---
title: The Modern Web Sucks
description: And what can be done about it
publishedDate: 2022-05-18
updatedDate:
    - 2022-05-26
    - 2025-02-22
tags:
    - manifesto
    - favourite
---
<div class="note">
    <div class="note-content">This is a living document. It's likely to change over time!</div>
</div>

The modern web is huge. It's a shame that most of it is kinda rubbish.

Much of the web is dominated by people trying to make money, because *of course* it is. Surfing the modern web without an adblocker is unbearable. So many things vying for your attention, trying to plant themselves into your subconscious, trying to make you do something for someone else's benefit. Even then, after applying an adblocker, you're oft left with machine-generated drivel that's devoid of meaning, commonly is 95% filler and sometimes flat-out wrong.

The real personal expression that's left over can be found on big social media platforms. Be it Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, written word, video, audio, images - whatever; they're all shared on these big, centralised platforms that exist, not to serve the people, but to make (more) money for their owners and shareholders, with a secondary motive of embedding themselves further and further into our lives.[^1] This doesn't create an environment tailored for the well-being of the individual, nor does it create an environment that can foster truly free expression. It creates an environment designed to suck as much out of the individual as possible and to keep content as corporation-friendly as possible.[^2]

Privacy is a fallacy. It doesn't pay to respect people's boundaries, it pays to know as much about as many people as possible and exploit their habits. It's not only data that pays, but other people's time, too. It's not a coincidence that you can get unintentionally sucked into your phone for hours at a time.

Almost all of the web is extremely polished, rounded and impersonal. Most sites lack the imperfect touch of another human. They're sterile and uninteresting. Perhaps that's because it's not a place for humans, any more - it's a place for corporations.

It goes without saying, but I don't like any of this.

# My alternative

**Self-host your own apps.**[^3] It's refreshing to get your data and your stuff back into your own control. It might not be for everyone, but running your own password manager, a knowlegebase, a planner or a media server, self-hosting your own apps keeps your stuff to yourself under your own terms.

**Make a personal website.** Do what you want with it, and go crazy. Don't be constrained by what you can fit into a single image or a handful of lines of text on someone else's property. Fill an entire viewport with what you want. Give it your own flair. A good place to start would be [the Neocities "Learn How to Make Websites" page](https://neocities.org/tutorials).

**Publish your content away from mainstream social media.** Why not put it on your site? You can put whatever you want on there. Maybe somebody will find value in it. I've found plenty in other people's sites.

**Share stuff you create for the good of others.** Open source your designs and code. Try to use the web for making other people's lives better, even if it's in a tiny way. You have the power to reach billions of people.

**Explore.** Stray off the beaten path. You could browse through a webring[^4] or have a play with with [an indie search engine](https://search.marginalia.nu/). You could create a list on your site of [other indie sites that you like](/links), and read other people's lists too.

**Have fun.** Enjoy the unpredictability. Be wonderful to all those you encounter in your travels.

# Footnotes

[^1]: Look no further than [Meta paying TikTok creators](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c897pg2nengo) a pittance to get them to migrate over to Instagram.

[^2]: A lot of the time, this manifests itself as censorship. Stupid stuff like people on TikTok having to say "biseggual" because saying "sex" will get their videos massively down-ranked (essentially censoring LGBTQ+ speech), or YouTube channels being demonetised for talking about prickly topics. [Mia Mulder did a fantastic video on this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZMtzDxYK74), where she was *trying* to talk about drugs and such, but since it's YouTube, she had to replace every mention of drugs or a drug with some kind of drink.

[^3]: Some interesting places to start might be [Grow Your Own Services](https://growyourown.services/) or [Awesome Selfhosted](https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted), the latter of which is a *huge* list of apps you can self-host.

[^4]: A webring is a collection of links to a collection of websites, typically around a certain theme. Each page links to another in the ring. This website is part of a webring, of me and my friends - take a look at the home page to see it in action, or have a look at https://yesterweb.org/webring/ or https://hotlinewebring.club for some much much much bigger examples.
