Anil DashYou must picture Sam Altman holding a knife to Tim Berner-Lee's throat. We are in a truly existential level of danger when it comes to the survival of the open web, across every front. This year is when it all comes to a head. https://anildash.com/2026/03/27/endgame-open-web/
v@anildash agree with your diagnosis but not the prescription. Conditions that brought about the seemingly impossible open web do not exist now that it has matured. I dont know what collective action could even be mobilized toward specifically, vis-a-vis preserving what's been, but even that is largely moot imo because the userbase of the modern internet is such a different set of cats to herd. (1/3)
@anildash My expectation is a new, less centralized internet will form. Possibly not http or even tcp/ip, almost midway between internet and sneakernet. More reliant on human networking to establish collaborations - making this slop spamming obsolete - and more dependent on geography for content discovery - making scraping, malicious or otherwise, largely obsolete at least in the way its been done before. In short: less open, but more trusting and more human
Edit: I am picturing meshtastic, but it could be something similar or a combination of things
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@anildash the start of the open web wasnt something I was around for but I imagine it was a core of smart nerds inspired to be part of something new and different who created an inertial snowball rooted in openness, eventually pulling in a far larger number of people and hustlers until the latter blew it up and now we're a scattered mass of billions of people at the bottom of the hill, and the only scenario where we have an inertial openness core again is to find a new hill to roll it down
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