Bonum Certa Men Certa

Legacy of a Dying World Wide Web

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 07, 2024

Two Native American Chickasaw warriors hunting sculptures at the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur, Oklahoma.

Google is ruining the Web (it's a "fixer" only in the negative sense of the word; its existence or mission is based on a false promise) and it's really hurting millions of sites. Back in the 90s when the Web started we had very slow connections (even universities equipped with Ethernet had slow connections by today's standards), but the average quality of news sites was a lot higher (they still had print editions) and navigating the Web wasn't about shopping or finding fake "reviews". There were informative sites like howstuffworks.com (now pure junk, don't bother) and even news sites like independent.co.uk could be loaded quickly using a dial-up modem (now it's over 300 KB; telegraph.co.uk is over 600 KB right now and some well known American news sites are 10 times bigger).

The Internet Archive (and Wayback Machine) may not survive as there are forces trying to force them offline, so what will be left of what we once knew as "The Web"? Almost nothing. About a year ago Google started hiding Google Cache (sometimes or when the need arose it helped salvage removed/censored material) and several preservation projects are defunded to the point of going offline - basically defeating their purpose. When Groklaw stopped publishing it focused on "preservation" (it was the title of its article about it; P.J. sought ways of preserving information) and about a decade later, in spite of great efforts (including going static), Groklaw is no more. Only a decade!

One day, or some time/s in the future, our offspring will look back at this "era" of World Wide Web and social control media (not an utterly ridiculous passing fad like "era of AI", which is meaningless nonsense on par with "AI arms race"). They might wonder what it was about or what it used to look like. They might even ask, "what is this Internet Archive (and Wayback Machine) thing?"

To which one might answer, it's something that the copyright cartel and rich revisionists destroyed like the Library of Alexandria, except unlike the Library of Alexandria, those lasted only a few decades and stagnated after DDoS, data breaches, and lawsuits.

There are no paper copies left. For most of the stuff there was never a physical form at all!

Many people truly believe they're "stars" in social control media, but unlike Newton and Darwin, nobody will remember them, nobody will be able to see what they "created" (as so-called "creators") and the World Wide Web will be some outlandish term. It's like bringing up Xanadu today.

PROJECT XANADU®

The deterioration of the Web and social control media (and the health of people who participate in the latter) can doom the prospects of offspring, as it props up actual nazis, it's the new "nazi bar".

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete
Links 26/10/2025: Microsoft Spies on Gamers, Open Transport Community Conference
Links for the day
Links 26/10/2025: LLM Slop / Plagiarism Programs Continue to Disappoint, CISA Layoffs Threaten Systems
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/10/2025: Gemsync and Joining the Small Web
Links for the day
India.com a Click-baiting, SEO-Spamming, Slopfarming Heap
They do this almost every day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 25, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 25, 2025
Without XBox Consoles, XBox is No More, It's Just a Brand (More Rumours of Microsoft Ending XBox, Then Laying Off Lots of Staff)
All signs indicate that Microsoft wants to "exit" the XBox business (not brand), but it does not want to publicly admit this as it would alarm staff and shareholders