Thread 106281561

Is there anywhere the internet is still good? I'm a lost millennial who remembers when the internet was a joyful place before the corpo social media takeover.

It seems like my options are:
>Fediverse
Love everything about it, but I'm not even sure where to get started. What are the best instances? While I don't want to join communities that are too prude to federate with taboo hentai, I also don't want to end up surrounded on all sides by child pornographers (the deepweb types, loli is fine) and literal terrorists. More importantly, I don't know where the fun and in-depth discussion is happening. Mastodon and that Rddit ripoff look the most interesting and active.
>Dumbcord
Yes, it's centralized corpo social media, but it sucks moderately less than Rddit and Farcebook. It's not the free internet, but it's a passable synthetic substitute because it actually feels organic.
>Marginalia Search
Helps to locate stuff that gets overlooked by mainstream search engines. It's like a search engine from 2008. While most of the stuff is old, it's apparent that there's a sort of resurgence of web 1.0-type sites for personal interests and personal web sites (fueled by HTML and the return of Angelfire) in certain circles, which is great.
>Gopher
Looks interesting and more free than (today's) world wide wide web, but only a few people use it.
>SpaceHey
Classic [MS] was and is the best normalfag social media.
>Imageboards
The only sites left all suck. I remember a point where the scene was booming to the point where 4chan was my less-favored alt-chan; now almost all other sites are dead and four out of five still active consist primarily of literal Nazis.
>Zeronet
If it's even still alive? There was one active chan back in the day, and zeronet gained some popularity that time eig chan went down.
>Tor
At least there's stuff like "Dreadit". Probably some other social media sites on Tor if you look deep enough.
>IRC
Surprisingly legit and people still actually use it.

Thoughts? Ideas?

>>106281561 (OP)
Another of those nostalgia posters, who miss remember the past and and doesn't know these times used to be the bad old days.

All full of trannies

>>106281561 (OP)
Wiby is another search engine you might be interested in, it only indexes web 1.0 sites. Neocities and Nekoweb offer a platform for small personal sites. Traditional forums are still around, the problem is finding one for your specific hobby that doesn't have stupid rules. For now I'd stay away from the Fediverse, as it seems heavily politicized. If you have something to say, you could make your own blog/channel and promote it here. I've been considering doing something like that, just can't seem to decide the topic it should focus on.

>>106281642
Look, the past few days I torrented like 500GB of anime, locally generated a bunch of hentai for my new doujin game, installed maybe a tenth of the legally-owned 1200+ game collection across three of my Linux devices, loaded up my RPG35XXSP with some new Pokemon ROM hacks, ripped some new FLAC music from Tidal and watched the new Panty and Stocking while legally smoking weed under the stars (but not legally watching Panty and Stocking). None of that is lost on me. Everything going on on my computer personally is fucking awesome, and the internet has never been better as far as content availability, but online communities are dying.
>bad old days
In the sense that my internet connection was 24kbps, you had to go to Blockbuster to rent one of eight interesting movies you hadn't seen before, and good games cost $24.99+ used, and you better get used to playing the same one for multiple hundreds of hours (getting endless enjoyment out of games that aren't even good in this way is a skill I wish I could remember), yes.
But online communities were better. These days, zoomers freak out at any post longer than two sentences and expect everything to be available across five or six heavily restricted social media apps instead of across thousands of disparate communities with their own individual site culture.
There still have to be good communities on the internet, right?
>>106281657
Gopher has a transgender community? Cool, I guess.
Trannies are fine. The toxic political correctness suffocating mainstream social media in the 2020s is what I find issue with. I don't want to go to the other extreme, either; I'm all for people living their lives the way they wanna live them, and everyone else's business is not my business as long as they mind their own. One of the biggest things that's shit about the modern internet (and world) is that this doesn't seem to be as popular a philosophy as it used to be on the left or the right.

>>106281826
Wiby looks cool, thanks.
Most forums had stupid rules of some kind or another, but you could always just join one of the literally dozens to hundreds of other individual communities devoted to your interests.
And the forums that do exist will have a tenth of the membership and traffic that they did back in the day. I'll still find forums for things I'm interested in, but the last post will be from 2015 or 2022 (and registration and posting will still be open). /b/ today is slower than a lot of forums were back in the 2000s, which is really sad.
>For now I'd stay away from the Fediverse
Yeah, it seems from first glance like virtue signaling moralfags (which is the majority) have separated off into a walled garden that doesn't federate with controversial instances (I like loli and guro, so this is a dealbreaker), and then there's a secondary more chaotic but still mostly safe section of the Fediverse of free speech absolutists that largely tolerate hentai addicts, edgelords, casual LARPing 4chan racists and (ugh) Fox News conservatives. Then I imagine there are the neo-Nazi terrorist, child groomer, and 1337 edgy chaotic-to-the-point-of-being unsafe hacker instances somewhere on the edge where you don't want to find yourself at all.
(Feel free to correct me if this impression isn't correct.)
It all still sounds much better than scrolling Facebook groups and liking SFW pictures of clown girls in between ads for women's body lotion and some nerd trying to become a professional D&D Dungeon Master from his mom's basement.

>>106281847
>legally smoking weed
Spotted your problem. That is is wrecking your serotonin receptors, and it will make you more and more depressed over the years (and lowering your IQ, and increasing your risk of degenerative neurological disorders). Start weaning off while you still can pretend it's innocuous.

>>106281642
god you’re a fag

>>106282100
Look, I quit meth, nicotine, opiates and alcohol. Those were the real issues. Far as I'm aware, marijuana increases neurogenesis and neuroplasiticity (although causes weird connectivity patterns that eventually resolve upon cessation). Probably does lower your IQ while you're on it or for a while after a period of chronic use, but try drinking all day every day the way some people smoke weed and go breandead and die in a fraction of the time. Pretty sure it's done the least damage of any drug I've been addicted to.
I didn't smoke but once or twice a year for several years and currently on my third week of a weed binge. I don't plan to continue once I run out, but there's nothing wrong with weed, man.

>>106282171
>Far as I'm aware, marijuana increases neurogenesis and neuroplasiticity
post sauce

it seems after forty years of home computing, the point of diminishing returns is approaching the limit of novelty with the interface. maybe another twenty years or so until it fades in favor of being directly connected. VR/AR is going to experience a surge before that. after comes mind-machine interface. it won't be mandatory, but the court of public opinion will likely herd the masses towards it.

>>106281561 (OP)
Geminispace, which is very much like Gopherspace
https://geminiprotocol.net/
https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange

>>106284183
Even people who like and use Gemini, admit that it's empty, because they never bother to add useful stuff to it...

>>106282536
I thought this would be as easy as Googling a study and posting it (the way it would be with, say, shrooms). Since it's not (complex issue, apparently), you can Google for the information yourself.
At the very least it doesn't actively kill/damage brain cells, and at least one stidy implies that low-dose use may improve neurogenesis in mice, whereas another shows no effect
>>106284027
>VR/AR is going to experience a surge before that
Nah. That was the logical progression, but AI will be here first and directly link with us faster than we can create VR/AR software that comes anywhere close to being satisfactory.
>>106284183
Cool.
>>106284427
Then the mission is clear.

>>106281561 (OP)
>Thoughts? Ideas?
Move on and touch grass instead of constantly trying to relive comfy times that are gone for good and will never come back.

>>106281642
>miss remember
lol dumbfuck

>>106282032
>there's a secondary more chaotic but still mostly safe section of the Fediverse of free speech absolutists that largely tolerate hentai addicts, edgelords, casual LARPing 4chan racists
And what would it be? If I look at mastodon I can only see inclusive lgbt faggot servers.

>>106281561 (OP)
Despite a lot of us want more independent websites and social platforms but struggle with the reality that it takes time and money to build up a community and features, and despite understanding that I do struggle to give forums or other platforms much time because they don't have those yet, and it's not like the users are teenagers any more that can spend an entire day/night posting there.

Platform wise I'd quite like something that combines the benefits of discord with the freedom of IRC, and while there are modern alternatives they all seem more to be teams clones than a social platform like discord

op you seem to be under the illusion that effort posting rants on forums was the norm. on the contrary it was rare and only seldomly accepted only if it was funny and/or useful.
your rambling is neither and therefore what ever communities you’d like to be a part of are unlikely to accept you.
i can in fact vividly imagine the narcomaniac creak in your voice as you ramble off

>>106288242
>Effort posting rants
What does this even mean? People on forums talked about all kinds of shit, even if it was for a specific hobby. Discussion was organic.

Misc on BB.com was funny as fuck when it was in its primacy.

Game specific forums like project perfect mod and tiberiumweb were good ones.

Facepunch forums had some tons of subforums, you could find one for almost any hobby or interest. Then it got devoured by identity politics and trannys. I don't blame Garry for closing it. But man, you don't know what you got till it's gone.

>>106288304
it means that you’re an insufferable retard and not a desired participant in any interesting online community

>>106281561 (OP)
>Is there anywhere the internet is still good?
nowhere you're posting.

cytube is fun.

>>106281561 (OP)
We're in the dark forest age of the internet. Nothing good can be in the public anymore.
I've been running a Matrix homeserver/community for last 5 years, and I've tried a lot of different moderation styles, but in the end heavy gatekeeping is the only way to keep fun sane people around. All of the good internet is like this now, it's all gated. The second it isn't, it's either filled by /g/-nazis or /g/-trannies, and once you attempt to cleanse your place of such undesirables, you get DDOS'd and doxxed.

>>106288859
>heavy gatekeeping is the only way to keep fun sane people around
I more or less agree with this anon. Which is why I don't agree with the idea behind unified decentralised platforms, where anyone can post anything and nobody can "censor" them out. Small, independent communities, running things they way they want to run them, is what I prefer.

Tor has the potential to host (and has done in the past) some interesting discussion boards. The hard part is finding them and, presumably, maintaining them. In general, the altnet protocols serve as a good way of filtering out normies, so I'd look there.

I'm an 80s born millennial who was lucky enough to be online before Eternal September, so I know the same time periods you're talking about and yes, social media, advertising, phonefaggotry and a number of other issues definitely made things less desirable thanks to a shift in who was using the Internet/web and why. However, all you can do is try to find some things of interest to you and if you're up to it, pass on the spirit of what made the old net great; not old technologies, but the approach and the vision that differed from what would come later. That's a big topic but anyway..

>Fediverse
Overall this is the best option we have for "harm reduction" for those that want the features of modern social media but without the bullshit; federated FOSS projects mostly but not exclusively based on ActivityPub. There are lots of different approaches- https://fediverse.party/ is a good place to learn about the various projects and also has links not just to the projects but places that analyze servers and the like. Mastodon/Pleroma/Misskey are Twitter style microblogging, Friendica / Diaspora are macrosocial Facebook style, Pixelfed is Instagram-like, Lemmy/Kbin are Reddit style, PeerTube is a promising YT alternative, and there's even Fchannel (the usagi fork) that is a federated imageboard still updated. Don't worry too much about CP - its not going to be on clearnet very often and even niche sites are moderated and take down shit when possible. Pic related is outdated but mostly still accurate.

The biggest potential weakness is shitty fucking admins for instances that break the point of federation importing blocklists of instances that are 'problematic/degenerate/tranny/fascist' on tenuous "receipts" of proof thereby affecting their users. However, you can find your own server or servers of interest that don't really do this sort of thing (some of the tools linked from the fediverseparty menu can help with finding them). Out of room

>>106287775
maybe tsundere.love ?

>>106281561 (OP)
Just keep coming here. Things will get better again, maybe moot will reopen the textboards

>>106288859
>>106288975
I disagree with that type of censorship, but that's just me.

>heavy gatekeeping is the only way to keep fun sane people around
>fun sane people
According to whom? Lends itself to self-serving narcissism or Rddit-like elitism: disgusting. Even in off-topic channels I've seen Reddit-coded behavior from the admins.

>>106289189
>However, all you can do is try to find some things of interest to you and if you're up to it, pass on the spirit of what made the old net great
I was going to make a "passionate" thread here in /g/ pointing out how this one important technology is shitty, but the cukflare captcha won't load. Oh well, maybe another time.

>>106281561 (OP)
neocities
It's perfect for faggots like you who pretend to know what it's like to grow up in the 2000s. Just accept things are better now than they ever were and grow the fuck up already.

>>106288242
>>106288332
Dumb as fuck take. It's up to personal preference whether a user likes long-form posts on things vs. short posts. Trying to simplify users to "this is the best and everyone agrees" is idiotic.

>>106281561 (OP)
QuakePlanet mirrors still exist.

>>106290074
>elitism
Not all elitism is reddit. These image boards you're on used to have a strong gatekeeping elitist culture, and they were better for it.
>According to whom?
According to me, ultimately. You'll never get along with everyone, and not everyone will please you and wise-versa. I've tried to quantify or give it some objective criteria, but ultimately it's just down to if I like you or not, on a personal level and if I think you're a positive contribution to the community. I've stopped pretending there's much more than that to it, any actual rules just get in the way of purging undesirables.

>>106290074
You'll have the problem of narcissism almost everywhere. Various general threads on 4chan have attention seeking avatarfags, engaging in circlejerks over each other's individual identities, rather than discussing a topic. There's nothing you can do about it. That's why it's better to seek out or create a narcissism-free zone, wouldn't you agree?

In my case it wouldn't even be about active gatekeeping as much, more of a technological filter. If you're on this .onion, then congrats, you've passed the filter.

>>106281561 (OP)
I didn't have any of these. I had Legos, a palm pilot, and a Gameboy. I don't know why you left out the Gameboy color that was peak 90s.

>>106289189
>Fediverse con't
So yeah, overall a good idea if you want those kind of interactions. There also also alternatives like Nostr scuttlebutt, and theoretically the protocol behind Bluesky is open to federation, but much of the "fediverse' is stuff that's at least friendly with activitypub. There are some distributed/p2p alternatives too but are shitty for discovery thereby shooting oneself in the foot for 'social media' if it requires having to know people out of band

>>106287775
Somewhere around here I have a diagram of some of the communities, but as OP mentioned sadly a lot of the FREEZE PEACH ones are overrun by nazi conspiracy bullshit, crypto scams, blackpilled incel shit etc in an inversion of how the hugbox tranny ones represent the other side of the culture war idpol focus garbage.
>Dumbcord
While organic communities spring up, the problem is a centralized, privacy hostile environment that is insular and shitty for discovery. You see this in some game mods or other projects -t hings that would have had a forum, or a website of their own, or at least some sort of hosted thing are now only on Discord and drama ensues in ways that can be far more likely and harmful to the project than elsewhere. Thus when a server gets nuked for one reason or another, the project and all the content may be hard to find, legitimate "successor" Discords for the project etc. This is a major issue with the younger generation. If you want something comparable, check out the Matrix federated FOSS protocol that supports e2e encryption, and clients like Element are comprehensive and "Discord-like" in terms of features, layout, plus it has stuff like bridges to IRC or other networks.

>Marginalia
A neat project. Yeah, there are some new "web 1.0" style sites out there, the return of neocities etc. Overall nice to see but niche. There can be issues of "web 1.0 aesthetics only" without the conceptual underpinnings and ideals of the era, but that's secondary.

>>106281561 (OP)
The sharty is cool I guess.

>>106288242
My brother in christ at least it existed.

>>106281561 (OP)
The non-social media aspects of the internet still work fine, you know.

>>106287412
Move on to where?

If you live in rural America, or in a crime ridden neighborhood, or poor and can't afford to go out without spending money the internet is the only place left.

>>106281561 (OP)
>Is there anywhere the internet is still good? I'm a lost millennial who remembers when the internet was a joyful place before the corpo social media takeover.
What you are looking for does not require an online conection. You seek the aesthetic and the truth is most of your childhood was not predominately web browsing but desktop browsing. Just download a UI swap and an archive of flash animations/games with some shareware of your choice while watching 240p Cartoon Network shows.

>>106289189
so you were an underaged 12 year old? ES is from 1993

>>106288242
It depends on a lot of things. The topic of the forum, your status as a member of that forum, the average IQ of the community, the emotional maturity of the moderators...

>>106288671
Back in the 8ch-an days, I organized movie watching events for my small niche board. It was indeed fun. Something similar used to happen on 4chan's /x/ too, not sure why they stopped.

>>106281561 (OP)
>but only a few people use it.
That's something you gotta accept if you want to get into "smolnet" stuff like that. There won't be endless content for you to consume while zoning out. It's part of the appeal to me. Touch some grass in between content consumption sessions. Maybe contribute something that comes to your mind yourself.

>>106291637
>SpaceHey
If looking for the MySpace aesthetic and features it seems decent; was never my thing but I can see how some remember it fondly. I can respect them for being donation based, but wonder how long that will continue if they grow

>Gopher/Gemini
Potentially interesting but niche of niche by its text-focused nature and client requirements. Its been ages since I've looked into the latter which is more modern than the ancient gopher. A nice hobby but if you're looking for communities that inspire you like the old days, it may or may not be what you're seeking depending on the scale. I'd consider
>Usenet
as well as something with a higher user density. Likewise
>IRC
Continues to do what it always did and there are long standing communities on many of the primary servers like libera / freenode, rizon, efnet, scutttled etc.. and channels within each. Of course, many have evolved to use Matrix instead either graphically or via CLI clients, especially given that you can bridge to IRC too
>Zeronet, freenet, TOR, i2P, other alternative networks / darkwebs .
There can be a variety of content available, but many of the most prominent stuff will be stuff that is there for a reason. I'd keep away from many of the networks predicated on crypto bullshit as many remind me of movie sets in that the content is often set up to prop up the network and/or site as the next big thing in order to benefit the crypto asset which is the way that monetization is focused upon, one needs to buy usernames or domains using a token, related asset + transaction fee "gas" etc. That aside, things vary immensely here and you may find something you like

>>106292125
Yes, I was lucky to have the Internet when I was around that age group

>>106290109
Captcha is always a pain in the ass. Hope you get to make your post later.. Having a Pass can be worth it, I have one I picked up awhile ago for cheap and I think it has a few more years remaining. .

>>106281561 (OP)
How a out we rebuild the old web somewhere else better?

Shilling this till I get at least 10 clearweb normies on board. Glowies eat ass and die.

Join Hyphanet while you still can. It's been operational for 25 years already.

. Free
. Anonymous
. Encrypted
. Reliable
. Censorship resistant
. Decentralized (no need to run a server in order to host any website or file)

. Works in a completely diffetent way compared to other darknets.

DOWNLOAD: https://www.hyphanet.org/

TUTORIAL: https://navigating-the-darkweb.readthedocs.io/en/latest/chapter4_hyphanet.html

. Hyphanet's replacement for usenet/forums is called FMS.

. Hyphanet's replacement for Twitter/Facebook is called Sone.

. Hyphanet's replacement for e-mail is called Freemail.

. Hyphanet's replacement for websites are called Freesites, and they can't contain scripts (uploaded through JSite).

Also be mindful that good ole' Freenet was recently rebranded to Hyphanet, while the name "Freenet" itself is now being used for a different project unrelated to Hyphanet. So get Hyphanet and don't fall for shitskin glowie sophistry.

>>106281847
>Trannies are fine.
cuck

>>106281561 (OP)
>I'm a lost millennial
you are old, internet is dead. go waste away your days.
t. millenial

>>106293580
retard

>>106281642
You're an absolute retard.

>>106293021
The old internet he longs for wasn't "small", just smaller by today's standards. You could still spend hours jumping from site to site and never reach the end of it. But then again, you talk like a Tiktoker, so you probably don't remember it...

>>106281561 (OP)
>Is there anywhere the internet is still good?
Yeah but you're not invited. Take a guess why.

>>106289189
A good post.

But you missed the reason of the current state of things.

Socials have turned a population of internet users from active users, creating pages, talking and discussing topics and interests in a pletora of brain dead scrollers that crave thumbs up and that can only consume what others create and be toxic.

It's basically internet capitalism.

The only way out is a network of no script, no cookies, no ads, no telemetry.

You read, you discuss, you write, you create. No consoom stuff.

>>106281561 (OP)
In Europe, it's still good
>no shitty ads
>no shitty anti-privacy
>no shitty rightoids content

>>106294287
We wish

>>106291984
While it could be possible that anon just wants the nostalgic feeling of culture, games etc.. from childhood, I don't believe one should be dismissing when anons pointing out the changes, particularly with the coming of the advertising, attention economy, data mining, social media driven Internet has caused difference not simply resultant of no longer coming home from school and jumping on your favorite vidya or site for hours. Hell, just with this imageboard alone the incursion of the (proto-tourists during gamrcc and then actual) election tourists, /pol/ culture war nonsense, was a noteworthy change from the board culture of the previous era. It wasn't just a matter of memes changing or perpetual bitching about who's a "real" oldfag, but the whole structure of who, how, and why changed and it is very obvious to those here before and after.

So it went with the Net and Web. Previous generations for instance valued privacy and anonymity and treated the Internet as a "separate place' from meatspace. Then overnight, because it benefited data miners and advertisers, there was a push to use your real name on everything with the emergence of modern social media.. There are many other examples including pic related which is literally a decade out of date (I also have the one tracking 4chan population around here somewhere in relation to the above conversation ). So I do think Anon could be onto something besides just nostalgia.

>>106294257
Surveillance capitalism is the cause for a lot of this, along with other forms of data mining (more recently AI, but before that the attention economy, advertising and more). After all, social media went with the real name policy and centralized everything in walled gardens because that meant better more accurate data and trends to mine, correlate and sell. Out of room for now though

>>106294723
Good post, but I feel like you're missing another major cause.

>>106294287
>EU
>no shitty anti-privacy
joke, right? https://fightchatcontrol.eu/