It seems like having a website open and available on the internet is getting practically impossible to manage, with bots accounting for more and more traffic. AI has gotten to a point where it can circumvent just about any form of captcha, sooooo, what? Does "the internet just get abandoned in favor of some other, better technology that we hope crops up? Does it fade away? Do the real nerds start their own separate internet, and not let companies in? I donno, food for thought I guess.
I want that nice middle ground 90’s-2000’s 'net:
There was a lot of weird stuff, there was scary places, but general browsing and surfing wouldn’t USUALLY suddenly hit you with some NSFL / CSAM stuff that made you wish your brain had a “bleach port.”
Stuff like TOR is really cool in theory, and absolutely necessary, but it still has that back-alley “Don’t stray from the street lamps and guide posts and trust no one.” vibe. Definitely not a place one can (easily) go around making friends.
That’s why I just enjoyed watching Mutahar surf it, since he knows what he’s doing lol.
I’m curious if people tend to use i2p as much.
And then there’s that pesky network effect, of course: Secretive places on the web might finally break free of the corporate net, but the non-criminals inhabiting it will likely be those already deep into sweaty nerdery and a definite non-zero chance of untreated schizophrenia.
But, yeah, make something too accessible and it gets Eternal September’d into yet another extension of corporate / state hegemony…
I’m deeply invested in where we go from here, and how to make that future brighter as opposed to following the downward trend…