The majority of technologies that power the internet were developed in the 80s and refined in the 90s. Everything since then is built as a layer of abstraction on top of those core technologies.
Also, the development and evolution of these open technologies relies on human interest and attention, and that attention can be diminished, even starved, by free, closed offerings.
Evil plan step 1: make a free closed alternative and make it better than everything else. Discord for chat, Facebook for forums and chat/email, etc.
Step 2: wait a few years, or a decade or more. The world will largely forget how to use the open alternatives. Instant messengers, forums, chat services, just give them a decade to die out. Privately hosted communities, either move to Facebook, pay for commercial anti-spam support, spend massive volunteer hours, or drown in spam.
Step 3: monetize your now-captive audience. What else are they going to use? Tools and apps from the 2000s?
We are facing a very real possibility of the end of the web browser as we know it. Google owns the chromium engine. Mozilla is on ever more precarious footing. It’s become logistically impossible to build competing products except for tech giant. Even then everybody else gave up and went with chromium.
And Mozilla is largely funded by Google. We all just hope they don’t pull the rug from them but I have no faith that our inept, slow government would stop that from happening before it’s too late.
But nntpd is still out there. Rebuilding Usenet will suck. But it’s not impossible. Start from the net2 sites again.
Old mail RFCs included an instant message channel. I’m sure I saw code in either sendmail or uw-imap for it too.
I like the fediverse, but the old ways are still valid for their particular payload.
The key word is “majority”. I think IPFS will gain more popularity moving forward especially if fascism and censorship continue to rise.
