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#openweb

11 posts8 participants1 post today
Public
Miguel Afonso Caetano

"[T]he biggest culprit of the slow demise of the Web as we knew it has been the rise of the app economy. The first thing most large commercial websites will do when you try to access them on a mobile device is to open up a notification encouraging you to install their app. Why stay on the scary open Web when you can be viewing the same content on their safe walled garden? So people switched, and kept on switching until the Web on mobile is practically an extinct creature. 60% of all Web traffic comes from mobile devices, but people are using apps and not the browser on their phones, and 88% of all time spent on the phone is on apps and not on the Web. Sure, that includes games and all sorts of other applications, but the reality is that the old Web is a dying environment.

Add to that the fact that websites have become ugly behemoths filled with cookie banners and pop-ups, and you will see that the move to apps makes a lot of sense. The advantage of the app for developers is evident: higher retention, more control, and most importantly, higher capability of gathering user data that can then be resold to the highest bidder.

The consequences of this shift are far more profound than mere inconvenience. As the open Web recedes, we are witnessing the slow death of digital serendipity, that peculiar joy of stumbling across unexpected information or communities whilst wandering through hyperlinks. Apps create isolated silos of content, algorithmically curated and commercially optimised. This fragmentation erodes the decentralised nature of information access that characterised the early Web.
(...)
Perhaps most concerning is what this means for future generations who will never know the Web as it was."

#OpenWeb #AppEconomy #AppStores #Decentralization

technollama.co.uk/the-appstore

TechnoLlama · The Appstore killed the Website StarI was recently trying to buy a train ticket using a Web platform which shall remain nameless for obvious reasons. I have been using the site for years to buy train tickets in advance, and while it …
Public
witchescauldron

Because, let’s face it, look at most tech news today and mutter with me:

Utterly pointless. Stupidly pointless. Dangerously pointless.
Naively evil. Innocently evil. Just plain evil.
…We need to do better in alt-tech

It’s long past time to return to the #openweb, and compost this mess making hamishcampbell.com/its-long-pa

hamishcampbell.comIt’s long past time to return to the #openweb, and compost this mess making – Hamish Campbell
More from Hamish Campbell
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witchescauldron

The #OMN is built on a simple, powerful truth: "This is the Internet."

GET
PUT
POST
DELETE
–MERGE–

These basic actions — close to the core HTTP verbs every website uses — are all you need to create, share, remix, and grow.
(From RFC 7231 and RFC 5789.)

Then you have the #4opens which are about reclaiming the grassroots social power of the web:

Open data

Open source

Open process

Open standards

No gatekeepers. No #dotcons middlemen. No closed silos. Just people, building together. This is what #openweb reboot looks like.

#nothingnew
Public
witchescauldron

In the #openweb and #Fediverse spaces, it's worth remembering: Many people only value things once they’re validated by #mainstreaming sources. This is narrow, blinded behaviour — the kind that keeps the #deathcult fed.

If you only see value through the lens of #dotcons algorithms, you’re missing 90% of what actually matters.

A lot of the “famous” people in #mainstreaming — even on alt spaces — are assholes. Not because fame makes you bad, but because climbing the algorithm's ladder requires selfishness, ego, and conformity.

On alt platforms, sure, we have "our" assholes, that's life. But our assholes can be challenged, mediated, and composted into something better. On the #mainstreaming side? They're more shit on the corporate pile.

Please, don't bow down to them. Stay critical. Stay rooted. Keep your shovel handy.

#4opens#nothingnew#techcurn
Public
witchescauldron

In tech, the last 20 years have been a mess of #fashernista trends and the ongoing #geekproblem, a compost heap of broken promises and abandoned projects. It's obvious if you lift the lid and really look. The glossy hype fades fast, the rot underneath remains.

Much of what we call "innovation" ended up as #techshit - rushed, bloated, short-sighted code that needs serious composting if we’re going to grow anything real. #Openweb dreams have been buried under a #dotcons landfill.

The real challenge now isn’t just pointing at the pile (fun as that can be), it's handing the next generation proper shovels - real tools, real critical thinking, real spaces for building rooted, resilient, open tech.

A hopeful note: some #fashernistas are starting to apologize and acknowledge the mess. That's good compost material too. Let's keep composting. Let's keep planting.

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Hamish Campbell

Not to punish the individuals, but to highlight the groups to compost

One of the most corrosive problems on the path to rebooting the #openweb is the nasty, unconscious blocking that seeps through all #mainstreaming and careerist #NGO spaces. It’s not usually overt, it doesn’t come with a clear “no.” It comes with silence, with being ignored. With polite nods and a quick pivot back to safe, fundable, middle-of-the-road ideas that don’t rock the boat. This is how real change is smothered, how compost we need becomes concrete we are trying to break […]

hamishcampbell.com/not-to-puni

hamishcampbell.comNot to punish the individuals, but to highlight the groups to compost – Hamish Campbell
More from Hamish Campbell
#dotcons#fashernistas#mainstreaming
Public
Mathieu Lefebvre :cursor_move:

We’re exploring what a truly ethical, open, and human-centered social platform could look like — and your voice matters.

Whether you’re a creator, a casual scroller, or just curious about alternatives to Big Tech — we’d love to hear from you.

tally.so/r/nWQREv

Let’s rethink social media together 🌱

Tally Forms🧠 UX Survey – Exploring Ethical Social Media PlatformsMade with Tally, the simplest way to create forms.
#uxresearch#fedisurvey#openweb
Public
stackdpodcast

The wait is over! #76: Shiny Objects that People Like to Chase is out!

@kito99, @dhinojosa, and Ian start out the new year with #WebAssembly, #SemanticWeb, and #AI guru @bsletten. They talk about #WebAssembly, #LLMs, edge computing, and open source hardware. The crew also discusses how theory of mind relates to #AGI, #DeepSeek, #OpenWeb, #Fediverse, #ActivityPub, Interplanetary File System (#ifs), and more. pubhouse.net/podcast/title-shi

Public
Miguel Afonso Caetano

"From unstoppable slop, to “enshittification”, to a digital world peopled by automatons, all of these ideas have a useful explanatory power. None, on its own, sufficiently captures the problem. The internet suffers from a cluster of disorders, some with overlapping symptoms and causes. I’m interested in uniting them all under a bigger tent, one that accounts for their similarities and for the role of human decision-making in bringing us to our current predicament.

Borrowing from the world of public architecture, I think of it as the “hostile internet”. Through deliberate choices, and some unintended consequences, the architects of the current consumer internet have created a thoroughly commercialised, surveilled and authoritarian space where basic functions are seconded to the extractive appetites of the monopolies overseeing the system. And it’s making us miserable.
(...)
Like the Moynihan Train Hall, today’s internet isn’t really designed for us, but rather to elicit certain responses from us, responses which, to put it loftily, are hostile to human flourishing. The tech companies’ growth-at-all-costs mentality has scaled their products’ flaws and vulnerabilities — and their second-order social effects — in proportion with their billion-person user bases. The hostile internet is a witch’s brew of explanations for how one of humanity’s most important inventions has produced so much simultaneous prosperity, inequality, disruption and social upheaval.

The result is that today’s internet seems to, if not make us actually crazy, make many of us seem crazy. Always connected, always posting and consuming, we resemble madmen now, giving voice to thoughts that are normally the province of the eccentric ranting on a street corner."

ft.com/content/5d06bbb4-0034-4

#AI#GenerativeAI#AISlop
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Hamish Campbell

Messy language feeds back into our culture

The #blocking of current action, the constant stalls, confusion, and fragmentation, has a lot to do with the mess our language makes. And the deeper issue is how this messy language feeds back into our culture, which then loops back to make the language even murkier. It’s a feedback loop that clouds meaning, erodes trust, and paralyses collective action. The last 40 years of postmodernism and neo-liberalism have made this worse. #Postmodernism chipped away at the idea of shared reality, […]

hamishcampbell.com/messy-langu

hamishcampbell.comMessy language feeds back into our culture – Hamish Campbell
More from Hamish Campbell
#blocking#deathcult#dotcons
Public
MidniteMikeWrites

Has anyone worked out an #althistory where TCP/IP and/or HTTP(s) were proprietary? Could the internet meaningful exist in such a world?

Working through some reflections on progress and private property for my blog Misaligned Markets and this topic came up with friends.

Maybe the question just boils down to what size network effect do you need for the internet to facilitate communications and commerce and does fragmenting it change that?

#internet#openweb#tech
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