I firmly believe that connecting people to their IRL friends is an important part of the potential of the Internet, as it is shown by Facebook, for example.
But I also believe there are people looking to connect with new people and finding a community where they can express themselves wholly. I think the current Internet is weak in this regard, weaker than it has been before, but I think it’s possible to build a place where people can connect.
I have a friends Discord I set up a year before Covid, and for about a year only 3 people used it, mainly to play some games together.
But when Covid hit, it obviously gained some traction. And now it’s THE place I interact with friends since I’ve long ditched the likes of Facebook.
I keep going back and forth on whether or not to possibly set up a Mastodon server for friends. The hardest part would be convincing people to use it. But it could just be like our little shared space that could still interact with the wider world. It’d be kinda cool to have a Local feed be just people you know in real life.
“Silos” that echo.
“the future of the internet is likely its past…”
the title is the description of reddit/lemmy/etc
One might suggest that it should have always been that way.
Sounds a lot like the past. And, actually, a bit like the current internet. Custom websites, feed syndication, etc. didn’t disappear, they just shrank in the face of behemoth platforms.
The future of internet is you have to ask your government for permission before you can visit foreign websites.
There is no longer “Internet”
It will be suceeded by:
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Freedom Net (where “Antifa” is Banned, and you need a swastica armband to get access)
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Euronet (where UK just left, again)
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United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland(they noped out of the UK, and re-re-joined the EU) -
Putin’s #1 Digital Fan Club
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中华人民解放互联网 (People’s Liberated Internet)
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And that’s it, Canada and Mexico got Invaded by the US; while UK, EU, Russia, China all fought over the remaining of the world
(okay maybe my worldbuilding is ridiculous, but the world is collapsing and I want to write a story about my predictions of the future mm’kay? 😉)
I think the future of the internet is darknets for example Veilid.
The darknets are here, have been here, but are by definition: dark, so unless you’re in one they’re useless to you.
First rule of darknet membership: don’t talk about the darknet.
You think the current US would stop at Canada and Mexico?
They wouldn’t.
EU would have to defend Greenland from the USA (and given the already huge amount of US miliary presense, they would probably fail). South America would be a warzone between US and resistance forces funded by EU, but since they also have to fund the defence against Russia, they don’t have the fund to fight two fronts, so they focus more on the EU-Russia front. UK will have to also defend itself from the US military that can launch an attack from Greenland at any moment (good luck, they left the EU lmfao). Russia and China relationship doesn’t do so well and they fight over Mongolia and the “Middle East” (for lack of a better term). Australia joins China as a Special Administrative region because USA gone fascist, and EU is already fighting two fronts, so they eventually got absorbed in China’s sphere of influence. Japan is now a warzone between Vanguardist “Socialist” China, and Fascist USA.
And Taiwan is… wait what’s a “Taiwan”? Oh that boring island that has totally always been under PLA control and totally never had any de facto autonomy under the name ROC, like ever, that Taiwan? Long live CCP! (/s 😉)
(Actually, maybe I should write a story about all this… 👀)
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Small communities where one can talk about specific subjects? Man there’s something like that already and people can run it from their own computers too, forgot the name though.
The good old days of phpmybb
Thank fuck the corporate silo era is (slowly) coming to an end. And they tried so hard to turn it into TV 2.0.
Depends on how you measure things. If you pie-chart the internet by bandwidth used, most of it is currently used for TV 2.0 (streaming video, mostly by subscription.)
So a field of circle jerks
Oh how the mighty have fallen
If me and other linux nerds being happy in our little mastodon instances about some random feature being added that no real life person cares about is a circle jerk then im all in for it
yes, but where could we find something like that?
Just like as it was in the past
You’ve found the leading light of destiny burning in the ashes of your memory.
Check out Neocities, a great community of indie web fans, built in the spirit of the old GeoCities sites.
Some really great sites there, it really captures that late 90’s to early 2000’s internet vibes.
US servers though… better self-host or use another non-US VPS.
Definitely depends on the site because I’ve seen some impressive modern looking sites in the past, but a lot of sites I find on there definitely encapsulate that vibe in a great way.
Is there something like a masterlist of forums. Id like to join some but dont know where to look.
This is what Google used to be for.
The best I can think of off hand is to look at the mobile apps that are designed to interact with traditional forums, because they will have directories of all the ones that are integrated with them. For example, Tapatalk and Fora Communities. You should be able to find thousands of forums categorized in those apps? I’ve never used these apps myself, but have heard of them.
And that’s how it started. are we approaching a big crunch of sorts?
First infinity didn’t go great. Not sure I want to see more.
