Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Shape of the World Wide Web Is Really Bad and It Won't Improve in 2023

WWW sites



Summary: According to this latest "Web Server Survey" by Netcraft, Microsoft is down sharply on the Web, but the Web as a whole keeps getting smaller as many sites go offline; we need to react to that trend

THE number of sites which become unreachable is growing; we assume economic factors play a role (people become hesitant to pay for domains and hosting bills). Hours ago an associate sent us a list of "sites missing or replaced by cybersquatters" -- mostly sites covering GNU/Linux*. The EPO's blog (blog.epo.org) has gone offline too! The EPO is not interested in that anymore.



“This past weekend we spent a great deal of time tackling this problem, which had become a sort of 'technical debt' (for years already).”The World Wide Web is rotting away. Many sites go offline, some get hijacked by cybersquatters, and our lists of RSS feeds (we have over 1,000 that we follow) are going out of date. This past weekend we spent a great deal of time tackling this problem, which had become a sort of 'technical debt' (for years already).

So what's in store?

Well, we expect our Daily Links to be far more extensive in years to come. The scope and frequency of blogging will remain the same, but we de-prioritised that in recent days because of much-needed housekeeping with feeds. We might have a lot more to say about this in days to come, but the shape of the Web generally isn't good. Not promising, not encouraging. The only way is down. With Twitter and Facebook now openly admitting they want their users to pay monthly subscription fees (more on that shortly, in the next batch Daily Links), it's not hard to see where this is going. _____________ * To name just some of them, by their RSS feeds:

    "https://linuxacademy.com/blog/feed",
    "https://linuxdady.com/feed/",
    "https://linuxhint.staging.wpengine.com/feed/",
    "https://linuxscoop.com/feed/rss",
    "https://marcozehe.de/feed/",
    "https://mrpogson.com/feed/",
    "https://niklasanderson.com/feed/",
    "https://pinguyos.com/?feed=rss2",
    "https://techreflect.net/feed/",
    "https://theclc.co.uk/feed/",
    "https://tux-techie.com/feed/",
    "https://webleit.info/feed/",
    "https://www.askmetutorials.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss",
    "https://www.cloudsavvyit.com/rss",
    "https://www.farsightsecurity.com/Blog/index.rss",
    "https://www.kmotoko.com/feed.xml",
    "https://www.linuxnix.com/feed/",
    "https://www.linux.org/articles/index.rss",
    "https://www.linuxsecrets.com/rss/articles-unsorted-catgories",
    "https://www.stockholmdirekt.se/feed.xml",
    "http://www.jollausers.com/feed/",
    "http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/feed/",
    "http://www.linuxplanet.com/rss",
    "http://www.polydesmida.info/BASHing/BASHing_data.xml",
    "http://www.simplicitylinux.org/feed/",
    "http://www.techthrob.com/feed.rss",
    "http://www.theperlfisher.com/index.php/feed/",
    "http://www.unixshadow.com/feed",
    "http://www.womeninlinux.com/index.php/feed/",


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