Ask Lemmy

Here's the problem, for this to happen, we would first have to reorganize the economy/politics/society. Everything has turned to total shit because we live in a global capitalist plutocracy. Nothing is gonna get much better under that

IMO the big thing is just to broadly remove corporate influence and control. Almost everything that is wrong with the internet has roots in profit seeking megalomaniacs thinking up ways to make the technology we use serve their needs exclusively and manipulate everyone's interactions to cater to that. Tech utopia would be everyone using systems that are designed for organic human interaction, organizing and information exchange, and the people who want to corrupt that being unable to do so.

You really need to break up Google, Amazon, Meta, and the other gigantic internet companies. There's a relatively small collections of massive companies that have too much sway over how the internet works and are ubiquitous enough to facilitate mass surveillance and micromanaging what content people are exposed to. The reason the internet doesn't benefit us and is antithetical to our wants and needs is because it's setup to bring value to the companies' shareholders.

All platforms must be decentralized and interoperable and fuck the algorithms.

I'd immediately outlaw the buying or selling of goods and services. The internet should be a free repository of knowledge and a communication platform. Not a marketplace.

IMO, peak internet experience was when you had to make an effort to log on. i.e. dialing-up and tying up the phone line. Yeah, the speeds sucked and sometimes you got the dreaded "all circuits are busy now" message during peak hours, but everything else about the experience was better.

When you logged into AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo, etc, you did so with a purpose. You never worried about bothering someone by messaging them at a bad time because if it was a bad time to do so, they wouldn't be online in the first place.

"Back in my day" (lol), the internet wasn't always on, it wasn't demanding your attention, it wasn't pestering you with constant notifications, it wasn't in your face all the time, it wasn't constantly recommending or suggesting things at you (not "to" you, at you) etc, etc. It was there when you needed it but didn't butt into your life every second when you weren't.

You could disconnect.

I honestly don't know what we can really do about it. Personally, I turn off pretty much anything that can send a notification except SMS/MMS and check manually when I want to. Some people hate that and get annoyed that I rarely respond instantly to IMs and such, but I hate being constantly "on" as well as the expectation to be.

My web would be a lot more focused on static content, aka text content and a less centralized one too. Making for a much leaner web (less resources wasted to load useless crap) while at the same time making for a much slower web to... consume as reading takes time, which also means the necessity to carefully pick what one will read instead of doom scrolling and also spend more time/attention reading each pick, one can't just glance at a block of text).

Hopefully, a Web less self-centered, with less fomo/anxiety/hate/anger/stupidity/numbness. With more attention and awareness to the other(s).

First off require all social media to have a reverse-chronological feed front and center.

It's better to start over from scratch than it is to try to reorganize a huge code base.

Therefore, Internet 2.0, where it's only IRC channels for support, forums as "social media", and simple file sharing sites for your video and image content. You don't need anything else.

Apply the Linux mentality to the Internet 2.0 and it won't be so bloated with slop.

EDIT: Oh, and no JavaScript! That can stay quarantined with the Internet 1.0

Less popups. I don’t mind the banner style ads both horizontal and vertical but the pop-ups are annoying.