pay a monthly fee for group chat; happens on someone else'e servers; for the love of all that is holy, this exists already doesn't it?? and for free??

It seems "web 3.0" is all about making tarted up existing free software with hipster interfaces, selling it for $$$, and putting it "on the cloud" (i.e. on someone else's machines).

I know this is the way the world seems to be moving (backwards, back to the 1970s if you ask me, to mainframes and dumb terminals (chrome book anyone?)) ...

but I for one would rather see a world where local users controlled their own machines, their own data, their own encryption, and a peer-to-peer system for communicating

maybe someone can invent a standard.

TCP/IP anyone?

-grumpy old man