Creating the Human Breakaway Internet
(1) By joshuablais on 2026-10-01 12:12:20 [link] [source]
For some time I have wrestled with the idea of how to create a human-centric internet, one which is reminiscent of the 90's/00's
- focused on human interaction, building community, and free transfer of information. I feel as if putting one's head in the sand regarding LLMs and "agents" (bots) can only really save our sanity to some degree, but the way forward will be as builders and those that actually want to have a human experience, to seek Truth, and to connect with those that are not "cooked".
This thread is a preliminary discussion on this topic, and perhaps may lead to something more as I think this community has the skills and vision to pull something like this off.
Stay Human.
(2) By cashmere on 2026-10-01 16:20:52 in reply to 1 [link] [source]
i feel exactly the same way, and every time i think about it, i get really upset. i try to work through my frustration by creating projects like this.
but i think llms are just a symptom of the underlying problem. i think the problem lies with all the current flagship projects in the foss space. these so called platforms make it incredibly difficult for users to interact with them from a social media or community standpoint.
people try to create solutions for problems that had already been solved. instead of improving those solutions, they decided to develop something new and incompatible that can’t even exchange information with the old ones in any way.
the best example is linus torvalds, who still refuses to communicate outside mailing lists. that approach works, it’s publicly accessible, and it’s easy to understand.
my solution to all this is to spend the next few years scraping all the valuable information from the internet and publishing it in a reusable form. whether others make use of it is up to them.
(3) By SquatnDog on 2026-10-01 16:42:02 in reply to 1 [link] [source]
Josh, it sounds like you are talking about vetting humans from bots? One thing humans have that bots don't, are mailing addresses. Furthermore, humans can write with pencil and lick stamps. I heard that some social media sites were considering vetting real people from their mailing address. I think this would be an effective clean-up campaign. Though the idea of giving my address to a soyligarch sends shivers down my spine.
(4) By joshuablais on 2026-10-01 16:55:26 in reply to 3 [link] [source]
Interesting take. I know they do want to ID everyone on the internet, and I dislike that solution very much. There is also this project from the Godfather of the web, Tim Berners-Lee: https://solidproject.org/
Where you control your data and plug in/out at your control. Federation is a good idea, Indieweb has some good concepts too.
I know that Gemini/Gopher exist, but I think the http(s) protocol is a good one and probably the way forward.
(6) By cashmere on 2026-10-01 17:10:40 in reply to 4 [link] [source]
gemini and gopher are easy to set up. they have their own markup format and you need to set up a server.
i found this amazing project.
if you think about it we already support the following formats and/or protocols:
- fossil
- git
- https
- imap/smtp
- atom/rss
- usenet (nntp)
(7) By joshuablais on 2026-10-01 17:13:35 in reply to 6 [link] [source]
But that is exactly it - build on protocols instead of any platform. A platform build on protocols, if you will.
(5) By cashmere on 2026-10-01 16:59:24 in reply to 3 [source]
i am more than happy to welcome all the social media refugees and offer them a place where they can get and share knowledge. we just need somebody who can recruit this little target audience. my plans are way bigger than what we have here right now. i would love to offer anyone who is interested a set of resources they can ssh into, set up their self-hosted services or static websites on, and just have a great time. the only issue is that i don't know anybody who could be in need of such a place. the possibilities are endless if only enough interest is out there.
