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The “small web” is bigger than you might think

kevinboone.me

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Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#11

Post by skeeter2020 »

SirFatty wrote: post #8
romaniv wrote: post #5

Small Web, Indie Web and Gemini are terminally missing the point. The web in the 90s was an ecosystem that attracted people because of experimentation with the medium, diversity of content and certain free-spirited social defaults. It also attracted attention because it was a new, exciting and rapidly expanding phenomenon. To create something equivalent right now you would need to capture those properties, rather the…

Which is exactly the point of Gemini.

I'm a dinosaur who bemoans the loss of whatever-it-was we had prior to the mass exploitation and saturation of the web today, so I feel it's my duty to check out Gemini and stop complaining. I'm prepared to trade ease of use or some modern functionality for better content and less of what the internet has become.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#12

Post by cdrnsf »

romaniv wrote: post #5

Small Web, Indie Web and Gemini are terminally missing the point. The web in the 90s was an ecosystem that attracted people because of experimentation with the medium, diversity of content and certain free-spirited social defaults. It also attracted attention because it was a new, exciting and rapidly expanding phenomenon. To create something equivalent right now you would need to capture those properties, rather the…

There's an element of nostalgia, certainly but it's also a reaction to the overwhelmingly commercial web. Why not build something instead of scrolling through brief videos interspersed with more and more ads that follow you everywhere?

Large companies have helped build the web but they've done at least as much, if not more, to help kill it.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#13

Post by 8organicbits »

apples_oranges wrote: post #4
lasgawe wrote: post #2

mm, yeah. I like the idea of the small web not as a size category but as a mindset. people publishing for the sake of sharing rather than optimizing for attention or monetization.

Feeding llms you mean

Is there a good free-but-subscriber-only solution for blogs? It seems like a contradiction, but in practice it may be manageable.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#14

Post by lich_king »

upboundspiral wrote: post #6

I think the article briefly touches on an important part: people still write blogs, but they are buried by Google that now optimizes their algorithm for monetization and not usefulness. Anyone interested in seeing what the web when the search engines selects for real people and not SEO optimized slop should check out https://marginalia-search.com . It's a search engine with the goal of finding exactly that - blogs, w…

> Google that now optimizes their algorithm for monetization and not usefulness.

I don't think they do that. Instead, "usefulness" is mostly synonymous with commercial intent: searching for often means "I want to buy ".

Even for non-commercial queries, I think the sad reality is that most people subconsciously prefer LLM-generated or content-farmed stuff too. It looks more professional, has nice images (never mind that they're stock photos or AI-generated), etc. Your average student looking for an explanation of why the sky is blue is more interested in a TikTok-style short than some white-on-black or black-on-gray webpage that gives them 1990s vibes.

TL;DR: I think that Google gives the average person exactly the results they want. It might be not what a small minority on HN wants.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#15

Post by boxedemp »

upboundspiral wrote: post #6

I think the article briefly touches on an important part: people still write blogs, but they are buried by Google that now optimizes their algorithm for monetization and not usefulness. Anyone interested in seeing what the web when the search engines selects for real people and not SEO optimized slop should check out https://marginalia-search.com . It's a search engine with the goal of finding exactly that - blogs, w…

I think that's a cool project, though I found the results to be less relevant than Google.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#16

Post by 8organicbits »

One objection I have to the kagi smallweb approach is the avoidance of infrequently updated sites. Some of my favorite blogs post very rarely; but when they post it's a great read. When I discover a great new blog that hasn't been updated in years I'm excited to add it to my feed reader, because it's a really good signal that when they publish again it will be worth reading.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#17

Post by shermantanktop »

This is a specific definition of "small web" which is even narrower than the one I normally think of. But reading about Gemini, it does make me wonder if the original sin is client-side dynamism.

We could say: that's Javascript. But some Javascript operates only on the DOM. It's really XHR/fetch and friends that are the problem.

We could say: CSS is ok. But CSS can fetch remote resources and if JS isn't there, I wonder how long it would take for ad vendors to have CSS-only solutions...or maybe they do already?

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#18

Post by jmclnx »

I moved my site to Gemini on sdf.org, I find it far easier to use and maintain. I also mirror it on gopher. Maintaining both is still easier than dealing with *panels or hosting my own. There is a lot of good content out there, for example:

gemini://gemi.dev/

FWIW, dillo now has plugins for both Gemini and Gopher and the plugins work find on the various BSDs.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#20

Post by BrenBarn »

lich_king wrote: post #14
upboundspiral wrote: post #6

I think the article briefly touches on an important part: people still write blogs, but they are buried by Google that now optimizes their algorithm for monetization and not usefulness. Anyone interested in seeing what the web when the search engines selects for real people and not SEO optimized slop should check out https://marginalia-search.com . It's a search engine with the goal of finding exactly that - blogs, w…

> Google that now optimizes their algorithm for monetization and not usefulness. I don't think they do that. Instead, "usefulness" is mostly synonymous with commercial intent: searching for often means "I want to buy ". Even for non-commercial queries, I think the sad reality is that most people subconsciously prefer LLM-generated or content-farmed stuff too. It looks more professional, has nice images (never mind th…

> I think that Google gives the average person exactly the results they want.

There is some truth in this, but to me it's similar to saying that a drug dealer gives their customers exactly what they want. People "want" those things because Google and its ilk have conditioned them to want those things.

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