Bonum Certa Men Certa

Moving Away From the World Wide Web is a Wise Move, at Least to the Degree Which is Possible

Tesla sphere



Summary: More Web browsers finally support the Gemini protocol and decentralisation is gaining traction (it's even in mainstream European media right about now)

THE World Wide Web (or just "Web"/"WWW") is awful place to be, not because it's an inherently vicious specification/standard but because of how it is implemented in practice (both browsers and sites). It has been optimised to abuse the so-called users (visitors) and the real users are advertisers or worse actors. They use people who are online and manipulate them in endless ways. It's a toxic combination of surveillance, censorship, and propaganda, which are closely interconnected (e.g. surveillance begets targeted propaganda).



"We don't intend to leave the Web; we just recognise the fact that empowerment of the Free software community will be easier when more of us reject the Web, a tool which increasingly works in service of monopolies and against people."At the moment we're growing our Gemini capsule, which automatically expands each time we add a new article. At the same time we strive to make more capsules for Techrights in more locations around the world; it's not decentealised in the same sense that IPFS is; nevertheless, it can enhance reach. It's very time consuming, but at least data and code can be reused. Yesterday we worked on our self-hosted Git repository, organising some of the tools crafted to operate the site and help the community (yes, we have a real community and no sponsors).

IPFS has just had a major new release and hours ago there was a milestone announcement, heralding that a Web browser in pretty much all major repositories (in GNU/Linux) has decent Gemini support (gemini:// as a protocol is barely understood by any other Web browser, sans Web proxies).

Tesla handSome people wrongly misinterpreted what we had said; or maybe misunderstood. We don't intend to leave the Web; we just recognise the fact that empowerment of the Free software community will be easier when more of us reject the Web, a tool which increasingly works in service of monopolies and against people.

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