The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.

It’s a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I’ve noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.

I’ve known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I’m back in the early spirit of the internet.

  • chunes@lemmy.world
    36·
    10 hours ago

    Whenever I get overwhelmed by the modern web, I go to http://wiby.me/ and click “surprise me…”

    It’s a search engine that only spits out “real” webpages that were made by people like you and me. Very refreshing.

    • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      9 hours ago

      If I had a lot of money I would fund the creation of a new search engine. It would operate entirely on a white list model. And every website on it would be reviewed by people, for people. No posts from any social media site would be allowed; only small webpages. To be featured in the engine, sites would have to have verifiable human origins. So personal blogs made by real people or small businesses with actual physical addresses that can be fully verified in the real world. In order to get your business featured, you would have to apply, and someone would physically have to visit you in order to verify your authenticity. Oh, and any website that uses AI in any form would simply be ineligible to appear on the search engine.

      Yes, this would result in a drastically reduced pool of potential sites, but what remains would be absolute gold.

      • redsunrise@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        8 hours ago

        I love the idea, but wouldn’t it be one of those old web indices (like a site or book that was just a list of other sites) with a keyword search function? Like a centralized webring with user submissions?

        • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          7 hours ago

          Yeah, I’m basically envisioning something like that. An old school web index composed entirely of human-curated human-made content. How to actually fund such an effort? I have no idea. That’s why I started with the the premise that I somehow had millions to throw at the project. It would invariably be very labor intensive.

          It would probably have to be subscription funded. Maybe there’s a way to pull it off, but getting people to pay for subscriptions for services like this has long been fraught. Surveillance capitalism was built because donations don’t cut it, and no one wanted to spend a few bucks a month for Google or Facebook access.

    • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
      6·
      6 hours ago

      Thank you for sharing. It’s painful to realize in hindsight that those websites were peak internet.

      They lack polish, but they were all a labour of love. No enshittification, no selling things, no corporate influence, no shit posting.

      Everything had a purpose, every post took effort, and it was all about sharing experiences or knowledge.

      I really miss that internet.

      EDIT: correcting gibberish 🤭