes. Maybe I should block them, but often I will just go to a different website. I guess that's similar? In some sense, we are seeing a different Web because we are running different web browsers. That's going to be true anyway, though. People have different preferences about which websites they like.
carlossouza 3y ago
Do you guys think the non-commercial web will ever achieve critical mass to tilt the scale in its favor and spark a chain reaction to drive flocks of people out of the commercial web? A refreshing thing about the non-commercial web is the fact that it is not trying to monopolize my attention and not trying to hard-sell me anything. More and more, I see people complaining about the big tech services... but that's a qualitative perception, certainly biased... I wonder if that's really happening.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Do you guys think the non-commercial web will ever achieve critical mass I don't know. I rather doubt it. Personally, I've given up on that as a goal -- the masses can do what they like. My goal is more about self-preservation: finding those spaces that are beneficial to me. What I think is actually happening is that the web is balkanizing, as people who feel as I do build spaces that serve their needs.
- hanniabu 3y ago
  That's what the web3 movement is about but everyone is too caught up in bias based on false narratives
  - palata 3y ago
    That's what the web3 people try to make you believe
    - ChrisClark 3y ago
      A perfect example of his point.
TheIronMark 3y ago
I get it, but man that's some hyperbole in there. I like Mastodon, but since there's still good stuff on other sites, I will read those, too. If the author thinks he's outsmarted analytics and tracking, they should check with their ISP. Or VPN provider.
johnnyworker 3y ago
How about a web ring? A manifesto? A good name for it, or several? By that I mean things to make this distributed discontent more discoverable, and more importantly, all those neat little tools and protocols that achieve great things with a fraction of the resources while keeping the autonomy of the user intact. We also need (more, discoverable) beginner level material that explains the beauty and potential of the web and many of its good parts (there are so many!). People who are as excited about the web and DIY as the Veritasium guy is about physics and math, and as talented at showing it. I certainly would tune in, and spread the word. Wouldn't it be great if we could leave something to future generations, like people left us diaries and books? If we just keep shoving our "content" and personal musings into those silos, chances are very good they will get basically nothing. A big fat hole, compared to what could be have if we actually cared about our files and bytes, and got the average person to care about theirs too. I consider that literacy in the digital age. You don't stop at 20% literacy, that would be appalling. And I posit it's not actually hard to become an adult, it's way harder not to. As long as you don't exercise autonomy it seems more and more daunting and hard, if you do, it becomes easier. I think the same applies here. There's just all these swarms of middlemen telling people it's all impossibly hard and dangerous (while they shovel on layers of complexity to make it so). They say don't bother walking, walking is hard, and offer to carry you. That goes well for a while, until you depend on them, until the idea of walking positively scares you. Then they start carrying you where it serves them.
- potta_coffee 3y ago
  Discoverability for the kind of content I want to see is completely broken. I can barely find anything on the web anymore. Google gives me Reddit, Facebook and a million crappy review sites.
- pmlnr 3y ago
  > How about a web ring? A manifesto? A good name for it, or several? Yup, doesn't work either: https://suboptimalism.neocities.org/writings/yesterweb https://suboptimalism.neocities.org/writings/yesterweb
Chiba-City 3y ago
[dead]
deepsun 3y ago
> I’ve never received so many emails commenting my blog posts. I've always wondered if there's is an easy way to have a pre-moderated, owner-sorted list of comments section. Emails are private, but sometimes users can say something interesting for others to see. And I don't mind if website owner deletes/edits/down-sorts my comments -- it's their web property. PS: If only that page had a Like button... :)
revskill 3y ago
My blog has no JS, but my customers dashboard is full of JS, a SPA. I'm on both side where it matters.
throwing_away 3y ago
> When browsing on the "normal web", it is increasingly required to disable at least part of your antifeatures-blockers to access content. Author lost me here. I use Firefox and Kiwi browser with uBlock Origin with all the annoyance lists enabled, bypass-paywalls-clean, unpaywall, sponsorblock, alternate player for twitch, violentmonkey and a few scripts. I also have yt-dlp, streamlink, and mpv. I regularly read HN, Slashdot, and TechMeme, and it's extremely rare to get a link that I can't access. Oftentimes I can access content without a browser, thanks to mpv's excellent web support. I get that it's annoying, but it's really not that hard to solve it once and rarely think about it again. This has been my setup for at least 3 years now. Occasionally something will annoy me and get through my filters, and I have to spend a few minutes fixing it. The only thing I'm walled off from right now that's slightly annoying is browsing specific accounts in "X" with tweets ordered by timeline and viewing tweet replies. This is really low value so I haven't bothered looking for a solution, but if anyone knows one, feel free to link it here.
- teekert 3y ago
  I do see it quite often. Also when signing up for things often I need to disable ublock or move to Edge entirely.
  - throwing_away 3y ago
    I've never run into that. I wonder what services? Maybe stuff I would get some other way.
    - teekert 3y ago
      It's mostly stuff like the local sushi shop like [0], works poorly, renders the "pay" button outside the screen on FireFox. Office 365 tools, sometime just kill FireFox performance, or there is no audio, while everything looks ok. Lots of issues trying to sign into this learning platform as well [1]. Can't think of more, but as said it happens surprisingly often. Edit: Also, on icloud in the browser I consistently need to click explicitly where I want to type (in notes) or my text won't register. It's the same type of sites that happily take my 32 random char password then I later find it was truncated to 12 chars or so. Just amateur stuff. [0] https://www.sushimochi.nl/ https://www.sushimochi.nl/ [1] https://www.develop-yourself.com/ https://www.develop-yourself.com/
teekert 3y ago
I feel this too. Moreover, I often want to signup fro something, like a webshop. Often it simply does not work and I choose to order without an account, sometimes it works then. Sometimes I need to disable ublock, sometimes I need to use Edge (on Linux). Often I'm already dropping out, using a different shop altogether. I guess we are a group to small to care about though.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  I will give various sites a little wiggle room via NoScript but by the 3rd failure due to an excess of 3rd party requirements I just move on to somewhere else.
GMoromisato 3y ago
It's not symmetric, however. Those of us on the "full web" are still able to access everything. Which is why I don't feel compelled to "pick a side". Still, I do feel the enshittification that they're talking about. I hate that Google is less reliable and that (e.g.,) reading a recipe online requires shoveling away a mountain of spam. I think this is just the natural consequence of funding the web through ad clicks. Shameless plug: I'm working on something called GridWhale, which I hope eventually turns into a modern, global BBS. We'll be able to afford to publish the info you want without ads because we're getting revenue elsewhere. But since the revenue will come from customers, our incentives will be aligned, and we won't need to sacrifice privacy or use dark patterns. OK, I realize I'm not adding much to this discussion, but I was just waiting for the compiler. Sorry.
- flir 3y ago
  Everything beyond the main page is a 404. I just wanted a technical description of how it works.
  - GMoromisato 3y ago
    Apologies--still working on everything (which is why I didn't post the URL). But here's a technical description: 1. Imagine we build a platform abstraction layer on top of the typical nodes of a datacenter: web servers, database storage, etc. 2. We also create a remoted UI layer on the platform that renders on browser clients as HTML/JavaScript. Think of it like X Windows but higher-level and rendered on a browser. 3. Now we build a VM that can execute byte code and runs on the platform layer. We can now create programs that run entirely on the server/datacenter, but can render UI on the client. From the program's perspective, it thinks it has full control over a machine, but the platform layer takes care of remoting as appropriate. 4. Also, we have abstractions for shared memory, so that multiple programs can share data, even if they happen to be running on different nodes. Multiple programs, each potentially run by different users, can collaborate. Effectively, all programs think that they are running on a single, giant, global computer. Happy to answer questions if this is at all interesting.
    - 3y ago
reboot81 3y ago
I reject the ad injected sites, most gets handled with Pihole. To much ads? ⌘ + w. FB? I open the app once every 3 weeks, cant stand the ads. As the OP wrote: I have enough to read anyway.
bad_alloc 3y ago
This post expresses something I have been feeling fro a while. We need some catchy names for these parts of the web. I'd propose "Corponet" for the big sites (borrowed from Cyberpunk). How to call the other side though? "Fediverse" is its own thing, is there any other term that encompasses the fediverse, random personal sites and so on?
- tolciho 3y ago
  smolnet is one such term.
- treyd 3y ago
  The term "small web" refers specifically to the old style of small handcrafted websites. But that would exclude Mastodon which is actually fairly heavy to run if you don't use a dedicated client and use the main browser app. I've heard the term "indie web" to roughly include both of these.
- emsimot 3y ago
  I like cozyweb
cutler 3y ago
AI is a much more divisive factor than Javascript. AI polarises the end user and the massive corporate cloud entities with the technological capital to compute what an individual cannot. The corporate cloud is the real evil which has taken away the agency of individaul developers.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"It gathers as much information as it could about us and spams every second of our life with ads, beep, notifications, vibrations, blinking LEDs, background music and fluorescent titles." Plaintext SNI or TLS other than v1.3 is one way of gathering information, namely, a list of every domain the computer accesses. TLS1.3 without SNI: https://web.archive.org/web/20230801115645if_/https://ploum.net/2023-08-01-splitting-the-web.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230801115645if_/https://ploum....
tonyfader 3y ago
another virtue signaler using false equivalence to avoid personal discomfort. his "solutions" do nothing to address the power of these monopoly platforms.
- RalfWausE 3y ago
  > his "solutions" do nothing to address the power of these monopoly platforms Oh, his solutions DO address the problem in a way that works best: Walk away.
casey2 3y ago
>Most of the time, I don’t bother anymore. The link I clicked doesn’t open or is wrangled? Yep, I’m probably blocking some important third-party JavaScript. No, I don’t care. I’ve too much to read on a day anyway. More time for something else. This has been my browsing habit for a long while now. Sure if I need to add a macro or google some compiler flags to compile an OS, I'll do it. But fiddling with noscript when I know your site is just images and text (plus trackers/ads) is not worth it.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  The little mini-game of "what third party script domains do I have to enable in uMatrix to make this website work" is starting to get really grating these days. Especially for payment processors.
paulddraper 3y ago
Ah now it's clicks. Used to be eyeballs.
- sophacles 3y ago
  Before it was eyeballs it was clicks too.
royibernthal 3y ago
Very idealistic, not sure your conclusions were entirely thought out.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
julianeon 3y ago
To me it seems dangerous to go to the author's side of the split, if you work in tech: you won't be exposed, at all, to the web that most people experience. Which is bad for you, professionally speaking - it's bad to be completely in the dark about "the web" as most people experience it. It's bad if you work in a startup which is on that web. And it's bad if you're entrepreneurial and would like to make money off that same web: you literally don't know what most of your customer base is seeing. I would even go so far as to say it's not a viable strategy if you expect to be employed by tech cos. or startups. It would be like trying to get a job at Disney or Paramount, while saying "oh I don't watch tv or go to the movies."
- 1shooner 3y ago
  I agree. But considering it an other (probably less binary) way than the author, it means you have to intentionally undertake to understand an experience purely from your users' view, if you want to do your job well. I think it's more dangerous to have the misconception that you're keeping up with the broadening diversity of users. This, to me, is the beautiful part of the universal design philosophy being adopted by web development.
- strix_varius 3y ago
  I think this is a false assumption. I run Brave with privacy features on, on a Linux laptop, and I have not had any issues with employment, at both startups and very large tech companies. Facebook, for example, didn't care that I didn't use Facebook or have an Instagram account. Often, the most useful perspective is not the one that regresses to the mean.
- nicbou 3y ago
  I am on the author’s side of the split and this is reflected in how I design websites. The website on my profile is a good example of this: no cookie banners, no newsletter prompt, no call to action. It’s simple, it’s straightforward, it’s exactly what you came for. To me, that’s a competitive advantage. I am self-employed and make a good living from that website. The hardest part of my job is going against advertiser expectations. I control if, when and how I mention products, and that’s very unusual to some of them.
momirlan 3y ago
looked at kagi.com. paid search ? hmmm
- spiritplumber 3y ago
  it works surprisingly well. the main problem is that you won't know what to do SEO wise but if you're actually looking for info, it's good.
pard68 3y ago
Wait, doesn't everyone use an ad blocker?
- delphi4711 3y ago
  You already know the answer :). The answer is: no
  - pard68 3y ago
    In some sense, yes I know. But in another, the elderly neighbors who I help with computer issues even use an ad blocker.
systemvoltage 3y ago
> Then there’s the tech-savvy web. People who install adblockers or alternative browsers. People who try alternative networks such as Mastodon or, God forbid, Gemini. People who poke fun at the modern web by building true HTML and JavaScript-less pages. I am a tech-savvy person that doesn't like Mastodon or Gemini or whatever. They're equally cult-like, the very cult they were trying to escape. I stopped reading after this.
petermcneeley 3y ago
It is interesting to contrast this with the original declaration of cyberspace[0]. At the time the thinking was that the threat to the web would come from Government. [0] https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
esafak 3y ago
This happened because the marginal cost of supporting a user for many online products is low enough to be advertising- and data exhaust-supported, thanks to machine learning (which increases the revenue by better matching users with ads). This is not entirely a bad thing; most people are poor, and rich people are effectively subsidizing them. I give Google Search a pass, but I don't want to use it myself any more. Vote with your wallet if you can.
cesaref 3y ago
I don't think this is quite right. What I believe is going on is that different generations have different battles they are fighting, different tech that they are comfortable with. How i'm reading it is the author is fighting against change, and the tipping point they are seeing is the realisation that the battle is lost - they have to either choose to adopt the new stuff, or close the door to it. Each generation grows up with stuff and sticks with it in the face of 'better' or 'more modern' alternatives. We see this with adoption of different social media platforms where there is a clear age difference between different platforms. My generation (i'm in my 50s) are big facebook users, my son (in his 20s) doesn't use facebook, but uses tiktok & discord. I'm pretty sure in 20 years time the next generation will be using something different and there will be an aging tiktok demographic too. All this means is that if you are developing a new competing platform in what appears to be a closed space, there is always room for you, if you target the next generation and their expectations.
eterevsky 3y ago
I think the author exaggerates a bit. Where on their scale between commercial and non-commercial web would you fit say Substack? It's obviously a commercial service, but it has it bells and whistles mostly tuned down, presenting to the users more or less pure texts of the articles.
dartvox 3y ago
[dead]
sydbarrett74 3y ago
What pisses me off is that the Powers That Be (both government and Big Business) are requiring that we keep purchasing ever beefier hardware to run all the trackers that get shoved down our throats. We're paying to be surveilled.
doctor_radium 3y ago
This post touched on something I was pondering recently: disappearing. If users of alternative browsers (Firefox apparently being one now) are more likely to block analytics scripts and more with uBlock Origin (etc.) then we've fallen off the map insofar as tracking us goes. Does that mean these browsers are actually more popular than statistics suggest? Is there any way of knowing? I suppose Raymond Hill would have some idea from the ratio of user agents who download updates, but that's just one addon among many. Not that I'm expecting more than an additional blip, but even that would give me joy.
piocaidsn 3y ago
The analogy of "splinternet" to "Babelization" is quite fitting and brings to mind the story of the Tower of Babel, where linguistic diversity led to communication breakdown. Applying this concept to the internet highlights the potential consequences of isolating information and communication based on geographical or political boundaries.

332 points by bertman 3y ago

What do I do? Been blocking ads since I discovered it was possible in 1999, while on a shitty dialup and observing that banner ads loaded before the page itself. Back then I used a network level adblocker/firewall combo called AtGuard, which Symantec acquired later. Then moved onto AdMuncher on Windows for the next 15 years or so. Now I use Pale Moon as my primary browser - unlike Firefox that pretends to care about privacy while doing the opposite, this one, forked from Firefox 24 and maintained independently, does not have a shred of telemetry or analytics or 3rd party Pocket like bullshit that requires 50 different 'hardening' about:config tweaks to remove. uBlock Origin and eMatrix (a current fork of the discontinued uMatrix), both with an aggressive set of filter lists keep the web spanking clean for me. On Android, I've always rooted my phone to install AdAway, as a next level now I use AppManager (get it from muntashirakon.github.io) to disable advertising/tracking components within apps, and Google Play Services itself. Youtube being a special case, I use ReVanced Extended. Took some doing, but now I've managed to happily use whatever the corporate web throws up minus every piece of track advertising/analytics/tracking crap that they throw at me on either laptop or phone/tablet. Occasionally I look at the uBlock Origin logs and shudder to see all the crap that got blocked. Tl;dr - I don't have to turn hermit and seek out indie websites exclusively when I'm able to extract exactly what I want from the mainstream web. Ultimately, your devices belong to you; you have to take back control over what gets sent to it.

8chanAnon 3y ago

From the article: But, increasingly, I feel less and less like an outsider. It’s not me. It’s people living for and by advertising who are the outsiders. They are the one destroying everything they touch, including the planet. They are the sick psychos and I don’t want them in my life anymore. My thoughts exactly. Like the author, I don't have patience for glossy websites anymore. If a site needs third-party JS to be usable then I'm gone. I won't put up with 15mb downloads just to read some content (Twitter included). The web is not so much splitting in two. We are simply saying "no more" to the exploiters and grifters. Eventually, they will have to learn to eat with the commoners or eat by themselves.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
skydhash 3y ago
I’m moving to Firefox as my main browser, and the amount of sites that break because of me blocking JavaScript (with ublock) is staggering. I can understand SPA being JS only, but simple blogs and other content sites, no.
- sodapopcan 3y ago
  Using NoScript has been pretty eye-opening. I've come to learn that most of the time I'm happy unblock the primary domain. If the site doesn't work I'll look for a clearly-named CDN. If I can't identify one or, worse-yet, there is some kind of cdn.some-domain.com and unblocking that still doesn't make the site work, then I'm out.
  - 8chanAnon 3y ago
    I've stopped using NoScript because it was breaking my own apps. It was fine until Mozilla changed something in Firefox. The problem is that NoScript inserts a lot of JS into the web page and some of that JS gets broken by some sort security lockout. It may be a bug in Firefox and maybe it's been fixed but I wasn't satisfied with NoScript anyway. I'm now using uMatrix. It doesn't insert JS on every active element (just at the top) so it avoids buggy behaviour. The main thing I like about it is that it only blocks cross-origin scripts (NoScript blocks everything by default, including same-site).
    - sodapopcan 3y ago
      Good to know! I have seen how it injects JS into every page but so far it has not messed with my development, but I do use uBlock so I'll look into using it as a NoScript replacement as less the fewer plugins the better. Thanks! I do also use my hosts file for stuff that will never, ever, ever get a pass, like google analytics.
    - 3y ago

jakelazaroff 3y ago

> It feels like everyone is now choosing its side. You can’t stay in the middle anymore. You are either dedicating all your CPU cycles to run JavaScript tracking you or walking away from the big monopolies. You are either being paid to build huge advertising billboards on top of yet another framework or you are handcrafting HTML. Is that happening? I feel like there's a ton of middle ground, and it's only ever expanding. My personal website isn't a huge JavaScript app tracking my visitors, but I wouldn't really call it handcrafted HTML. I'm involved with a bunch of communities that aren't overly corporatized but don't take a big principled stand against it either. I prefer Maggie Appleton's diagram of the web [1]. The click-obsessed corporations are what she calls the "dark forest of the clear web". But below that there are email newsletters and RSS feeds, there are personal blogs and digital gardens, there are communities run on Discord and Slack. [1] https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest

chomp 3y ago
Well, her analogy is more for protected areas where you can hide from lifeless, aggresively public areas and where you can consume (presumably) more authentic content. It doesn't work well in this case for e.g. "cozy web" because places like Snapchat are definitely harvesting your interactions. Whatsapp is literally Facebook. The author of this article is more ranting about the "commercial web" in this case. They don't seem to have the same level of appreciation for some of the corporations that Maggie does.
- jakelazaroff 3y ago
  That’s why I feel like the author is trying to force a square peg into a round hole. WhatsApp is literally Facebook, but all my messages are end-to-end encrypted; I don’t feel like they’re tracking me the same way I do on Instagram. Meanwhile, plenty of people’s blogs have all sorts of nasty tracking shit. People love trying to fit things into dichotomies, but reality is always a lot messier.
  - rakoo 3y ago
    Whatsapp doesn't know what you're talking about, but facebook stills increases its power and presence if you use it

bruce511 3y ago

I get where the author is coming from, but I feel like his conclusion is reductionist. Yes, on the one extreme you have Facebook, and the other extreme is say Mastodon, but there's also a huge middle way which is well populated. This week I've browsed hacker news, Wikipedia, done some research for an upcoming trip, kept up with OpenSSL and Jquery (yeah, that's still around, and still useful.) I bought some waterproofing (direct from the manufacturer), looked up nearby steel manufacturers, and looked up the phone number of my electrician (on his site). In cases where I feel I might be tracked, I just open an incognito browser [1]. Mostly though (apart from news) I don't really find myself on sites driven by advertising. If you spend your day on social media, news sites, or buying everything online, then sure, I get it, you're gonna get tracked. But that's really (for me) a tiny part of my browser history. Everyone is different I guess. [1] yeah I know, tracking is more than cookies, but I see so few ads anyway I haven't even bothered to load an ad-blocker. Then again, I'm not on social media...

hightrix 3y ago
Replied to wrong comment
palata 3y ago
> Everyone is different I guess. If you are not on any social media and not logged into google, then you are really in a very small minority.
mrweasel 3y ago
> I bought some waterproofing (direct from the manufacturer), looked up nearby steel manufacturers, and looked up the phone number of my electrician (on his site). Perhaps a little side tracked here, but the internet has basically become useless for DIY projects lately. We're renovating and needed some advise on which kind of paint to use for a particular project and we have given up on using the internet for advise. SEO, bad translations and straight-up scams have prevent us from finding even the most basic information. Instead we just go to the paint store and ask there. They also know exactly what kind of paint, wallpaper and tools are available and don't recommend stuff that's can only be shipped from the US or China. So congratulation, we broke the internet and we now back at consulting local experts in physical stores.... Brilliant.

spansoa 3y ago

> The link I clicked doesn’t open or is wrangled? Yep, I’m probably blocking some important third-party JavaScript. No, I don’t care. I’ve too much to read on a day anyway. More time for something else. Only on a rare occasion does surfing with no JS actually hamper my surfing. If a site needs JS, I make a rare exception and whitelist it temporarily with uBlock Origin. I have a dedicated browser profile for sites which require JS and I need to be logged in, like Amazon, Gmail, Reddit, etc

klabb3 3y ago

It’s the monopolistic companies aka mega corps that really restrict individuals and stifle innovation. In the small-mid sized space, there are shitty actors but they’re easier to avoid, and don’t require resorting to living in a cave. They are competing with each other in the traditional sense of the word. They’re not on a mission to extinguish. This is not unique to tech, it’s everywhere. Private actors that become the size of countries switch to playing zero-sum games, by acquiring and consolidating. It’s always bad for the consumer.

jfengel 3y ago
In what way do they stifle people? I had the impression that for the most part they just ignored small fry. If you want to boot up a server and point a DNS address at it, knock yourself out. You can't "innovate" on Facebook's site, but why would you want to? People go there to do Facebook things. Your own web site is limited primarily by your imagination. (And occasionally the law, but that requires some pretty extreme stuff.)
- klabb3 3y ago
  > You can't "innovate" on Facebook's site, but why would you want to? People go there to do Facebook things. Parents use Facebook to schedule activities for kids. Governments and companies use Twitter to announce things to citizens and customers. So they are, as they claim, in a sense a digital townhall. But with arbitrary restrictions on access, both in terms of opinions and expressions and in terms of clients they don’t want you to use, or APIs they don’t want you to call. > for the most part they just ignored small fry Very small, yes. But as soon as you’re bigger, they’re gonna want to eliminate you, peacefully of course. Acquisitions are probably the first tool, then it’s get uglier if that doesn’t work out. Anyway, details in all its glory, but the trend as you grow larger is to play dominance games, which is another term for zero-sum. That’s not the only thing they do of course, but the trend is overwhelming.

gumby 3y ago

Key insight: > It’s a bit like all those layers of JavaScript and flashy css have been used against usability, against them. Against us

shaunxcode 3y ago

Apparently I joined this movement decades ago on accident? I lurked Reddit on occasion but even that is dead to me now. Mastodon is awesome. It does need door game support though.

beeburrt 3y ago
Door game?
- pschuegr 3y ago
  I assume this means something to do with onboarding
- npongratz 3y ago
  Not GP, but probably referring to door games similar to those found on BBSes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBS_door#Door_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBS_door#Door_games
  - shaunxcode 3y ago
    Yep, exactly. The whole fediverse thing very much feels like a new iteration of BBS (which is a great thing!) and a big part of that was async/turn based games (often times you were restricted to 5-10 moves/actions per day). The great thing about it was it meant you spent more time thinking about your moves as you went about your normal day than being glued to your screen.

rodolphoarruda 3y ago

I like the text, but the author seems to indicate there is a fork in the road ahead. Take left to the open web (HTML, lessJS, etc.); take right to the commercial web (Fb, GA4, JS, Ads etc). I think we can easily have both options at the same time. If in the past we used to discuss our "work life" in opposition to our "personal life", I think we are at the point now of discussing our "small-tech text based web presence" vs. a "big-tech click based web presence" as described. Not a big deal, I think.

EGreg 3y ago

As I’m blocking completely google analytics, every Facebook domain and any analytics I can, I’m also disappearing for them. I don’t see them and they don’t see me! Aww how cute. No, they can still track what you do. Remember Facebook Beacon and the outcry? It is now a reality. Facebook (oh excuse me, Meta) doesn’t back down after people vehemently react to Newsfeed, Beacon, Metaverse etc. Mark used to respond “Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.” before justifying what he did. That was when he was wet behind the ears — he doesn’t bother to do that anymore. Facebook changed our world, our ideas of the word Friend, of the word Like, etc. Whether you want to or not, these platforms controlled by a few people will reshape society unless we build open source alternatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon https://www.computerworld.com/article/2533161/facebook-s-beacon--returns--for-some-bloggers.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2533161/facebook-s-bea... https://techcrunch.com/2008/09/18/is-beacon-back/ https://techcrunch.com/2008/09/18/is-beacon-back/

masfuerte 3y ago
Beacon was client side. If you block access to facebook domains then they receive nothing.
- EGreg 3y ago
  If a company has your first name, last name or other information, they can send it to Facebook Large corporations are buying this data, and even governments https://www.fastcompany.com/90310803/here-are-the-data-brokers-quietly-buying-and-selling-your-personal-information https://www.fastcompany.com/90310803/here-are-the-data-broke... https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-what-data-brokers-know-about-you https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-... https://www.dli.tech.cornell.edu/post/facebook-and-google-are-the-new-data-brokers https://www.dli.tech.cornell.edu/post/facebook-and-google-ar...

Kiro 3y ago

Reverting back to phone calls and visiting physical stores again? This person is living my nightmare.

JohnFen 3y ago
I've largely been doing this (and more) for a few years now. It's seriously improved my quality of life.
at-fates-hands 3y ago
My kids are teenagers who have stopped texting almost altogether. They do more facetime and other video conferencing. When I need to get a hold of either, I actually call. Texting stopped working years ago as a means to get a hold of them. Both are going to be seniors and have told me all their friends have all but abandoned texting and besides facetiming, they spend a LOT of time on conference calling when they're mobile gaming. It would appear communications continue to evolve over time from generation to generation. I thought once texting took hold, phone calls would become obsolete. I guess not. There's a lot more interesting things they do with tech these days, but I was fascinated with how their communication habits have changes so rapidly even in their own short lifetime.

superkuh 3y ago

>People who try alternative networks such as Mastodon or, God forbid, Gemini. People who poke fun at the modern web by building true HTML and JavaScript-less pages. Mastodon is actually part of the "HTTP as a secure application delivery protocol" and is no longer part of the "HTTP as website document delivery" team. To me that seems the biggest split: self contained application versus hyperlinked documents.

the_gipsy 3y ago
I am ignorant of the underlying mastodon protocol, but couldn't there be a (mostly) HTML-only frontend for mastodon, or something like that? I really hated that about twitter too, that for reading a goddamn SMS-lenghty tiny text it couldn't just have been "prerendered" on the server, no, you have to fetch a million things and watch different spinners before you get at it.
- steinuil 3y ago
  Sure, you can write or run your own fediverse server that renders HTML-only page, and every time you see a Mastodon link you paste it in your server's lookup form and browse it from there. Honk (https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk) is HTML only and very minimalistic. I'm sure there's frontends or clients for Mastodon that use less HTML as well, so you can also swap out Mastodon's default frontend for a less heavy one.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- doublepg23 3y ago
  GoToSocial exposes an API for basic frontends pretty much. https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial
- aendruk 3y ago
  The awful thing about Mastodon is it used to serve inert HTML but this behavior was removed. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19953 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19953

butz 3y ago

Biggest issue will be to keep government and public services on the non-corporate web, as they probably jump ship for "security" reasons.

reidrac 3y ago
I hate when a official government organisation that has their own website still uses twitter and facebook to make important announcements. The assumption all citizens use those private services is wrong and dangerous.
- butz 3y ago
  Yes, this. Of course, there are no alternatives. EU could probably promote some instance of Mastodon as mandatory.
  - sickill 3y ago
    Official Mastodon instance for EU institutions: https://social.network.europa.eu/about https://social.network.europa.eu/about

wewxjfq 3y ago

It's sad, really. The information people want to get out of the web hasn't changed - an article is still a headline with a few paragraphs, a product is still a name, a description and a price, ... it's all so dead simple, yet the websites became unusable.

simonbarker87 3y ago

I find it sad that people always want to go to extremes. It doesn’t need to be the “handcrafted HTML” vs “bloated JS” sides the author describes. For example, I dislike scroll jacking in most cases, however some level of scroll based animation or interactivity can be nice and make things feel a bit more interesting. Humans are wired to notice and react to movement, a slightly animated button to go alongside a click is satisfying due to this. The author rails agains the world of corporate internet only after clicks and impressions. They have done the same, except with writing pitting one side against the other ignoring that the choice isn’t binary, it is, like all things in life, a spectrum. But that doesn’t sell as well so, good vs bad it is.

bayindirh 3y ago
I'm one of the people who's leaning towards the small web, yet I don't go to these extremes. I use no adblockers, yet I use services that are part of the small web. I host my own webpage. However, if I need to use some part of the "common" web, I use that part. It just doesn't get used anymore. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, many news sites are distant places. I have nothing to block them, but my lifestyle pushed them out of my life. I'll continue scaling down until I hit that optimal point, but I won't go to extremes just for reaching that limit. Also, seeing the bad practices and anti-patterns help me to keep my knowledge about these things up to date. This way, I can recognize the patterns and I don't re-implement them get blindsided.
- palata 3y ago
  Hmm from your description, you sound very close to the author of that article. What makes you think they are extreme and you are not? Genuinely interested.
  - sophacles 3y ago
    Not the person you asked, but framing it as "us vs them" and talking about having to choose a side... it's an extremist framing.

wilsonnb3 3y ago

> It feels like everyone is now choosing its side. You can’t stay in the middle anymore. You are either dedicating all your CPU cycles to run JavaScript tracking you or walking away from the big monopolies. You are either being paid to build huge advertising billboards on top of yet another framework or you are handcrafting HTML. This is only true because the UX of mastodon, Gemini, GrapheneOS, and other darlings of the non-commercial web crowd are so bad that the only reason to use them over commercial alternatives is ideological. Which, for Gemini at least, is intentional. So I guess I agree that the web is fracturing but the post makes it sound like some kind of battle between the commercial side and the 'tech savvy's side, as the post refers to it, when really it is just a minority of tech ideologues rejecting commercial tech, a tale at least as old as Stallman and not particularly interesting. Like the famous scene from Mad Men: Tech Savvy Web: "I feel bad for you, commercial web" Commercial Web: "I don't think about you at all"

anthk 3y ago
UX of Gemini bad? I've seen browsers with far more complex settings in average.
palata 3y ago
> This is only true because the UX of mastodon, Gemini, GrapheneOS, and other darlings of the non-commercial web crowd are so bad I don't know... many "commercial websites" are really, really slow. Slack, for one, regularly takes seconds to show me a few text messages. A big bloated website I absolutely hate is HelloFresh: I see how they may think it looks good, but loading it feels like I'm compiling a kernel or something. Facebook has an infinite wall, and regularly when I scroll it just makes me jump somewhere else (and therefore I lose this one post that was looking interesting in the middle of those ads). On the other hand, SourceHut may look "old", but it is so snappy, it's refreshing. And I find the UX really good. It just removes the glossy, useless UI stuff.
- lolinder 3y ago
  It's common to assume around here that most people care about snappy UIs and corporations are just dumb and give in to designers who need to justify their paycheck, but... what if that isn't true? What if the people who care about load times in apps like Slack are a tiny minority, and the majority actually likes the "glossy, useless UI stuff"? It's easy for a native computer user who grew up with (or before) Windows 95 to dismiss the gloss as frivolous, but given that the glossy products constantly beat out the minimalist ones it's hard not to suspect that modern computer users have a different set of values.

skybrian 3y ago

Sometimes people complain about life sucking in very general terms. Other times they criticize specific things, one at a time. This post seems like a generic, zoomed-out sort of complaint, and that doesn’t appeal to me, because I’m not sure I learned about anything specific. I guess it’s about how it’s possible to stop using some business’s websites and interact with them in other ways? But which businesses? “Splitting the web” implies a big claim that other people do the same, but how many? I guess we don’t know since they aren’t tracked? Yes, there are patterns, but each website is different. Maybe websites should be judged for themselves? I don’t think it’s a good idea to stop using a website I like due to generic concerns like this.

palata 3y ago
Well the article describes a feeling which is shared by many (me included). It is interesting (again, at least for me) to see that others feel the same way. > I don’t think it’s a good idea to stop using a website I like due to generic concerns like this. I think that the idea is not to philosophically decide to stop using some websites. It is rather that some of those websites have become unbearable, and the author says that they won't make an effort anymore. I tend to do the same, and I guess many people do that too: if I start loading a website and it takes forever, or it lags, or it seems like a big spam, I don't spend 10 minutes checking if my feeling is right or not: I just close the tab.
- skybrian 3y ago
  The author writes about actively blocking things and that's not something that just happens, it's something they chose to do: > Yep, I’m probably blocking some important third-party JavaScript. No, I don’t care. Occasionally I will try to help someone with a lot of browser extensions installed who is confused about why some website doesn't work and does care, and the first thing I will recommend is creating a fresh profile with no extensions and seeing if that works. Meanwhile, I tend to browse with fairly vanilla settings, so I'm not going to see the problems they see. I do see ads sometimes. Maybe I should block them, but often I will just go to a different website. I guess that's similar? In some sense, we are seeing a different Web because we are running different web browsers. That's going to be true anyway, though. People have different preferences about which websites they like.

carlossouza 3y ago

Do you guys think the non-commercial web will ever achieve critical mass to tilt the scale in its favor and spark a chain reaction to drive flocks of people out of the commercial web? A refreshing thing about the non-commercial web is the fact that it is not trying to monopolize my attention and not trying to hard-sell me anything. More and more, I see people complaining about the big tech services... but that's a qualitative perception, certainly biased... I wonder if that's really happening.

JohnFen 3y ago
> Do you guys think the non-commercial web will ever achieve critical mass I don't know. I rather doubt it. Personally, I've given up on that as a goal -- the masses can do what they like. My goal is more about self-preservation: finding those spaces that are beneficial to me. What I think is actually happening is that the web is balkanizing, as people who feel as I do build spaces that serve their needs.
hanniabu 3y ago
That's what the web3 movement is about but everyone is too caught up in bias based on false narratives
- palata 3y ago
  That's what the web3 people try to make you believe
  - ChrisClark 3y ago
    A perfect example of his point.

TheIronMark 3y ago

I get it, but man that's some hyperbole in there. I like Mastodon, but since there's still good stuff on other sites, I will read those, too. If the author thinks he's outsmarted analytics and tracking, they should check with their ISP. Or VPN provider.

johnnyworker 3y ago

How about a web ring? A manifesto? A good name for it, or several? By that I mean things to make this distributed discontent more discoverable, and more importantly, all those neat little tools and protocols that achieve great things with a fraction of the resources while keeping the autonomy of the user intact. We also need (more, discoverable) beginner level material that explains the beauty and potential of the web and many of its good parts (there are so many!). People who are as excited about the web and DIY as the Veritasium guy is about physics and math, and as talented at showing it. I certainly would tune in, and spread the word. Wouldn't it be great if we could leave something to future generations, like people left us diaries and books? If we just keep shoving our "content" and personal musings into those silos, chances are very good they will get basically nothing. A big fat hole, compared to what could be have if we actually cared about our files and bytes, and got the average person to care about theirs too. I consider that literacy in the digital age. You don't stop at 20% literacy, that would be appalling. And I posit it's not actually hard to become an adult, it's way harder not to. As long as you don't exercise autonomy it seems more and more daunting and hard, if you do, it becomes easier. I think the same applies here. There's just all these swarms of middlemen telling people it's all impossibly hard and dangerous (while they shovel on layers of complexity to make it so). They say don't bother walking, walking is hard, and offer to carry you. That goes well for a while, until you depend on them, until the idea of walking positively scares you. Then they start carrying you where it serves them.

potta_coffee 3y ago
Discoverability for the kind of content I want to see is completely broken. I can barely find anything on the web anymore. Google gives me Reddit, Facebook and a million crappy review sites.
pmlnr 3y ago
> How about a web ring? A manifesto? A good name for it, or several? Yup, doesn't work either: https://suboptimalism.neocities.org/writings/yesterweb https://suboptimalism.neocities.org/writings/yesterweb

Chiba-City 3y ago

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deepsun 3y ago

> I’ve never received so many emails commenting my blog posts. I've always wondered if there's is an easy way to have a pre-moderated, owner-sorted list of comments section. Emails are private, but sometimes users can say something interesting for others to see. And I don't mind if website owner deletes/edits/down-sorts my comments -- it's their web property. PS: If only that page had a Like button... :)

revskill 3y ago

My blog has no JS, but my customers dashboard is full of JS, a SPA. I'm on both side where it matters.

throwing_away 3y ago

> When browsing on the "normal web", it is increasingly required to disable at least part of your antifeatures-blockers to access content. Author lost me here. I use Firefox and Kiwi browser with uBlock Origin with all the annoyance lists enabled, bypass-paywalls-clean, unpaywall, sponsorblock, alternate player for twitch, violentmonkey and a few scripts. I also have yt-dlp, streamlink, and mpv. I regularly read HN, Slashdot, and TechMeme, and it's extremely rare to get a link that I can't access. Oftentimes I can access content without a browser, thanks to mpv's excellent web support. I get that it's annoying, but it's really not that hard to solve it once and rarely think about it again. This has been my setup for at least 3 years now. Occasionally something will annoy me and get through my filters, and I have to spend a few minutes fixing it. The only thing I'm walled off from right now that's slightly annoying is browsing specific accounts in "X" with tweets ordered by timeline and viewing tweet replies. This is really low value so I haven't bothered looking for a solution, but if anyone knows one, feel free to link it here.

teekert 3y ago
I do see it quite often. Also when signing up for things often I need to disable ublock or move to Edge entirely.
- throwing_away 3y ago
  I've never run into that. I wonder what services? Maybe stuff I would get some other way.
  - teekert 3y ago
    It's mostly stuff like the local sushi shop like [0], works poorly, renders the "pay" button outside the screen on FireFox. Office 365 tools, sometime just kill FireFox performance, or there is no audio, while everything looks ok. Lots of issues trying to sign into this learning platform as well [1]. Can't think of more, but as said it happens surprisingly often. Edit: Also, on icloud in the browser I consistently need to click explicitly where I want to type (in notes) or my text won't register. It's the same type of sites that happily take my 32 random char password then I later find it was truncated to 12 chars or so. Just amateur stuff. [0] https://www.sushimochi.nl/ https://www.sushimochi.nl/ [1] https://www.develop-yourself.com/ https://www.develop-yourself.com/

teekert 3y ago

I feel this too. Moreover, I often want to signup fro something, like a webshop. Often it simply does not work and I choose to order without an account, sometimes it works then. Sometimes I need to disable ublock, sometimes I need to use Edge (on Linux). Often I'm already dropping out, using a different shop altogether. I guess we are a group to small to care about though.

NovaDudely 3y ago
I will give various sites a little wiggle room via NoScript but by the 3rd failure due to an excess of 3rd party requirements I just move on to somewhere else.

GMoromisato 3y ago

It's not symmetric, however. Those of us on the "full web" are still able to access everything. Which is why I don't feel compelled to "pick a side". Still, I do feel the enshittification that they're talking about. I hate that Google is less reliable and that (e.g.,) reading a recipe online requires shoveling away a mountain of spam. I think this is just the natural consequence of funding the web through ad clicks. Shameless plug: I'm working on something called GridWhale, which I hope eventually turns into a modern, global BBS. We'll be able to afford to publish the info you want without ads because we're getting revenue elsewhere. But since the revenue will come from customers, our incentives will be aligned, and we won't need to sacrifice privacy or use dark patterns. OK, I realize I'm not adding much to this discussion, but I was just waiting for the compiler. Sorry.

flir 3y ago
Everything beyond the main page is a 404. I just wanted a technical description of how it works.
- GMoromisato 3y ago
  Apologies--still working on everything (which is why I didn't post the URL). But here's a technical description: 1. Imagine we build a platform abstraction layer on top of the typical nodes of a datacenter: web servers, database storage, etc. 2. We also create a remoted UI layer on the platform that renders on browser clients as HTML/JavaScript. Think of it like X Windows but higher-level and rendered on a browser. 3. Now we build a VM that can execute byte code and runs on the platform layer. We can now create programs that run entirely on the server/datacenter, but can render UI on the client. From the program's perspective, it thinks it has full control over a machine, but the platform layer takes care of remoting as appropriate. 4. Also, we have abstractions for shared memory, so that multiple programs can share data, even if they happen to be running on different nodes. Multiple programs, each potentially run by different users, can collaborate. Effectively, all programs think that they are running on a single, giant, global computer. Happy to answer questions if this is at all interesting.
  - 3y ago

reboot81 3y ago

I reject the ad injected sites, most gets handled with Pihole. To much ads? ⌘ + w. FB? I open the app once every 3 weeks, cant stand the ads. As the OP wrote: I have enough to read anyway.

bad_alloc 3y ago

This post expresses something I have been feeling fro a while. We need some catchy names for these parts of the web. I'd propose "Corponet" for the big sites (borrowed from Cyberpunk). How to call the other side though? "Fediverse" is its own thing, is there any other term that encompasses the fediverse, random personal sites and so on?

tolciho 3y ago
smolnet is one such term.
treyd 3y ago
The term "small web" refers specifically to the old style of small handcrafted websites. But that would exclude Mastodon which is actually fairly heavy to run if you don't use a dedicated client and use the main browser app. I've heard the term "indie web" to roughly include both of these.
emsimot 3y ago
I like cozyweb

cutler 3y ago

AI is a much more divisive factor than Javascript. AI polarises the end user and the massive corporate cloud entities with the technological capital to compute what an individual cannot. The corporate cloud is the real evil which has taken away the agency of individaul developers.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"It gathers as much information as it could about us and spams every second of our life with ads, beep, notifications, vibrations, blinking LEDs, background music and fluorescent titles." Plaintext SNI or TLS other than v1.3 is one way of gathering information, namely, a list of every domain the computer accesses. TLS1.3 without SNI: https://web.archive.org/web/20230801115645if_/https://ploum.net/2023-08-01-splitting-the-web.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230801115645if_/https://ploum....

tonyfader 3y ago

another virtue signaler using false equivalence to avoid personal discomfort. his "solutions" do nothing to address the power of these monopoly platforms.

RalfWausE 3y ago
> his "solutions" do nothing to address the power of these monopoly platforms Oh, his solutions DO address the problem in a way that works best: Walk away.

casey2 3y ago

>Most of the time, I don’t bother anymore. The link I clicked doesn’t open or is wrangled? Yep, I’m probably blocking some important third-party JavaScript. No, I don’t care. I’ve too much to read on a day anyway. More time for something else. This has been my browsing habit for a long while now. Sure if I need to add a macro or google some compiler flags to compile an OS, I'll do it. But fiddling with noscript when I know your site is just images and text (plus trackers/ads) is not worth it.

BlueTemplar 3y ago
The little mini-game of "what third party script domains do I have to enable in uMatrix to make this website work" is starting to get really grating these days. Especially for payment processors.

paulddraper 3y ago

Ah now it's clicks. Used to be eyeballs.

sophacles 3y ago
Before it was eyeballs it was clicks too.

royibernthal 3y ago

Very idealistic, not sure your conclusions were entirely thought out.

aaron695 3y ago

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julianeon 3y ago

To me it seems dangerous to go to the author's side of the split, if you work in tech: you won't be exposed, at all, to the web that most people experience. Which is bad for you, professionally speaking - it's bad to be completely in the dark about "the web" as most people experience it. It's bad if you work in a startup which is on that web. And it's bad if you're entrepreneurial and would like to make money off that same web: you literally don't know what most of your customer base is seeing. I would even go so far as to say it's not a viable strategy if you expect to be employed by tech cos. or startups. It would be like trying to get a job at Disney or Paramount, while saying "oh I don't watch tv or go to the movies."

1shooner 3y ago
I agree. But considering it an other (probably less binary) way than the author, it means you have to intentionally undertake to understand an experience purely from your users' view, if you want to do your job well. I think it's more dangerous to have the misconception that you're keeping up with the broadening diversity of users. This, to me, is the beautiful part of the universal design philosophy being adopted by web development.
strix_varius 3y ago
I think this is a false assumption. I run Brave with privacy features on, on a Linux laptop, and I have not had any issues with employment, at both startups and very large tech companies. Facebook, for example, didn't care that I didn't use Facebook or have an Instagram account. Often, the most useful perspective is not the one that regresses to the mean.
nicbou 3y ago
I am on the author’s side of the split and this is reflected in how I design websites. The website on my profile is a good example of this: no cookie banners, no newsletter prompt, no call to action. It’s simple, it’s straightforward, it’s exactly what you came for. To me, that’s a competitive advantage. I am self-employed and make a good living from that website. The hardest part of my job is going against advertiser expectations. I control if, when and how I mention products, and that’s very unusual to some of them.

momirlan 3y ago

looked at kagi.com. paid search ? hmmm

spiritplumber 3y ago
it works surprisingly well. the main problem is that you won't know what to do SEO wise but if you're actually looking for info, it's good.

pard68 3y ago

Wait, doesn't everyone use an ad blocker?

delphi4711 3y ago
You already know the answer :). The answer is: no
- pard68 3y ago
  In some sense, yes I know. But in another, the elderly neighbors who I help with computer issues even use an ad blocker.

systemvoltage 3y ago

> Then there’s the tech-savvy web. People who install adblockers or alternative browsers. People who try alternative networks such as Mastodon or, God forbid, Gemini. People who poke fun at the modern web by building true HTML and JavaScript-less pages. I am a tech-savvy person that doesn't like Mastodon or Gemini or whatever. They're equally cult-like, the very cult they were trying to escape. I stopped reading after this.

petermcneeley 3y ago

It is interesting to contrast this with the original declaration of cyberspace[0]. At the time the thinking was that the threat to the web would come from Government. [0] https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence

esafak 3y ago

This happened because the marginal cost of supporting a user for many online products is low enough to be advertising- and data exhaust-supported, thanks to machine learning (which increases the revenue by better matching users with ads). This is not entirely a bad thing; most people are poor, and rich people are effectively subsidizing them. I give Google Search a pass, but I don't want to use it myself any more. Vote with your wallet if you can.

cesaref 3y ago

I don't think this is quite right. What I believe is going on is that different generations have different battles they are fighting, different tech that they are comfortable with. How i'm reading it is the author is fighting against change, and the tipping point they are seeing is the realisation that the battle is lost - they have to either choose to adopt the new stuff, or close the door to it. Each generation grows up with stuff and sticks with it in the face of 'better' or 'more modern' alternatives. We see this with adoption of different social media platforms where there is a clear age difference between different platforms. My generation (i'm in my 50s) are big facebook users, my son (in his 20s) doesn't use facebook, but uses tiktok & discord. I'm pretty sure in 20 years time the next generation will be using something different and there will be an aging tiktok demographic too. All this means is that if you are developing a new competing platform in what appears to be a closed space, there is always room for you, if you target the next generation and their expectations.

eterevsky 3y ago

I think the author exaggerates a bit. Where on their scale between commercial and non-commercial web would you fit say Substack? It's obviously a commercial service, but it has it bells and whistles mostly tuned down, presenting to the users more or less pure texts of the articles.

dartvox 3y ago

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sydbarrett74 3y ago

What pisses me off is that the Powers That Be (both government and Big Business) are requiring that we keep purchasing ever beefier hardware to run all the trackers that get shoved down our throats. We're paying to be surveilled.

doctor_radium 3y ago

This post touched on something I was pondering recently: disappearing. If users of alternative browsers (Firefox apparently being one now) are more likely to block analytics scripts and more with uBlock Origin (etc.) then we've fallen off the map insofar as tracking us goes. Does that mean these browsers are actually more popular than statistics suggest? Is there any way of knowing? I suppose Raymond Hill would have some idea from the ratio of user agents who download updates, but that's just one addon among many. Not that I'm expecting more than an additional blip, but even that would give me joy.

piocaidsn 3y ago

The analogy of "splinternet" to "Babelization" is quite fitting and brings to mind the story of the Tower of Babel, where linguistic diversity led to communication breakdown. Applying this concept to the internet highlights the potential consequences of isolating information and communication based on geographical or political boundaries.