INTERNET alternatives??
Far-fetched question, I know... But is anyone working on an alternative to the internet itself? It's not safe on any website anymore. Everything is tracked by somebody. I wish there was an alternative that's owned by the people and not the corporations...
There's the Gemini protocol (not the LLM), Gopher, Usenet, Hyphanet, Reticulum, and a new project called Alternet (https://github.com/ravendevteam/alternet). Some of these, like Gopher, have been around for basically as long as the Internet. But they are so tiny and obscure compared to the Internet. Still super cool to explore and keep an eye on.
Gopher and Usenet are also part of the Internet that were pushed aside by the web. But are still part of the Internet. Hyphanet is new, but relies on the Internet infrastructure. Alternet is the same.... they're like running Tor or I2P.
The only true alternative you mentioned is Reticulum.
edit: grammar
Aah, yes. Usenet. I remember that. Alt this, alt.that. Those were the days...
That's true! I was thinking of it more colloquially though. I don't think the OP was asking so much about literal hardware protocols, I took it more in the sense "how do I find parts of the Internet and other information systems that are under direct corporate control, deeply enshittified, and full of surveillance capitalism?" Which, now that I think about it, there's also stuff like Neocities, Kagi's Small Web, and the revival of static web pages and web rings that satisfy that desire.
Otherwise, yes, for true alternatives, you're looking at like Reticulum, or maybe building something slightly Internetish on top of Meshtastic or something wild like that.
Quote from The Zen of Reticulum:
“Zero-Trust Architectures
We must unlearn our reliance on Institutional Trust.
For decades, we have been trained to trust authorities. We trust a website because a chain of Certificate Authorities (companies we don't know) vouches for it. We trust an app because it is in an app store (run by a corporation we don't control). We trust a message because it comes from a phone number assigned by a telecom. Yet, everything in our digital information sphere today is more untrustworthy and risky than a medieval second-hand underwear market.
Reticulum replaces institutional trust with Cryptographic Proof.”
Lol and based. This is new to me and interesting; curious: why don't more people use it?
I've been thinking about a "post-internet era" lately as well, simply for the time suck and exploitative nature that we have ultimately seen morph from it's original creation. I'm looking at scraping all of my contacts from social media and just being more deliberate about maintaining relationships and exploring interests and making more in person human connections. If relationships don't last, then that seems like a reasonable way to spend more time doing more meaningful things.
A year ago I deleted all my social media outside of Reddit (and only use this from time to time), and I havent looked back. There are somethings I miss but ultimately it feels great to have 4 or 5 less reasons to pick up my phone and lose myself in it.
I highly recommend if you’re already thinking about it
Done and done. Been about a year and miss a few things but I hated social media anyway.
I’ve heard the postal service has pretty good infrastructure
Hahaha, no.
Unless you use encrypted letters this is a big no.
I was using AES to encrypt all my letters, but it got kind of time consuming to do all the bit operations by hand then write down the resulting string. Lately I’ve been wondering if there’s a way to do this on a computer since it would be much faster. I think there’s money to be made there
IPFS, Hypercore (Formerly DAT), Peerweb, Gopher, Gemini, Nightfall Express (nex), Spartan... All of these technologies are focused around either decentralization of Hypertext Transfer Protocol content (like IPFS, Hypercore, and Peerweb), reviving older protocols abandoned in the shift to HTTP (Gopher), or creating new protocols that are simple to set up and run (Gemini, nex, Spartan).
I don't know about all but Gopher, Gemini are over internet, even FiDO is over internet these days
Yes, i am. Big mesh network, lots of data hoarding on a local server, lots of security.
I'm also working on a VERY simple homemade social media network, starting first with just messaging, that is never exposed to the internet. Just local.
I have a bunch of mini pcs and laptops that im learning to manage and assign user accounts so anyone can use any machine. I also have 10-15 cheap modern android phones that I'm hoping i can set up for the same local messaging. Hoping that if shit really hits the fan, we can still do some stuff.
I have a big house in the woods and it looks like a bunch of family will move in with me depending on how the US handles it's business in the near future.
I have tons of music, movies, tv shows, radio, etc. All of Wikipedia and a bunch of other informative databases. Backups of NHS papers and various science journals.
I'm also learning to host and train my own LLMs and am purposefully disconnecting them from the internet to see what all i can do with it with lots of different hardware, from slow phones to an enterprise computer.
Freenet is looking interesting, we will see
on a quick 2 minutes look at the site, that seems like a messaging service, that runs OVER THE INTERNET
Yes, the IPFS (InterPlanetary FileSystem)
Have a look at Meshcore and Meshtastic (whichever is the most popular in your area.)
For messaging there is a bitchat running on mesh networks.
The internet itself is just the protocol, i.e. IP, TCP, Gopher, HTTP, Usenet, SMTP, FTP, IRC, etc.
The various servers behind it that keep the whole thing running belong to different organizations, governments, private individuals, fans, developers, students, NGOs, and so on. What these people do with the infrastructure is another matter entirely. In itself, the Internet is (mainly) free and anyone can do whatever they want, as long as they obey the law. The fact that large companies have now hijacked the infrastructure and are “abusing” it to spy on users is just unfortunate.
But it doesn't prevent anyone from putting their own projects on the Internet without the unpleasant stuff, the tracking, the spying, or dubious methods. Be it well-maintained lists that link to “nice” websites (similar to the moderated search directories of the past), classic old webrings (who still remembers those?), or alternative DNS systems or something completly new stuff?
The technology is there, so who will make use of it? It's up to each and every one of us. But it's not easy.
Yes, no, sort of, not really, eh... The alternatives I can think of are more so for hobbyists, nothing completely detached from the internet exists that is also plug-and-play.
The "dark web" exists if you're willing to learn your way around tor. Contrary to popular belief it's not just hitmen and drugs on there but you will also accept the risk by using it that you might run into something unsavory.
You have the fediverse which people already talk about on here, it's still on this internet but the platforms are de-centralized.
Some stand alone devices exist which effectively form a peer to peer network for messaging. They're geared towards "preppers" and anybody who's generally anti-establishment. Peer to peer connectivity as a technology exists, obviously. It's not nearly as fleshed out as the internet but it's by its very nature owned by the people.
You also have a bunch of snake oil salesmen piggybacking off this kind of frustration. "New internet without trackers!" "New internet but you get paid for your data!!" type things crop up every now and then, and fall flat.
Meshtastic or other similar radio based network
Reticulum, and possibly nomadnet.
you mean books? like the library? the library was what we had before the internet.
there's a tragic lack of gay fanfic there, tho
If you mean alternative to modern social media, the kids are making websites on Neocities. They're doing some really cool stuff, go check out a few webrings
We tend to forget about the “original” text system called radio, in particular, ham radio. It requires an FTC license, which is easy to obtain and there are endless possibilities with it, including something called MESHtastic. Those younger in the group should check it out and get involved! If you are a techie person or interested at all in electronics, you will eat it up.
N.A.T.U.R.E
F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
R.E.L.A.T.I.O.N.S.H.I.P.S.
F.A.M.I.L.Y
Are all Internet alternatives...
Just saying
Usenet? IPFS, as mentioned by another commenter, sounds very interesting, haven't heard of that.
The library?
LoRa?
Been hearing touching grass is back in these days
Get yourself a library card.
Tor
Kagi Small Web
https://github.com/ravendevteam/alternet
Peer Mesh.
But I think the real answer here is to learn technological skills. Internet infrastructure is not entirely owned by corporations. Corporations are often highly motivated to make doing things on the internet easy for the layperson, because using a corporation's tools gives them access to an individual's money and data. Being easy to use means being widely used, and there is power in being widely used and relied on. The community projects and federated systems-- all of the non-tracking, non-profit things-- tend to require research, technical know-how, or both.