Take back the web!
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take back the web!
This article is not finished yet. Information on this page may change periodically. Page last updated February 12, 2022.
Let's cut to the chase, the web is in a state of disrepair and is almost only run by big tech companies just for profit.
Hundreds of thousands of independantly operated websites have vanished in the past 2 decades, because they simply became overrun by other,
commercially operated websites which ultimately killed off many independant websites found in previous years.
Independant websites are still important for the web today, and we must continue to support the free and open web, before it might dissappear entirely one day without a trace.
The Problems with the Modern Web
Let's face it, the modern web is awful. Between big tech companies that care about nothing but profit, and massively large websites that are almost impossible to use,
there is almost no purpose to visiting a modern website if you won't get anything useful from it.
In an age of widespread search engines and SEO's (Search Engine Optimizers) that commonly litter search results nowadays,
you'll almost never find any independantly operated websites because they are almost never indexed or visible to search engines.
Even if they are technically indexed on a search engine somewhere, it likely gets buried behind 10s of 100s of search result pages that no one will ever bother to skim through.
If in doubt, almost all commercial websites look basically the same.
Of course there are differences in colours, font, icons, etc. but pretty much all commercial websites use the same default (and overused) WordPress template or whatever default template a website builder has.
Page Sizes
If you have used the Internet in the past several years, you have probably noticed that your favorite websites have become slower and more bloated feeling?
Well, what gives?
Well, its the same reason (partially) why you can't load modern websites in Internet Explorer 8.
Sure you won't be able load even basic HTML pages anyways because of the outdated SSL/TLS support of those browsers (unless the site owner had deliberately disabled it).
But even if you managed to get past that issue, the page would be broken and unusable since it obviously wasn't designed for Internet Explorer 8 anyways.
Which brings me to the next issue, the web advanced way to fast.
For example, Internet Explorer 8 launched with Windows 7 in October 2009.
Not even 6 years later (in 2015), you might have had trouble loading some modern websites with it because the web changed so fast within that period.
Sure, Internet Explorer was by no means the best browser back in 2009 (lost out to Google Chrome), but it could at least halfway-decently preform some basic web browsing at that time.
At the same time, the web overall was becoming more bloated.
In 2011, website sizes were already around 1MB in size. Now in 2022 (11 years later), websites are commonly approaching or exceeding 5MB in size.
Some pages are even reaching 20MB in size, and you can feel every Megabyte of it...
Also, websites tend to use up alot of RAM too. I've consistently seen websites which use over 100MB of RAM. And thats with an adblocker on. With it disabled, it can be over 200 or 300MB being used..
Oh yeah and don't forget that modern browsers use at least 20MB of RAM already on any page, even on simple text-based pages. And should I even get started on CPU usage?
It's an even bigger problem for people who are stuck with or have had to deal with slow dial-up or satellite Internet.
I mean, unless you're really paient and want to wait upwards of 200 seconds for reddit.com to load, then sure, but it gets annoying extremely quickly.
If you want to see some examples of websites and their page sizes changing over time, see this page.
The Metaverse, Cryptocurrency, NFTs and Web 3.0
Before I talk about Cryptocurrency, I want to talk about the Metaverse. The Metaverse is basically an online 3D virtual world which you interact with other people in real time in virtual reality (read more about it here).
The Metaverse sounds cool and all, but do really need it? Short answer; NO! I mean, whoever said the Metaverse would be a great idea for humanity as a whole needs to get off this planet right now I swear...
Of course, the Metaverse idea itself (virtual interactive 2d or 3d worlds) have existed long before the modern idea of the Metaverse.
It goes as far back to the 90's when interactive online chat room style games were becoming a thing.
Early implementations generally included no more than 2d animations and sprites, since pretty much everyone had dial-up internet at that point and coundn't handle much data transfer at any given moment.
A more popular and modern implementation of the 'Metaverse' being Roblox when it launched in the mid-2000's.
I would consider those to be about as far as the Metaverse needs to go, anything further than any previous implementation of it goes too far in my opinion.
Now, there's a lot I could talk about cryptocurrency and it's disadvantages, but i'll keep this part short. If anyone thinks that cryptocurrency is a finacially stable means of monetization, you'd be extremely incorrect.
Should I even get started on cryptocurrency mining, it's environmental disadvantages, people buying ENTIRE POWER PLANTS TO DEDICATE TO MINING CRYPTOCURRENCY(!) and mining causing GPU shortages across the world? No, let's not get into that.
In the same way, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are also not financially stable either since they also use the blockchain, so if the blockchain were to die out, NFTs would too.
Facebook...
I could do a whole rant on Facebook right now, but I have other stuff to cover here.
As everyone knows, 'Facebook Inc.' rebranded to 'Meta Platforms Inc.' which sounds like a good thing at first, until you realise that the rebrand was just for investor hype rather than actually changing anything related to the companies' corporate structure, business models, or anything else. In any case, i'll still call them 'Facebook' since that is still exactly who they are.
Resources
The Web is F***ed (Caution: Contains curse words)
The modern web on a slow connection
A Demonstration of Modern Web Bloat (Luke Smith - Youtube Video)
The Metaverse could be a problem. (Mrwhosetheboss - Youtube Video)