Bonum Certa Men Certa

The World Wide Web (or Worldwide Empire): Optimised for Social Control Media



Summary: A shorter-than-usual video on where the Web is heading, why it's seriously deficient, and why IPFS seems like the way to go for those who value freedom of expression and/or access to information

THE general direction the Web/WWW (World Wide Web) has taken is troubling. The Web isn't so old. In relative terms it is in fact quite young. But nowadays it is bloated and user (visitor) hostile because the trajectory taken was determined by DRM pushers like Netflix and Google, or those who profit from the Web by spying on everyone and everything.



"It seems unlikely that the Web will become better and more open/free over time; we've long gone in the opposite direction (EME, AMP, SPDY etc.), so let's make room for alternatives and hope they gain sufficient traction."There's an old saying or ancient wisdom about creating alternatives rather than attempting to amend/repair/reform existing things. When it comes to the Web, the steering body (W3C) is thoroughly compromised and has been like this for at least a decade; so it seem like a wise idea to instead embrace substitutes or surrogates.

Naughty lists + World Wide Web = Worldwide EmpireIn 2020 we finally found the time and the capacity to make a simplified (text-only) version of the site and of IRC logs. The next step would be to serve these without a Web browser or webserver software, in effect making everything on the site accessible without surveillance and potential for censorship. The objective was complete last month and we now have a workflow that makes Techrights not only a Web site but a resource broadly available in a peer-to-peer fashion.

As noted today, in January we have some important leaks to publish and we are more comfortable publishing them when there's redundancy or a distributed (not centralised) framework for serving the material, deterring or preemptively thwarting any takedown attempts (either by technical means or threats/legal means).

It seems unlikely that the Web will become better and more open/free over time; we've long gone in the opposite direction (EME, AMP, SPDY etc.), so let's make room for alternatives and hope they gain sufficient traction.

Links from the video:

Recent Techrights' Posts

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