Mastodawn

arceuthobium 2d ago

the idea that the web ecosystem isn't "open" anymore because of complexity is ridiculous. anyone can still write basic html and javascript and get a site working. you don't have to use flexbox. you could just use nested tables. nobody gives a shit

the web ecosystem isn't open anymore because 5 planet spanning companies richer than god monopolize it now and you can't fix that by buying into the AI slop those very companies are peddling

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/25/ai-might-be-our-best-shot-at-taking-back-the-open-web/

AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

I remember, pretty clearly, my excitement over the early World Wide Web. I had been on the internet for a year or two at that point, mostly using IRC, Usenet, and Gopher (along with email, naturall…

Techdirt

Eniko Fox 3d ago

also using a picture of someone entirely unrelated to your take as the banner image for your opinion is ......... a choice you can make, i fucking guess?

LordMortis 3d ago

@eniko I mean this is the “blue sky is good actually” guy so yeah.

@eniko I was wondering what the hell Beato is doing discussing the nature of the internet

Jacob Ibáñez 🔒

@GandalfDG @eniko ME TOO! I was fucking puzzled

@eniko That's what i was wondering. The article has no images and just an embedded Rick Beato video (about locally-run AI being good enough), so the preview grabbed the video's title card.

@eniko
I was so confused by Rick's thumbnail as a preview image, this article is utter garbage that fortunately has nothing to do with Rick

cloudskater 2d ago

I actually thought it was a link to a YouTube video at first wtf

@eniko That headline alone is rage bait for me...

Gabriele Svelto 3d ago

@ainmosni @eniko yeah, it sounds like a bad joke. Take back the open we by... paying for an expensive black box of dubious legality controlled by an American corporation that is privately owned. It's like taking back our free time by giving ourselves in to indentured servitude.

F4GRX SÃ©bastien 1d ago

@gabrielesvelto @ainmosni @eniko the open web is old chromebooks on home cable modems.

🌈 Andrew ☄️3d ago

@eniko yeah, I had a similar reaction after skimming the same person’s article about people being wrong to cheer the verdict against Meta. They seem to have a lot of blind spots about scale.

Eniko Fox 3d ago

@bnut i feel like he was on here for a little while before he went full atproto guy and people kept boosting him and every time i saw his takes they just felt incredibly sus

🌈 Andrew ☄️3d ago

@eniko I didn’t know them before today, but after seeing that article I mentioned I looked at what else they’ve written and your one and an atproto one stood out as likely “bad takes” from the headlines

Kim 🕵️‍♂️ ✍️ 🍷 🍸 🚫3d ago

@eniko I actually feel its easier now than it was back in 2002 - there's pretty standardized approaches to CSS, JS and DOM.

I was working web dev around then and it was such a relief when Netscape fell off and you could avoid 17 if (browser) loops for a simple drop down menu.

@wincenworks @eniko
Real. The age of every browser having weird incompatible quirks in handling very basic things are long gone, JS is almost a sane language, CSS got variables and nesting, HTML is still as usable a markup language as ever.

@eniko what a weird take. Making a website is easier than ever and you don’t need ai for that, not even close. There are plenty of free options where you don’t even need to know very technical things like html or ftp and you can just mess around in an online editor.

Ratsnake Games 🔞3d ago

@h5e @eniko a lot of those options are technically controlled by companies (Squarespace, Wordpress dot com, Wix, Neocities and so on). I mean, they're far more open than Facebook, but still corporate and restricted by corporate decisionmaking.

@ratsnakegames @eniko that’s true but they don’t limit your expression (until you hit adult or illegal content) in the way that facebook for example does. And you’re always beholden to some other company and the more freedom you want the more you have to do yourself.

But ok, if you want the ultimate freedom and can spare a few bucks a month: the amount of resources to get started is vastly improved over the situation in the 90s.

Marta Threadbare 3d ago

@eniko taking back the web from these corporations by depending on the tools from these corporations, wtf is mike smoking.

Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.3d ago

@cygnathreadbare @eniko Mike lost his way several years ago. IIRC, I noticed him gaslighting someone else, so I unfollowed and basically ignore him.

I think he has either lost touch with reality or is intentionally deceiving. In any case, too much of an "infohazard" for my bubble.

Dogiedog64 2d ago

@eniko @cygnathreadbare

"We need to depend on the tools and benevolence of our oppressors in order to free ourselves!"

gkrnours 3d ago

@eniko you don't need JS and CSS grid are much easier to use than table IMO

@eniko I wont pretend to have read the whole thing, but the premise seems to be that it is no longer possible to learn how to make websites from viewing source, because of bloated websites and complicated frameworks, but AI can do it for us now, so people will start making websites again. I think that might possibly happen a little bit, and I guess that's good? But it will just make the original problem much worse though, because AI loves to write bloated websites with complicated frameworks.

@pontus_k @eniko There's a much simpler solution to that, especially for beginners: just make bloat-free websites. It's easier to understand what you're doing, i.e., the thing that leads to learning, which doesn't happen during vibe coding.

Tanguy ⧓ Herrmann 1d ago

@pontus_k @eniko the real problem is people using those bloated framework because they come from the same companies (react, angular, redux).
We trusted them in creating good technical solutions, because they're big, right?
But they just bloated the whole ecosystem with over engineered crap. Half for whatever technical reasons, half for obfuscating so nobody steal their amazing (joke) UI.

The real progressive move is to make everything simple again. Like what people are trying to do with small web, and other.
And connect things together like what activitypub is doing (I'm not considering atproto because this shit is gonna become enshittified, I promise you).

So people discovering the web now can copy and paste from source because it's not minified/crapified and be able to control it from A to Z.

Tanguy ⧓ Herrmann 1d ago

@pontus_k @eniko Hoping that a model will save us is delusional at best.

Qwen doesn't know about Tibet, Tiananmen. It's free to use, but it has very specific bias. And all of those models have their own bias and preferences. You're not free, you're just talking to a very biased person that tells you what their master trained them on.

You want to create small web with AI? Maybe it will suggest you React, and AWS to host it. And people without knowledge will must take it at face value.

@eniko AI might be our best shot at taking back the open web.

Not because AI is going to assist us in taking back the open web.

But because AI is making more and more people realize that the tech giants are not our friends. Because AI is pushing the price of computers up so much that more and more get a taste of Linux, and this becomes a "door opener" into a more open world.

Because people get scared of Google, Facebook and similar stealing everything from them, and start to look at self hosting and decentralized platforms.

So, in that way, "AI might be our best shot" isn't... wrong... but it's not for the reasons given there.

@eniko also we need to be fucking intolerant to the #JavaScript - #Malware and #SlopCode that makes the "#ModernWeb" suck!

https://helvede.net/@jwcph/116300480067916809 via @jwcph

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency (@[email protected])

Exactly. This article is fucking nonsense. First off, as a designer I can tell you NOBODY! can accurately or exhaustively describe what they want - it isn't possible, in web or anywhere else. Also, AI web code is still slop & will still suck & break. Doesn't solve a single problem & introduces infinite new ones. Oh & you can, in fact, see & copy & mess with CSS by right-click > inspect. I suspect this person might simply be bad at this. #tech #AI #coding

Helvede

David Frank 3d ago

@eniko that’s an interesting take on permission…

@eniko @brib … you can just… build a html website.

There’s no one stopping you.

The only thing you could conceivably _need_ LLMs for in a hard sense is engagement farming and some sort of assumption that you have to scale your content for the population of an entire country.

You can… just build cute little websites.

Purple Skies 3d ago

@FayeDrake @eniko @brib writer describes himself as a “founder and CEO”, so probably only thinks of things in terms of startup bullshit, hyperscaling and monetisation x-x

Luke Harby 3d ago

@Leviamicky @FayeDrake @eniko @brib

"dad and coffee afficionado"

F4GRX SÃ©bastien 1d ago

@FayeDrake @eniko @brib laziness is stopping people.

Liminal witch 🧙‍♀️ Sarah 3d ago

@eniko I give a shit about nested tables and I believe a lot of blind people and other screen reader users give a shit.

@eniko Mike has been steadily going off the deep end for a while now. I can't say I'm surprised that the slopworm has started eating up what remains of his brain too.

Geoff Wozniak 3d ago

@eniko Before checking I figured it was Masnick.

@eniko for a man who refuses to read a book on web design, watch a tutorial or phone a friend, he sure can pump out alot of words.

Arthfach 🐻3d ago

@eniko I had similar thoughts about that tool. He's also a suicide-by-LLM supporter too, which is special.

https://social.arthfach.com/@arthfach/statuses/01KMK138J1ZB69AMJ01VNKJBTW

https://arthfach.com/blog/mike-masnick-supports-suicide.shtml

Arthfach 🐻 (@[email protected])

Mike Masnick of Techdirt has lost his entire goddamn mind. AI is anathema to the open web, not its goddamn savior! And I think what gets me the most is his brazen admission that he has never truly CREATED; he even attributes his early years to just copy/pasting other people's code and calling it his own. On brand for an AI lover, I suppose. https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/25/ai-might-be-our-best-shot-at-taking-back-the-open-web/ Hey @gryphonmyers @davidgerard @xgranade @mcc @zzt y'all might be interested in this article from one of the most prominent members of Bluesky's board of directors - direct evidence he has fully succumbed to AI psychosis in a major way.

arthfach.com

Jody Lemoine CD 🇨🇦3d ago

@eniko Sir Tim’s vision is still intact. We just need to buy into it again.

The Hat Fox 3d ago

@eniko The most basic of website needs only rudimentary HTML to get going.

So many of the use cases I see for AI boil down to using it to handle unnecessary over complication.

We could also solve those problems by just not doing them.

@eniko By “open” they mean “effortlessly visually appealing”. They're sad that making websites look good takes effort now because of all the javascript and css.

Officeplant 3d ago

@eniko everyday Masnick disappoints me more than the previous day which feels impressive tbh.

RealGene ☣️3d ago

@eniko
Even if you just cut & paste some basic html, The Powers That Be have decreed that your site, even if completely static, won't be visible without TLS, and if you manage to overcome that, they're actively shortening the lifetime of certificates to add to the burden.

@RealGene @eniko decent web hosting providers will generally give you one-click Let’s Encrypt certs, though, so this doesn’t really feel like it’s a roadblock? Sure if you’re self-hosting off a box in your house, that’s still a problem for ease of use, but at that point there’s at least four other things standing in your way too.

RealGene ☣️2d ago

@alahmnat @eniko
Every time I mention certs, there's a reply, or several, like this, and every one mentions LE, and how easy it is, and everything else is hard too.

But nobody ever addresses that for those sites that made Web 1.0 fun and interesting, there's no need for TLS anyway, but your site will be still be treated like it's malware, and everyone scurries back to the walled gardens full of paid vipers.

@eniko exactly 🎯 I also take some issue with saying “I made this,” when one just asked an LLM to make the thing; both for coding and art. Sure, both coders and artists rely on tools, and the tools evolve over time—but their comes a point where one relying on the tools isn’t really engaging in a creative process anymore. Electronic synthesizers are music instruments; but someone who just presses the demo button isn’t playing music.

Szabó Em, Enigma He-Art Director

@eniko a 14k modem, an afternoon with an O'Reilly book, and my sister's dad (who codes databases for a living) taught 9 year old me how to build a website. I was 9 friggin years old the first time I coded a fully functioning website that had a guest book. I was handling input/output and database structures at 9!

If you’re a grown ass adult who drones on and on about how you need an ai slop machine to create a page for you......you've been conditioned to believe you're too incapable of becoming more than you are now. That's the saddest thing I can think of and I pity those that go about their lives like that.

@jadedtwin @eniko AI Coding Agents: Learned Helplessness, At Scale!

@jadedtwin @eniko But seriously. If you’re not going to spend an hour learning to build a page by hand, you can’t begin to understand the horrors a coding agent is going to build for you. This is worse than learned helplessness, it’s a siren call that will lead people to build insecure systems that cause real harm.

@jadedtwin @eniko I also think it has a lot to do with complacency - people who aren't "technical" enough want to be technical without learning how to be and more experienced technical people who have let their systems get too complex want someone to pawn the grunt work onto while they do the "real" work.

One of the most frightening conversations I've had yet though happened today - I found out that my company is piloting this "AI First" garbage by not only having PMs and POs use AI to define the product requirements but that the designers are now "designing" by vibe-coding functional mockups which will invariably become the basis for the production front ends.

It's all about "multiplying force" and yet also doing the same work with fewer actual humans that need to be paid and also need communication. It exposes the fact that a lot of "technical" people aren't in it for the love of the code or the job, they're just in it for the overblown salaries because, for better or worse even amidst all this job carnage, it's still where the money is.

Arcane Roops 3d ago

@eniko I can't help thinking we need to go back to a web 'browser' also doing WYSIWYG editing.

poetaster 3d ago

@eniko Exactly. I've continuously been hosting my own hand made websites since 1994 (well ~ since 1992) . I don't get the commotion.

Jonbjohns 3d ago

@eniko
Ugh. I dont get why he is peddling that. The point of the open web is creativity and imperfection. Ai is imperfect (it is dumb as bricks), but it will never produce something original/novel.

This is the same gatekeeping as big tech is doing

the idea that the web ecosystem isn’t “open” anymore because of complexity

JS frameworks where you pull in 200 dependencies to have a radio button is a completely self-inflicted hell, nothing inherently to do with the web platform

the complexity is a problem indeed but only if you assume the viewpoint of someone wanting to develop a new web rendering engine

from a website maker’s pov its more versatility