How are web pages shared? By distributing links.
How are pages censored? By deplatforming. This usually happens by activists targeting the host right in their cashflow.
If you remove the need to host, you remove a point of failure from publishing. Now the link is the content.
It's an interesting concept whether or not you agree with this implementation.
So instead of sharing the link couldn't you just... Share whatever the message or content is?
Edit: what I'm saying is that "activists" (which is an interesting concern btw) will pressure the platform that the link is being shared on because the link IS the content.
*Though the content is integrated well with modern browsers.
Why not just copy and paste the content directly?
Storing the page in the URL doesn’t remove the need to have a platform to communicate those links to those who want them.
No, the platform is wherever you distribute the URLs to other people. Browsers, for the most part, don't share URLs with eachother without an intermediary server hosting the shared links, either as one or more traditional webpages with links or something like a shared bookmark list.
Prediction: at some point someone will want to censor something and blame the host. The host or hostname will be taken offline, even though it's not storing or distributing the content.
Luckily, the benefit of open source is that anyone can clone the repository and host any number of similar services if they are serious about using them for content distribution.
I don't mind if there are problems with the host since it will mean people are actually making use of the project.
Edit: adding link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme
Telling a normal person to click that link (or, go to decoder.com and paste this text into there, for a more distributed version) is much easier than getting them to view the HTML.
I still think this is really interesting though.
Think about the tools a modern political campaign uses, it would be somewhat similar.
But aren't there any other encoding standards? Perhaps also with encryption?
I'm not knocking this url idea. Simply what-if'ing other possibilities.
I guess it's marginally better since there's no central "place" to take it down. However, the deplatforming concern is still there because you're still probably sharing those links on the major platforms. So they can still take those down. You can argue that having it distributed among random sites is better than having it centralized, but you can achieve the same thing by uploading to multiple sites.
The proper way to do this (that doesn't involve shifting the problem), is to use IPFS/tor. When you're sharing it, you can use a gateway server, but if that gets taken down or blocked, users can still access it using the underlying network if they really wanted.
Mostly, by distributing links on other web pages.
> How are pages censored? By deplatforming. This usually happens by activists targeting the host right in their cashflow.
This does not avoid that problem, since you still need (for effective reach) hosting for the links.
It also adds new problems, like the length limit most browsers impose on URLs limiting the size of content that can be shared by this method rather sharply.
Huh, I just saw a 2018 post on a Chrome support forum indicating that Chrome had the same 2083 char limit as IE...
Checking more deeply I've found more direct Chromium info indicating implying either no limit or a 2^31 character limit, with a 32kB display limit. So, yeah, the URL length limit may not be an issue.
https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/a-win-for-the-web/
One can also host in a different jurisdiction which doesn't have laws or action against your content. Preferrably that can stand up to demands of a major country. Switzerland is popular for this. Example host that I havent vetted but highlights common differentiators: