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126 lines
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HTML
126 lines
7.7 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
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"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
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<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1, viewport-fit=cover" />
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<title>wanderlost - The Internet Sucks</title>
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type="application/rss+xml"
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title="RSS"
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href="/blog/rss.xml" />
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<body>
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<div class="navbar">
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<h1 class="title"><a href="/">wanderlost</a></h1>
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<a href="/blog/">index</a>
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<a href="/blog/atom.xml">atom</a>
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<a href="/blog/rss.xml">rss</a>
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</div>
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<div class="main">
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<hr />
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<div class="post">
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<h1 class="post-title">The Internet Sucks</h1>
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<h2 class="post-date">2025-03-24</h2>
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<p>Over the past few years, I have noticed that the internet is in a state of decay. If you've found my
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site, there's a fair chance you think the same too, or have at least heard people say this. The
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amount of fun one can really have online is rapidly decreasing. Everything has pretty much been
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ruined.</p>
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<h2 id="the-problems">The problems</h2>
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<h3 id="bloat">Bloat</h3>
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<p>The web is bloated. Every time I go to look up something I get dozens of articles containing popups
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where I have to agree to getting tracked by every site's 800+ "partners", slowing everything
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down. Then there's the JavaShit dependency so many sites have. It's even spread to "small" personal
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sites that I have to wait for megabytes worth of JS to load in before I can read anything. My own
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site is constantly getting edited in an attempt to make it as easy to use as possible on even the
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most barebones browsers.</p>
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<h3 id="social-networks">"Social" networks.</h3>
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<p>I hate concept of social media. Microblogging is shit. Short form video content is shit. Instagram
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is shit. Reddit is shit. Yes, this very much includes your free and open source "ethical"
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alternative. The Fediverse, Bluesky, Nostr, whatever else don't fix this. The idea itself is heavily
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flawed no matter who develops it. I have too much to say about this for putting it in here, but to
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keep it short, I strongly believe being on those places just slowly makes you more and more
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retarded. Everything is optimized to get as many internet points as possible and well thought out
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posts that actually express the author's point are discouraged with tiny character limits and
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replies from children complaining about how long the text is.</p>
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<h3 id="surveillance">Surveillance</h3>
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<p>Shouldn't have to explain this one much, there's surveillance problems on nearly every mainstream
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platform that's been treated as normal for as long as it's been around. If you're here, you probably
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already have strong feelings about this one.</p>
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<h3 id="clearnet">Clearnet</h3>
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<p>I think the clearnet is beyond saving at this point and that we should not make an attempt to rescue
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it. The damage has been done and will continue unless you do something about it. Everything is
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centralized, and the system is a mess. CAs are centralized and you have to give them full trust to
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not do anything bad to your site, which they can do. ICANN is how everybody gets their domains, and
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they care more about making money than stopping things like parking for reselling or making the
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process more private. It also is harder to work with clearnet hosting than it is to work with an
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overlay network, which I see as something that gets in the way of people hosting their own things.</p>
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<h2 id="how-do-we-fix-it">How do we fix it?</h2>
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<p>Unfortunately, there isn't a perfect solution to fully escaping the bullshit, but there are things
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you and I can do to help.</p>
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<h3 id="overlay-networks">Overlay networks</h3>
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<p>Explore overlay networks like I2P, Tor, and Yggdrasil. There's others out there too. I'll go over
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this more in a later post, but to keep it short, Yggdrasil serves as internet done right (and about
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how one would expect) while I2P and Tor focus specifically on being anonymous.</p>
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<h3 id="write-your-own-site">Write your own site</h3>
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<p>Write a site for yourself and/or your projects! Instead of a Facebook page or a Twitter profile, get
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out a text editor and write some CSS and HTML, or even better, XHTML! It really isn't that hard to
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do, and you get full control over your own content and design. You can use static site generators
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like Hugo, Jekyll, Zola and many more to help if you need to mass produce templated pages. This site
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uses Zola, which does have its quirks but I find it to be the best to work with out of the ones I've
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tried. If you're running a blog or have other regularly updated content like news or updates, make
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Atom (and RSS if you want) feeds too to so your visitors can subscribe to your sites and get those
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updates instantly. A lot of static site generators have this built in. I'll tell you to self host so
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you're fully independent in the next section, but if you really can't, I can help with getting your
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site online over on Midgard.</p>
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<h3 id="alternative-protocols">Alternative protocols?</h3>
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<p>HTTP, or the Web, is not the only way of creating a "site" for yourself. There are other protocols,
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though all of them (or at least all I know about) are far more minimal than what you can create on a
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website even with just XHTML and a stylesheet. I don't have a full list of these protocols, but some
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are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)">Gopher</a>,
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<a href="https://geminiprotocol.net/">Gemini</a>, and <a href="https://nightfall.city/nex/info/specification.txt">Nex</a>.
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I don't hear much about Gopher nor have I got around to setting up a server for it yet but Gemini
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has been gaining a lot of popularity from what I've seen lately. Nex is much more obscure but I like
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it for how extremely simple it is, literally just plaintext served over TCP on port 1900.</p>
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<h3 id="self-host">Self Host</h3>
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<p>The best way to get full control over your sites and services is to self host them. Not on some
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managed hosting service, not on a VPS, not anywhere in the cloud, <em>actually</em> self hosted on a
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machine in a location you can physically access. This way, you have 100% control over your own
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things and will truly own your services. Many ISPs do not want people self hosting and will put
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people behind CGNATs, but if you use overlay networks and don't host on clearnet, then that won't
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really matter. With Tor, hosting your own XMPP server using Prosody is pretty easy and you can throw
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an IRCd onto pretty much any network. Running your own media server on Yggdrasil is entirely doable
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and I use my Jellyfin running over it daily. Almost any service that doesn't involve S2S can be set
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up on Yggdrasil, given that the client software is able to use IPv6.</p>
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<h3 id="contribute">Contribute!</h3>
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<p>If you're able to, start running nodes/peers for I2P, Tor, and Yggdrasil or any combo of
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those. Those networks always could use more peers available to help make things faster and more
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reliable for everybody.</p>
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<h3 id="do-it-now">Do it NOW</h3>
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<p>Stop waiting for the current internet to get worse. If you already host a personal site, start
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mirroring it on the darknets! For all of them it's as easy as installing the daemons, editing a few
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configs for them, and adding the names to your <code>server_name</code> on nginx or the equivalent for your
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webserver of choice.</p>
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<hr />
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<p>In the future I'll write a more full guide to the overlay networks, but I feel like this has been
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long enough of a rant by now.</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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</body>
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</html>
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