JA WestenbergMay 28, 2025
RSS never tracked you.
Email never throttled you.
Blogs never begged for dopamine.
The old web wasn’t perfect.
But it was yours.
Show threadRMay 28, 2025

@Daojoan to join the "well actually" crowd, email absolutely did have throttling, although retry and backoff logic tended to be much more reliable and well-tested back then

there was a lot of the old internet that wasn't democratized and "yours" (e.g. acquiring connectivity, acquiring compute), although the details have shifted around a lot

Show threadSerenusMay 28, 2025
@r @Daojoan I feel like there were models for democratized connectivity? The earliest setup I remember using was through torfree.net, and they were one of a group of freenets running under a co-op model, I think. Looks like they’re still around and offering free service as well, which is a pleasant surprise.
Show threadR

@Serenus @Daojoan yeah, this existed in various places (*especially* _outside_ the United States, where suburbia and monopolies really ruined things). there also existed people hosting stuff on spare computers and using dynamic dns providers

you gain some, you lose some. nowadays connectivity and compute are *way* easier and more affordable, but the cultural knowledge that you _can_ self-host seems to be disappearing

May 28, 2025 at 10:57pmWeb