When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, his vision was clear: it would used by everyone, filled with everything and, crucially, it would be free.
Today, the British computer scientist’s creation is regularly used by 5.5 billion people – and bears little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended.
In Australia to promote his book, This is for Everyone, Berners-Lee is reflecting on what his invention has become – and how he and a community of collaborators can put the power of the web back into the hands of its users.
Berners-Lee describes his excitement in the earliest years of the web as “uncontainable”. Approaching 40 years on, a rebellion is brewing among himself and a community of like-minded activists and developers.
“We can fix the internet … It’s not too late,” he writes, describing his mission as a “battle for the soul of the web”.
Berners-Lee traces the first corruption of the web to the commercialisation of the domain name system, which he believes would have served web users better had it been managed by a nonprofit in the public interest. Instead, he says, in the 1990s the .com space was pounced on by “charlatans”.
If you have any highly-specific questions, especially about niche hobbies, it’s hard to avoid Reddit. For example, there’s no (useful) equivalent to r/mechanicadvice or r/airbrush on Lemmy yet. Forums often provide alternatives, but not always.
Meta I personally don’t need at all, but I’ve managed to convince exactly zero of my irl friends to switch to, or even join, Pixelfed, which is the main alternative to Instagram. It’s a little lonely using social media when you don’t know a single person there lol. I can use it to meet people, but I prefer to have both.
Google can also be hard to avoid tbh. Other search providers just don’t compete in my experience - people frequently name DuckDuckGo but it’s just bad compared to Google in so many instances. I have DuckDuckGo set as my default browser, but I constantly end up going to Google’s site manually anyway because DuckDuckGo gives subpar search results. Presearch is usually okay I guess.
I don’t say any of that to be discouraging, but just to be realistic about the issues so they can be overcome and the alternative options can be true, full-fledged alternatives instead of compromises for the sake of morality. I think Lemmy and Mastodon in particular are doing a good job of developing into full-fledged alternatives.
…and all the streaming services are super easy to avoid 🏴☠️🦜