Mastodawn

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…

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Pontus 3d ago

@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.

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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.

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Tanguy ⧓ Herrmann

@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.