Imagine there is no YT, no Twitter/X, no Facebook, no Netflix, no Amazon, no Apple, no Google to to search the Web, no chatGPT. Imagine there is no TikTok either (even though it’s not US). Just imagine there is no ‘giant’ tech from anywhere owning any app or service that millions if not billions of people are willing to use.
A world without any of those giant (US) tech companies and services that many of us take for granted.
In that world, what would you use the Internet for? How would you use it? And how much time do you think you would spend online, compared to now?
(my own answer in the comments)
Self censorship robbed us all. I loved coming across some random blog of a passionate enthusiast. Sitting at 2am thinking hmm maybe I do need to consider learning how to wire lights on a small boat….no 226 lights is a perfectly fine amount of lights for a 12ft boat. I hope this guy sails past me one day. Those were the days.
These days you just don’t find them. People looking to monetise exploited anything good out of existence…and of course you literally can’t find them due to search engines turning to crap.
And of course those places were more about what you could give rather than what you could take.
100%.
You can still find blogs, thx to… human curation. by trial and error, too. Or by using dedicated search engines that focuses on a more personal Web. I used to use Kagi ‘small Web’ feature that centered searches on small website. Like it a lot? But there are others Thinking about it, it could be worth putting all our solutions and workarounds together.
Kagi is paid yeh?