Thought July 15th, 2023

Now that the Trust is Over

I long back to an age of the internet I have never fully experienced myself.

I long back to an age where discovery of content was a personal endeavour – a friend that would tell you about this site they found – and provided joy in itself – not being able to wait to share this thing you created or discovered with others.

Although the concept of the blog is alive and well, I hope it becomes one of the main ways people start consuming content again. With the text-based social networks fragmenting and decentralising, this seems like a real possibility. Open protocols like ActivityPub and RSS are having a resurgence, with RSS being known not just for podcast feeds anymore, and major companies starting to support ActivityPub.

We can’t rely anymore on the knowledge available on the public internet being correct or useful. With our news feeds being overloaded with spam and ads and AI generated content, there’s a real desire to go back to personal ways of discovering content.

No Web 3.0 bullshit, but back to a good old 1.1, or maybe a 2.1.

I long back to an age of the internet that is really just about to start, and I’m excited about it.


Also, apparently, Mastodon supports RSS out of the box.