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The small, real, original web

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Re: The small, real, original web

#11

Post by manytimesaway »

doug_durham wrote: post #3

An alternate framing for these types of "the old web was better" articles is: "I really liked the web better when only privileged, highly educated people could put up content". The reality is that there was a lot of implicit gatekeeping going on in the early web because of the technical hurdles.

The era of MSN, MySpace and self/ISP-hosted pages didn't feel like gatekeeping at all; sure, there was some privilege involved (internet access still is a privilege in 2026), but there was less shame about attempting stuff.

Re: The small, real, original web

#12

Post by CM30 »

nkapias wrote: post #8

> And obviously you’ll want a VPN too (skip Mullvad) — Proton’s VPN works fine for that. Why skip Mullvad ? I thought it has a great reputation.

Wonder if they're one of those people who thinks one of the founders donating to a right wing political parties make the service not worth dealing with:

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2026/7/20/donation-controversy

Alternatively, it could be a lack of servers meaning that a few services seem to be blocking all traffic from them. I've had that issues when trying to use it for services like Reddit.

Re: The small, real, original web

#13

Post by ooterness »

nkapias wrote: post #8

> And obviously you’ll want a VPN too (skip Mullvad) — Proton’s VPN works fine for that. Why skip Mullvad ? I thought it has a great reputation.

Previous discussion: "The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48717469

Re: The small, real, original web

#14

Post by judah »

nkapias wrote: post #8

> And obviously you’ll want a VPN too (skip Mullvad) — Proton’s VPN works fine for that. Why skip Mullvad ? I thought it has a great reputation.

The post author mentions in the comments he doesn't like the politics of the Mullvad and Brave creators.

Brave creator Brendan Eich is also the creator of JavaScript, which powers most of the web today. Eich donated to Republicans and pro-marriage causes, yes.

The author thinks that should disqualify his tooling from the open indie web.

I find that kind of political gatekeeping fit for a bygone and dead era. It’s a point of view that says we must cut off from our lives everyone who disagrees with our politics, even in the slightest.

Commercialized sites like Reddit are on the decline in part because of over-zealous mods driven by politics who ban and silence dissent. Facebook and pre-acquisition Twitter were also focused on silencing dissent; so much that they banned a sitting US President.

But the indie web of the ’90s? It was filled with free speech and live-and-let-live libertarians. Reddit originally was a bastion of free speech, and its founders were libertarian-leaning. Their vision has been polluted by the commercialization and big media takeover of Reddit..

The indie web is not likely to revive for many reasons. But it certainly will not revive with the kind of political gatekeeping the blog author is advocating.

Re: The small, real, original web

#15

Post by bigbuppo »

doug_durham wrote: post #3

An alternate framing for these types of "the old web was better" articles is: "I really liked the web better when only privileged, highly educated people could put up content". The reality is that there was a lot of implicit gatekeeping going on in the early web because of the technical hurdles.

It took less effort to setup a geocities page than a myspace account.

Re: The small, real, original web

#16

Post by viccis »

nkapias wrote: post #8

> And obviously you’ll want a VPN too (skip Mullvad) — Proton’s VPN works fine for that. Why skip Mullvad ? I thought it has a great reputation.

One of its founders donated to a party that opposes immigration into Sweden. Some people seem to think that this is a conflict of interest because they assume that the surveillance necessary to accomplish what they think that political party wants to do (they claim they want to do mass forced deportations) is at odds with Mullvad's mission.

I personally don't think a single founder making that contribution is a strong enough tie to Mullvad to expect it to influence their behavior. I also don't think there's any reason to think that that party's goal will necessarily entail the curbing of digital security products like VPNs.

If anything, I think that Mullvad taking a "it's his business; it's not our role to tell individuals what they can think or do" stance is exactly what I would like a VPN to do. Others disagree.

tl;dr: It still has a great reputation outside of the Blueksy crowd.

Re: The small, real, original web

#17

Post by RunSet »

judah wrote: post #14
nkapias wrote: post #8

> And obviously you’ll want a VPN too (skip Mullvad) — Proton’s VPN works fine for that. Why skip Mullvad ? I thought it has a great reputation.

The post author mentions in the comments he doesn't like the politics of the Mullvad and Brave creators. Brave creator Brendan Eich is also the creator of JavaScript, which powers most of the web today. Eich donated to Republicans and pro-marriage causes, yes. The author thinks that should disqualify his tooling from the open indie web. I find that kind of political gatekeeping fit for a bygone and dead era. It’s a p…

> Eich donated to Republicans and pro-marriage causes, yes.

Pro-marriage as in "prohibit marriage", I presume, since that is the cause to which he donated.[0]

https://www.pcmag.com/news/new-mozilla-ceo-addresses-anti-ga...

Re: The small, real, original web

#18

Post by doublerabbit »

manytimesaway wrote: post #9

Quite ironic to post this on a platform that uses 1/4 of the screen for advertisement and a drowning GDPR prompt. (Also the CSS makes it tedious to read on a computer.) Why the refusal of Mullvad, though?

The Founder of donated to a controversial political party of Sweden.

Same reasoning to why we shouldn't be using Kagi because the founder uses Yandex, a Russian state search engine for a data source.

Yolo I guess.

Re: The small, real, original web

#19

Post by doublerabbit »

manytimesaway wrote: post #11
doug_durham wrote: post #3

An alternate framing for these types of "the old web was better" articles is: "I really liked the web better when only privileged, highly educated people could put up content". The reality is that there was a lot of implicit gatekeeping going on in the early web because of the technical hurdles.

The era of MSN, MySpace and self/ISP-hosted pages didn't feel like gatekeeping at all; sure, there was some privilege involved (internet access still is a privilege in 2026), but there was less shame about attempting stuff.

In the golden era the care wasn't there. I didn't care someone said something offensive. You just kind of shrugged and moved on. It shouldn't be said but hey they did; report & ignore. That's why 4chan is 4chan, Encyclopaedia Dramatica et cetera.

Political correctness eventually tainted the internet as then if someone's values were hurt, drama would roll around only fuelling the troll further. This later led to gatekeeping and entitlement; Tumblr as example.

The internet has now made everyone so sensitive and now most want to broadcast their feels upon social media or whatever, you end up with elitism of groups and communities who think they know best.

Re: The small, real, original web

#20

Post by viccis »

The medium is the message. People posted websites and interacted other websites like that back then because hypertext static webpages were the medium of the time. We've already progressed through forums, social media, app-ified social media, image and then video and then short form video content, etc. Trying to go back has historically been challenging and mostly the realm of enthusiasts whose usage is warped by the fact that they sought it out. See also: typewriters, horse carriages, etc
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