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Comment by willtemperley | Hacker News Reader

You don't hate The Internet, you hate The Web.

The Web can be forked and I don't know why people aren't working on this.

An ad free, zuck-less ungoogle Web is possible.

I don't like the current web either. I like The Internet though. I can get free satellite imagery of the world and tons of other cool stuff. This doesn't need to use The Web, except for some relatively simple and replaceable metadata channels.

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What seems more likely: There are literally zero people working on a web alternative, or all existing alternatives and forks are so unpopular that you have never heard of any of them?

I think the more likely reason is that there's nothing wrong with the web per se, but rather with the way people use it.

Even the argument against the Javascript/CSS/APIs explosion and browser complexity... all that can be "avoided" if you make a JS-less document-centric webpage, for example.

The issue is not that the web is bad for content producers, the issue is that it’s bad for content consumers. Consumers doesn’t do create the content (like js) that they are consuming.

I don't disagree at all, I'm just mentioning why I don't think people are gung-ho on a web alternative.

Indeed, the Invisible Internet Project exists and works fine, https://geti2p.net

>The Web can be forked and I don't know why people aren't working on this.

People are working on this: https://geminiprotocol.net/

And the fediverse and other decentralized protocols have yet to entirely succumb to the rot.

I didn’t know about Gemini protocol, thanks. Seems to have traction.

Inadvertently, Cunningham’s law helps me out.

What's to stop this nu-web going the same way?

Arguably having numerous decentralized, small and insular sub-networks hostile to change and growth makes them not worth the effort of corporations to co-opt and control.

The biggest problem with the web is that there is only one.

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