Xennials like myself will often wax nostalgic about “How the Internet Used to Be”.
Smaller, more intimate, more organic. This was largely because people were creating pockets of culture online, to be consumed by other people. The Battle for Top 8 Spaces helped bring that to a stop. Suddenly the Internet has become a competition. More likes. More followers. More sponsors.
But somehow, there’s less in the more.
I’ve created this as a resource for people who might be afraid to take that first step into non-corporate Internet. I taught myself HTML as a teenager, so I’ve got a bit under my belt as far as navigating the interwebs. Honestly, it’s not hard. There’s a world of free information out there, all it takes is some reading, patience, and time. And it’s worth it.
Alternative Philosophies
Here are a few websites that do a good job of explaining how and why you can and should be in control of your online presence. When you’re dependent upon a social media site or corporate storefront, you are allowing control over your content, your voice, your very identity. Take it back.
IndieWeb – Own your own domain and use it as your primary online identity. Your platform is your website.
The Small Web – The Small Web is Your Web. You own your own “home”.
The Fediverse – Social networks should be community-owned and decentralized. Rather than being “trapped” in a singular social network, you can communicate with a wide variety. You can also create small pockets rather than be a global presence.
Grow Your Own – Make the internet YOU want to see and interact with. Built it yourself.
The Yesterweb – Nostalgia-based manifesto focused on individual control of the web.
Alternative Services
Apps on your phone are a walled garden. That is, it looks pretty, is protected, and is comfortable. You must obey the rules. You must say the correct things. You must relinquish privacy. The garden is a privilege, you see. Don’t leave the garden, it might be lonely, you might miss something important, it might be ugly.
Leave the garden, and take a walk in the forest.
| Ditch That | Use This | Here’s Why |
|---|---|---|
| Mastodon | Twitter, especially in recent years, has become increasingly full of questionable censorship and is being constantly scraped for data to use in AI. Mastodon allows for you install an instance on your website, from which you can communicate with other instances. You can also join an instance if you’re unable to start your own at the moment. Rules are dictated by whomever owns an instance. | |
| Discourse | Facebook is a constant battle for attention from the algorithm. Ads and misinformation plague all aspects. Discourse is a forum system that has calendars, chronological posts, and even a chat. If you use FB groups, this is a way to make your group more accessible to humans and fight less bots trying to hawk cryptocurrency or AI-generated t-shirts. Discourse can host you for a fee, or you can install it for free on your own server. | |
| Pixelfed | Instagram started out as a way to share beautiful photos. Now it is a cluttered mishmash of unorganized videos trying to claw their way to the top of the discovery pages. Pixelfed is federated like Mastodon, thus you can choose to host your own instance or join another. Either way, it’s peace and quiet and photos. | |
| YouTube | PeerTube | I realize this one is a little different, videos take up a LOT of room. But, it’s a great way to fight back against censoring language to appease the algorithm. PeerTube is federated; host or join. |
| Lemmy | If you liked Reddit before the proliferation of ChatGPT-generated bot posts, then Lemmy is another federated solution to providing or interacting with that sort of environment. | |
| Etsy | WooCommerce | Etsy is supremely guilty of once being an environment that encouraged handmade, human-made commerce but now rewards whomever provides the most for their bottom line. They’re largely a front for overseas factories mass-producing junk. Woocommerce works in tandem with WordPress, another federate-able service you can install for free onto your own servers. |
| TikTok | Loops | If you enjoy short-form videos, Pixelfed has come up with Loops as a federated alternative. |
| Doomscrolling | RSS Feeds | Rather than endless scrolling with the slot-machine win of occasionally finding your favorite comic or a worthwhile news article, use an RSS reader to curate your own feeds. Personally, I use the Feedbro extension in Firefox. I no longer miss updates from events or businesses that insist on posting on services I don’t use because the RSS reader directly picks up their feed and delivers it directly to my chronologically organized feed. |
These aren’t the only alternatives to each service you want to ditch! The beautiful thing about federation and open source is that there are multiple solutions to your problems.
Videos of Interest
Television Delivers People – 1978 – Richard Serra
Why you should quit social media – 2016 – Cal Newport
You Should Check out the IndieWeb – 2023 – Kat
Algorithms are breaking how we think – 2025 – Alec Watson
Articles of Interest
How-To Help
Landchad.net – A bevy of resources to start your own website. Stop being an Internet peasant!
HTML for People – An introduction to making your own website in a nice lil’ free book.
Make a Web-Ring – Github dedicated to resurrecting webrings
How to Subscribe to RSS Feeds using Mozilla Thunderbird – Thunderbird is a great email program, and you can use it as an RSS reader as well!
Discussions & Postulating
Little Brother Is Watching You – 1999 – From the article: “We must — as best we can — stay aware, try not to patronize companies that patronize us, raise holy hell when privacy is stolen, and occasionally throw a few good, heavy monkeywrenches into the works. But the day will come when it will be either impossible, or illegal, to function in normal society without a smart card, a tracking device on our vehicles, or a computer that automatically reports our activities to distant Watchers.”
Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It – 2016 – From the article: “Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom.”
How to Leave Dying Social Media Platforms – 2022 – From the article: “The Big Tech platforms style themselves as “benevolent dictators.” Sure, they have the final say over your digital life, but they only wield that power because they want to help you.”
Social media algorithms warp how people learn from each other – 2023 – From the article: “One of the key outcomes of functional misalignment in algorithm-mediated social learning is that people start to form incorrect perceptions of their social world.”
