we need to get these networks to be classified as utilities, and then dont use shitty service providers for your required packet needs

As someone familiar with the OSI model, this thread is a bit confusing since the Internet to me is really the infrastructure on top of which all of your fancy sites and apps are built. When you say “the Internet”, I’m thinking about TCP/IP, BGP, DNS, etc.

That said, I’m pretty sure most people here are just taking about websites at L7, although there are arguments for change at the other layers.

It might be a bit hard to grasp, but…

We’re already on that new internet, baby!

Just don’t use AI to optimize the compression.

It’s wildly unrealistic but also pointless, because nothing stops us from building new services on top of the existing net. See also: Lemmy, Mastodon etc.

Convincing “regular people” to move is the hard part.

I was just reading a couple weeks ago about a smaller web project. Lemme see if I can find it

Edit: here it is, https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/476826/What-is-the-Small-Web

There’s no need for a new internet. Every garbage service has a somewhat viable alternative.

You have peertube instead of youtube Kagi, duckduckgo, marginalia, etc instead of Google search Lemmy instead of reddit Mastodon, polycentric instead of twitter Gitea instead of github Bandcamp instead of spotify There are probably more things but you get the idea. The problem is not the internet itself but that you have to have many people go to objectively less polished or paid services to protect their personal data. I don’t know how that would happen since honestly, the privacy shit doesn’t affect people’s everyday lives, but using different services does affect their lives.

The internet is the result of networks connecting to other networks. If you aim to replace that, then how? Making new networks just expands the internet, making new interconnections just makes it more meshed.

You would have to make networks not connected to the internet but interconnected with each other. That’s expensive and all the economic network effects are against you. You probably won’t have many users connected and not many services either.

But let’s say you did it, what exactly is the benefit of a second internet? Would you be banning some networks from connecting to your mesh? What if one network in your internet connects to the normal Internet anyway? What sort of technologies and services would there be, just the normal ones, then what changes?

Honestly I don’t see the point. A concentration of economic power and influence over web technologies is the issue. The internet works fine, and we make it work every day (my specific corner being research networks in Switzerland). You need to change the producer and consumer behaviour of people and companies using the internet, not the internet itself.

The internet is much larger and diverse than the World Wide Web

At the end of the day you just create websites without trackers. Plenty of sites like it exist.

There’s simply not enough demand for it. The majority of people simply don’t care.

BBSes are making a comeback. This time over telnet. They’re just as great as they used to be.

I think what’s more realistic to happen is that internet will be split into two and after certain websites and services become unuseable to people who care about privacy and such, then new alternatives will just emerge along the more popular ones. Kinda like Lemmy.

Try Firefox or Brave with Ublock origin and SkipRedirect and use Brave browser or maybe 4get.ca. On Android use Brave or Mull (hardened Firefox). Be sure to not use AMP links so as not to support Googles attempt to centralize the web.

We did kinda create a new Internet… the tor is pretty amazing if not pretty fighting at the same time.

The internet hasn’t changed and is still the same Internet from the 90s. We’re all still using TCP/IP to communicate. A networked device using this protocol from 1993 would have no issue connecting to a network from 2023 (media conversion and bridging of the physical layer might be needed, but the point remains).

The problem is that everyone decided to congregate around the same four websites and the same web browser. You can, you know, stop using them anytime and seek alternatives RIGHT NOW that still exist. You’re here already, so that’s a start.