Random Geek in limboMar 31, 2024

The eldest among us remember the First Web, before search engines were Good Actually. They used secret magics to make sense of the chaos that was the First Web.

Site directories.

Web rings.

Home pages linking to trusted sites.

Homework and jello shooter recipes study notes.

Now that the Search Engines have fallen it is time to bring those ancient tools back, for ourselves and the youngest among us who never knew the First Web.

Show threadenoch_exe_incApr 1, 2024
@randomgeek #Freenet still runs like this, though this is primarily because it’s designed to be maximally secure and not the least bit accessible. Whenever I get a sufficiently nostalgic for the early 2000s Internet, I close my regular browser and connect to Freenet to browse its (filtered) site directories. The extremely slow state of the network, sometimes requiring up to half an hour to load a page, is immersion at its finest.
Show threadArneBab

@enoch_exe_inc Could you check the bandwidth you grant it?

With 15-30 connections (a typical bandwidth) it should not take half an hour to open a page.

Though the pages may take as long as a regular newspaper clearnet pages when accessing them without uBlock Origin.

Though that’s more a matter of the sad state of the clearnet 😢 and not of superb performance of Freenet 🐇
@randomgeek

Apr 28, 2024 at 4:35pmWeb
Show threadenoch_exe_incApr 28, 2024
@ArneBab @enoch_exe_inc @randomgeek Alright, it doesn’t take *that* long to download a page on Freenet. But it does take a fair bit longer than browsing on the regular Internet, especially if it has images. However, that is a small price to pay for the immense security the network provides.
Show threadenoch_exe_incApr 28, 2024
@ArneBab @enoch_exe_inc @randomgeek Why use Freenet at all? Well, because all content hosted on it is extremely difficult to remove, which is exactly what I need because the FBI (unintentionally) took down my blog when they arrested the guys who ran Freedom Hosting.
Show threadArneBabApr 29, 2024

@enoch_exe_inc For me it also provides fallback for my website, but additionally it brings communication tools that stay up when others fail — i.e. IRC via FLIP and Sone.

And it provides the only fully confidential communication channel I have — only with friends, but in exchange it even hides metadata: whether and when we communicated.

@randomgeek