The Internet Is Quickly Dying. Here Are The Best Solutions I’ve Got

It’s 2026, the age of AI and pervasive social media. Algorithms pump endless iterations of the same content, increasingly created with little to no human intervention, let alone talent or insight, to the top of all of our feeds. What was once an eclectic mix of human wit, whimsy and accumulated knowledge has boiled down to AI-generated memes, videos meant to hold attention instead of convey information and, worst of all, a well-oiled architecture to keep more of the slop coming. Enshittification has entered the popular lexicon. Somewhere, deep in the back of their minds, netizens all around the world wonder why the online space doesn’t feel fun, exciting or informative anymore, even though the technology behind it has, theoretically, only gotten better.

This isn’t how it used to be. In its golden age, the internet was populated by millions of people sharing their passions and knowledge freely, often on questionably functional forums and simple web pages that a reasonably well-educated fourth grader could probably cobble together in about 30 minutes today. Back then, optics, perfection and analytics weren’t the point, nor was optimizing content for monetization. In fact, many of the best websites of the old internet had no monetization strategy at all. They existed for the pure and simple reason that their creators thought they had something to say and considered that someone, somewhere, might just want to hear it.

As the internet increasingly drowns in AI slop and other forms of low-effort, low-value content, I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to the roots of the problem and a few possible solutions that might preserve some of the online space’s quality against a rising wave of absolute mediocrity. Today, I’d like to share some of those thoughts with the few people who occasionally see my little corner of the internet and see if maybe some of the solutions I’ve been thinking about can influence at least a few people to do their part to fight encroaching enshittification.

First, Why the Hell Should You Listen to Someone From the Cigar Industry About This?

I’m the first to admit, this is a deeply weird topic to find posted on a cigar website. If you’re reading this, I can only assume you arrived here by accident (though I’m certainly glad you’re here) or just enjoy the cigar reviews that get posted here enough to browse around the site a bit (again, thank you for being here). So, why do I think this is something I have any grounds to talk about?

Put simply, the premium tobacco world I’ve worked in professionally and enjoyed so much personally continues to exist, to a very large extent, by successfully preserving anachronisms. Most of the world has moved on from cigars and pipes, just as it has moved on from physical newspapers, three universal broadcast stations on the television and so many other things that seemed like everyday parts of life not so very long ago. The premium tobacco industry, however, has hung on through a combination of sheer stubbornness and the hard work of a community of deeply talented and passionate people who refuse to let the modern age sweep it away completely. I think this industry might provide a model for preserving useful and enjoyable things past the point that most people are willing to forget about them, and I believe that model might just be applicable to keeping something of the spirit of the old internet alive.

I’m also fortunate enough to have had the somewhat unique perspective of being among the youngest people in the United States to experience, to some degree, the pre- and post-internet worlds. The internet existed when I was a young child, but living in a flyover part of the country and growing up in a working-class household, it wasn’t something I dealt with much until I got a bit older. My younger childhood, as nearly as I can remember, was essentially experienced with only very limited awareness of personal computers as anything but the things you put discs in to play games (Oregon Trail II, anyone?) and virtually no working concept of the internet. I remember what made the internet great in its heyday as I gradually started to get online a bit later, but I also rode the wave of progress that took it to where it is today as both it and I matured. I’m not suggesting this gives me any special insights, but I might have a viewpoint from somewhere right in the middle of the pre-internet, old internet and modern internet eras that not too many people have experienced firsthand.

Do I have all the answers? Absolutely not. But I think I might have a few ideas, and maybe that’s enough to make this all worth writing. With that said, let’s get straight to my eight best suggestions for building a levy against AI slop, stemming the tide of lazy content and, perhaps, creating a few corners of the online world dedicated to something other than incessant brainrot.

1) Preserve What’s Already Out There

The first step to keeping complete enshittification from engulfing the internet is probably the easiest to figure out: preserve the good resources that already exist as best we can. This can look like a number of different things, depending on your skills, resources and available time. For most of us, the simplest methods probably look like funding other people’s projects that keep good online resources up and running. Donations to Wikipedia or the Internet Archive are great starting points, as these are two of the most important repositories of online information that have survived in spite of the changes that have overtaken many smaller webpages.

On smaller sites, you might see links to Patreon or PayPal, allowing visitors to donate a few dollars to help the site’s owner maintain it. If your financial situation allows, consider helping out people who share their knowledge or their talents with the world without actively charging for it. This kind of donation-based economy helps incentivize creators to keep doing what they do best, and it allows you as a consumer to support people whose work you genuinely enjoy. It also disincentivizes the opportunists who just want to sell a course, bombard you with affiliate offers or charge you for some kind of “coaching,” since this model relies on value being provided freely upfront, with any monetary considerations provided after the fact. This works out well for the people who genuinely provide tons of value for the love of what they do, but hacks who are just looking to make a quick dollar will find it completely uneconomical to put forth the large amounts of time and effort required to see even a modest income from reader or viewer donations.

For a more passive approach, consider turning off ad-blockers, as a LOT of small websites rely on the trickle of ad revenues they can generate to offset the cost and effort required for their webmasters to keep them up and running. Ads are, it must be acknowledged, somewhat controversial among people pushing for a more independent internet, since they often come with cookies and are served by large third-party providers, usually Google. With that said, I think we have to acknowledge the reality that many people are going to need some kind of revenue stream to offset the costs of running their sites, particularly if those sites are going to last for years or decades. This isn’t an unreasonable expectation, in my opinion, and I think most of us can probably stomach a few ads if we know that we’re supporting independent website creators by doing so.

For those of you with more technical skills (I assure you, I am NOT among this group), consider lending your time and talents to open-source projects, maintaining websites that have long since outlived the tools they were built with or helping other people learn the skills you have that are essential to keeping these things alive. I’ve noticed that many technically-inclined people already have a passion for preserving the parts of the old internet that hold some form of nostalgia for them, and this is a damn good thing for all of us. Putting things in the cigar industry context, you guys are the farmers and factory workers high up in the supply chain that make everything else downstream possible. Passing the knowledge you have on and keeping it at work is crucial to keeping something resembling an open internet alive. That brings me to my next suggestion for those of you in this category, which is to not only keep using your skills to preserve the parts of the internet you love but also to teach other people how to do the same. The less rare and less expensive we can make the technical skills required to keep remaining parts of the old internet alive, the more likely it is that we’ll be able to preserve as much of web 1.0 as can still be saved.

Contributing to online resources in non-technical ways is also a viable method to help them stay afloat. Small sites without the ability to pay large teams are always looking for content contributors, volunteer moderators and other skilled people who want to help. Even if you aren’t “officially” contributing, participating in independent community forums that may be seeing their user base dwindle instead of giving up and switching to Reddit is a great way to keep one of the defining features of the early internet alive. Even something as simple as leaving a meaningful comment on an older blog post may help that post reach a higher search ranking by showing signals of fresh activity, thus rescuing it from the dreaded pile of Google results buried further down in the search rankings that no one ever finds anymore.

If nothing else on this list is within your means, start with this: Consciously choose to visit independent, high-quality sites so that the people running them know someone still cares. Stop having AI summarize everything or skimming through the website preview you see on Google. Click through, spend a few minutes on a website and see what else is there beside the specific piece of information you’re looking for. Then, visit an old video on YouTube that has been providing good, solid information for the last 15 years. Perhaps drop by a forum and actually read the responses that real people have put real time and effort into.

This isn’t just about informational resources, either. The old internet was full of vibrant entertainment. Remember that old browser-based game you played for a while in high school? It might still exist, kept alive by a few die-hard players and a creator who doesn’t want it to vanish forever. Look it up, join in and play a bit, and maybe while you’re there put a post on the site’s forum telling everyone how glad you are to see that it’s still there and how much you enjoyed playing again. Share some memories, catch up and maybe *gasp* connect with other real humans over the internet, just like it’s 2006 instead of 2026. Remember some other sites or platforms you used to enjoy at various points in your life? Go back and connect with those, too. A lot of them will already be gone, but not all of them. And when you find the few that are, maybe ask if there’s anything you can do to keep them from joining the ones that didn’t make it.

Showing the creators behind independent web projects that there’s still a market for them is probably the best way to keep them around. It’s easy to finally decide not to renew your hosting one year if no one has come to your site since George Bush was in office. It’s also easy to become convinced that you’re wasting your time and talking to no one, allowing your site to keep drifting on in the ether but never adding anything new to it. One by one, this is how almost 40 percent of the webpages that existed in the year 2013 have slowly gone to the internet’s graveyard. Clearly, the first step in combating that trend is convincing the ones that have stuck around that they’re doing so for a reason and making it possible for them to continue.

2) Start an Online Project (Yes, Even if it Sucks)

Okay, maybe we’ve made some small progress toward keeping whatever’s left of the web’s old charm, informational depth and pure quirkiness alive. The next logical step is to expand on that by creating an entire generation of new projects that adhere to that spirit. If there’s to be a viable alternative to what the modern internet is rapidly becoming, we can’t just rely on the handful of nostalgia sites that have managed to survive the last 20+ years. Instead, new entrants have to come in to fill the gaps and ensure that the more independent parts of the web remain living elements of the online landscape instead of digital museum displays of times gone by.

My model for this is the cigar boom of the 1990s, which essentially laid the foundations for the entire industry as it exists today. During that boom, cigars came back into vogue, the consumer base expanded enormously and, most importantly, a plethora of new brands and new product lines came into existence. If a similar trend can be triggered in the online world, it’s just possible that a new wave of independent websites and other projects could flourish and present a serious alternative web experience to the giant social media platforms for those who want it again. Booms have a tendency to take on a life of their own, and if a large enough number of people can be convinced to get involved in the independent web, that part of the internet really could make a meaningful comeback.

Now, I know that not everyone has the time, resources or inclination to run an online passion project. Website hosting is expensive, and keeping a page updated and active requires a great deal of time (look at the website you’re currently on as a great example of someone who doesn’t post things nearly often enough). That’s okay. We don’t need everyone to do it; we need some people to do it. But if there’s an idea for a website, or a game, or a tool, or just about anything that’s been rattling around in your head for a while, maybe this is the perfect time to make it happen.

Here’s the great thing: it’s completely okay if your web project isn’t that great, or even if it outright sucks, especially in the beginning. This is something we can really learn from the early internet, when people were putting things out there without caring about perfection. Improvements could always be made later, and information was the focus. Starting something is much more important than having it be perfect right off the bat, and you’ll be amazed at the sense of accomplishment that comes with it, even with all of its flaws and foibles.

It’s also okay for your project to be great, but to have extremely limited appeal that may never go beyond a tiny group of like-minded enthusiasts. One of the great downfalls of the modern internet is chasing audience size, rather than creators doing what they really want to do. You might be passionate about something so niche that you’ve never actually encountered another person in real life who cares or even knows about it. But that’s what makes the internet such an amazing place: someone out there is just as interested in that thing as you, and would absolutely love to talk to you about it! Even better, other people who don’t know they’re interested in it might stumble on your website and suddenly discover how interesting it really is.

Here’s a true story to illustrate my point: Sometime during the COVID-19 pandemic, I stumbled across an entire website dedicated to a type of extremely outdated camera that today is used principally in Afghanistan and certain parts of Pakistan (link, for those curious: http://www.afghanboxcamera.com/). The site’s authors had been studying this type of camera and its use for years, had collected tons of pictures taken with them and even had complete DIY instructions for building your own. I have absolutely no recollection of how I found this site, but the sheer level of dedication that went into such a hyper-niche subject has ensured I never forgot the site or where to find it again in the years since. Taking something utterly obscure like this that truly fascinates you and bringing it to other people really is the heart of what the internet used to be about, and it’s what I hope to convince other people to help preserve and bring back by writing this.

One of the things I’d seriously encourage anyone who has managed to make it this far to check out is the growing movement to revitalize the more decentralized nature of the early internet. IndieWeb has some great resources for those interested in starting independent websites, especially small personal sites akin to the kind that proliferated widely before the advent of social media. You may also want to look into Neocities, a modern tribute to Yahoo’s old Geocities platform that has a ton of the old internet charm that’s missing from so many sites today. Blogger is another viable free option, though it is owned by Google. For those who are interested in bigger projects or more professional hosting, I’ve had a great experience with Bluehost, which makes it easy to set up a WordPress site on your own domain with very little tech know-how, though I will freely admit that the annual cost is a little high for a site like mine that doesn’t have a commercial purpose or any kind of revenue stream. Tons of other options exist, and if I do get a little traction with this post, perhaps I’ll spend some time compiling more links and adding them or posting them separately (let me know in the comments if this is something you’d be interested in).

3) Use and Support Open-Source Tools and Alternative Platforms

One of the biggest hurdles I see to reviving some of what the internet once was is the fact that a massive web of competing platforms has given way to a handful of powerful ones that are used by practically everyone. This makes the online experience homogeneous and creates a few massive sites that people are reluctant to step away from because their social networks and large portions of their digital lives effectively live on those sites.

The good news is that alternatives to these platforms still exist; they just tend to be much less visible and used by fewer people. And yes, there are real problems that come along with that fact that you have to learn to live with. Alternative social sites suffer tremendously from the chicken-and-egg problem that most people won’t sign up to a social platform that none of their friends use (remember, someone has to be the first!). Content sites have it a bit easier, but it’s still a fact that fewer creators means less content. However, we’re trying to fix things here, so allow me to suggest that it might be worth trying some of these alternative platforms, at least as a partial alternative to your regular social media. By maintaining a presence on an alternative platform, you create an entry point for other friends to join and make the platform, as a whole, a bit more appealing.

Alternative Social Media Sites:

*Note: I have not tried all of these, I’m just supplying links for information and so that you can see what’s out there. Also, some of these alternatives are widely thought to skew one direction or the other politically. That’s beyond the scope of this article, and I don’t think we need to get into political discussions here because I genuinely want as many people as possible to start thinking about and approaching the internet in a different way. Suffice it to say, if you don’t like the feel of a certain alternative platform, then just don’t use it.

• Bluesky (Highly successful Twitter/X alternative, probably the alternative social network that’s come closest to being “mainstream”)
• Minds (Privacy/free speech focused Facebook-esque alternative site, decentralized)
• Pixelfed (Instagram alternative, part of a larger group of interconnected social networks known as the Fediverse)
• SpaceHey (Essentially a clone of classic MySpace, currently invite-only or you can put yourself on a waitlist)
• Mastodon (another Twitter/X alternative, also part of the Fediverse)
• Loops (TikTok alternative)
• Lemmy (Reddit alternative, also part of the Fediverse)

Aside from these alternative social networking sites, there are also alternatives to more content-driven social platforms such as YouTube. In the case of YouTube, two of the contenders are Dailymotion (a long-lived video hosting site that still feels a lot like old-school YouTube) and Odysee (a younger site, but still a very good experience). I won’t go into every alternative to every major site, but let’s just say that if you want an alternative to just about any online platform, there’s probably at least one out there you’ll enjoy.

This brings me to open-source tools, which provide legitimate alternatives to the software products made by the biggest tech businesses. These tools don’t directly tie into building a larger and more robust independent web, but they often provide free alternatives to expensive software tools that can act as roadblocks to people creating what they want to on the internet. From free photo and video editing software to free office tools, there are literally thousands of projects out there that can give you the software you need without the need to purchase licenses or pay endless subscription charges. As a practical example of what these tools can do, the pictures of cigars I post on this site are edited with an open-source tool called Darktable, which saves me a ton of money I’d otherwise have to spend on expensive photo workflow software each year.

This really should go without saying, but absolutely none of this is free to the people who run alternative sites or create open-source software tools. Many open-source software projects have some kind of donation option that lets users say “thanks”. If there’s a tool or platform you find that you really like and you’re financially able to do so, contributing some money is the single best way to make sure the projects you like continue to exist. One of the biggest challenges of offering something for free on the internet is the fact that people will use it and forget that it costs you time, money and effort. Many great projects have died or been abandoned because of this, so consider supporting the projects that give you value without charging for it.

4) Rethink How You Engage With the Internet

When you think about how the internet has evolved, it isn’t just the platforms or technologies themselves that have changed, but the basic ways in which most of us use the internet. Earlier on, the internet was, in effect, a destination, a place you went during specific times and for specific purposes. While aimless browsing has always been a component of the internet experience, it wasn’t the core focus. Moreover, you still had to make some kind of decision about just what to browse for. These days, that decision is usually made for you by an algorithm, and features like infinite scroll have eliminated any kind of natural stopping point that might normally end an online session. The result? An endless stream of content you didn’t pick, delivered to you without you having to look for it. And we wonder why low-quality content thrives in this ecosystem.

Here’s the thing: I think that round-the-clock access has cheapened, rather than improved, the internet. Back when we treated the internet as a place we went to and then left, the time spent there mattered, and so did how we spent it. Today, most people carry the internet in their pockets everywhere they go. The average person today spends over six hours a day online, but the quality of the online experience has, it seems, gone nowhere but downhill. It may be time to rethink that formula by spending less time on the internet and being more discriminating in terms of how we use the time we do spend online.

I’m certainly not suggesting that you go sign up for dial-up internet, switch back to Windows ’98 and throw your smartphone in the nearest trash receptacle. Certain compromises, of course, have to be made. But I am suggesting that starting to treat online time more like an experience again, instead of a constant part of everyday life, might help some people to de-prioritize non-stop social media scrolling and instead spend time on the parts of the internet they genuinely enjoy. Generally speaking, the cheaper and more available something is, the less we enjoy it. You don’t savor a fast-food burger in the same way that you savor a meal at the nice restaurant that you only treat yourself to on special occasions. You don’t give the same thought to a cheap bundle cigar that you give to a rare, limited edition release from your favorite premium manufacturer. And you don’t worry as much about giving the minutes of your life away to low-quality content when you’re going to spend hours online throughout the day anyway.

One of the most important realizations here is that, whether it seems like it or not, your time and attention have value. Believe me, even if you don’t think in those terms, the large internet platforms that make a huge business out of putting ads in front of you have a very, very specific idea of what your attention is worth to them. So do the creators who are incentivized to maximize the amount of time you spend engaging with their content to increase their own slice of the ad revenue pie. Start valuing your time and attention the way they do, and you’ll soon find yourself wondering why the hell you’re spending that valuable resource watching the latest in a string of never-ending rage bait shorts.

5) Scale a Better Version of the Web Without Making the Mistakes of Large Tech Companies

This might actually be the single hardest thing to navigate. Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Google, Instagram, etc. didn’t start out the way they are today. They got there slowly, one decision at a time, and most of them actually contributed more than their fair share to the quality of the internet at one time or another. The fact that they’re still a deeply important part of the internet is self-evident in the sense that any discussion of reinvigorating the independent web, mine included, has to have answers for how to replace them. As it turns out, nobody actually wants to do without them, even with all of the problems we all know to come with them.

This leaves the open question of what’s stopping any small, independent web project from making the same mistakes the last generation of web platforms did as they grew. Any sufficiently successful project will, eventually, probably have to make some amount of money to sustain itself. It’s also not unreasonable for a person who founds a highly successful website or other project to want to get paid for his or her hard work, especially as the amount of work increases with the scale of the project. The donation economy model I discussed above is probably the most ideal solution here, but it doesn’t necessarily work in all cases. It’s also highly unpredictable, which presents serious issues for someone who might be thinking about quitting a steady job to focus on an online project on a full-time basis.

The question of how to keep standards high is even trickier on platforms that feature user contributions that are out of the webmaster’s control. Odysee, for instance, is a pretty good alternative to YouTube, but you’ll still see annoying things like AI thumbnails and clickbait titles there frequently. This is the kind of minor problem that’s perfectly acceptable at small scale, but it doesn’t take much for slop content to once again take over. By their very nature, low-quality and especially AI content take a fraction of the time to produce that better content does. In the time it has taken me to write this article, an AI creator working with the right tools and enough tokens could probably have produced weeks, if not months, worth of content. I have one extremely long article that 10 people might read, and that person has enough material to blast across multiple platforms. The economics of this situation suggest that, left entirely unchecked and circulating alongside each other, low-quality content will always be able to drown out high-quality content through sheer scale. It’s essentially Gresham’s Law, just for the internet.

So, is there a solution that both keeps website owners’ interest aligned with their users and cuts down on the incentive to flood platforms with poor content? Here, I think a fairly straightforward solution exists, albeit one the internet hasn’t historically liked very much: some form of paid access to premium content on independent sites. I know that this seems to go against the spirit of the free and independent web that I’ve spent all this time talking about, but hear me out before you grab your pitchfork. The key reason that the internet has turned into essentially a network for tracking users and serving ads is that the platforms were originally built on the assumption that they had to be free forever, no matter how much they scaled up. That assumption, however well-intentioned it may have been early on, has proven disastrous for everyone in the long run. To fix that, I think we need to acknowledge the reality that sites that grow beyond a certain point need to make money and then tether that to user satisfaction, rather than the amount of ad revenues sites can generate by holding their users’ attention.

To illustrate the point I’m making, let me pull in a real-world example. Meta, the parent company behind Facebook and Instagram, averaged about $57 in revenue per user last year, with the overwhelming majority of that being from ad revenue. In other words, $57 is the hypothetical price at which you could pay to use the platform and not see a single ad without cutting into Meta’s revenues at all. Without the need to serve ads, Facebook and Instagram could also retool their algorithms to prioritize content quality, rather than pure engagement. I don’t know about you, but given the option, I think I would pay $57 for that vastly superior experience.

Applying this concept to an independent website, a viable model might look something like this: basic access to features and most content for everyone without charge, but special features, certain pieces of content and perhaps a few other small perks available only to subscribers who pay a modest monthly or yearly fee. Realistically, for many sites, that fee could be very low if all it had to do was cover the operating expenses. This also preserves the virtues of the donation model, since users would have to be convinced by the quality of the site’s free content in order to decide to upgrade, putting most of the value still out in front of the paywall for everyone to enjoy. A subscriber model like this also gives a site owner a more predictable estimate or what he of she will make in a year, making it more feasible to make financial decisions that may involve the revenues and expenses associated with the site.

Of course, I’ll freely admit that this is one solution to an enormously complex problem. What’s most important, though, is that the next generation of independent websites be able to sustain themselves without allowing their quality to deteriorate. And some projects, of course, should simply remain free as long as they are able to do so. It’s pretty hard for me to picture monetizing Cigarchive, which I really do see as my little corner of the old internet. Fortunately, I don’t think it will ever reach such a scale that I’ll be forced to make that choice. Many sites, however, will, and I think it’s important that the owners of those sites have some options for covering their costs, compensating themselves for their time and ensuring they can keep going, all without compromising what made their sites great.

6) Avoid Gatekeeping Behavior if You Want ANY of This to Work

Okay, let’s address one of the few negatives that can come with some parts (certainly not all) of the more independent parts of the web: gatekeeping. This can take many different forms, but I’ll give a couple of examples here to give you some sense of what I mean.

Let’s go back to that old browser-based game you used to love that I brought up earlier. As an old veteran returning to the platform after many years, you’ll likely be welcomed back with open arms and a few fun stories from the old days. Here’s the question: Will the new person with a legitimate interest in an independent game and the nostalgia factor it provides be received the same way? Is that person going to be seen as a positive addition to the player base, or just a Johnny-come-lately who, by dint of not playing when the game was in its heyday, is somehow not a “real” player? If the answer is the latter, we can abandon the entire enterprise right now. Things can’t be kept alive indefinitely if no one new is allowed to participate. Even the most exclusive club must, from time to time, admit new members.

Highly technical or deeply niche-specific online communities can suffer from a different form of gatekeeping, namely the paradoxical idea that a person looking to learn about a topic must, before participating in the conversations that would allow him or her to learn, demonstrate a certain level of established knowledge. Look no further than various forums where people asking legitimate questions that are of an introductory nature will be told something along the lines of “This is already answered elsewhere, so don’t ask us to answer it again” or “You shouldn’t be posting here if you don’t even know that much.” People will forever mock the concept of the entry-level job listing that demands five or more years of work experience, and a similar level of mockery should, in all fairness, be applied to this manner of thinking.

This is another area where I think we can learn a lot from trends in the cigar industry, which once suffered from being perceived (whether fairly or not) as intentionally exclusive. Cigars, the thinking once went, were only for older men with very high incomes and, preferably, positions of high social status. Over time, the industry has benefited in direct proportion to its ability to get away from that perception due to the expansion of its consumer base. Today, people who would have been intimidated by walking into a cigar shop or lounge as recently as 10-15 years ago are discovering that cigars actually are for them, and the establishments are capturing customers they would have missed out on in earlier times. The same, I suspect, will largely hold true in fostering the preservation and growth of the independent web. The more people are under the impression that they can participate, the more people will end up actually participating.

7) Leverage the Modern Internet’s Tools for All They’re Worth

Wait, what? Haven’t I just spent an outrageous amount of time excoriating what the internet has become and encouraging you to run away from it as fast as you can? No, not necessarily. The truth is, there’s huge value in the ability of the large platforms to spread information and reach new people. These platforms are tools, and just like any tool, the end results all depend on how you choose to use them. If the goal is to foster a higher-quality internet, they can be used for that just as easily as they can be used to push complete garbage.

Here’s a practical example: You’re one of those all-important people with the tech skills that are essential to building and maintaining websites. Maybe you’re interested in starting to share that information with others, allowing them to start their own online projects with a better set of technological tools at their disposal. You have your own website, sure, but you can share that information more widely and empower more people by also putting some of your expertise out in the form of YouTube tutorials. Congratulations, you’ve just used the tools of big tech to help preserve the independent part of the web. (Just don’t forget to put the videos on Dailymotion, too!)

The bigger platforms are also great places to network with like-minded people. Facebook groups, in particular, can still have a lot of the niched-down, often humorous character of the old internet alive within them. Finding the right groups and sharing your website or other project (if permitted by the group rules, of course) is a great way to establish an initial audience and show people the thing you’ve poured tons of time and effort into. The trick, of course, is to use them in that way, rather than treating them as your platform. Your website is, well, yours. Put your effort into that, then use larger platforms to introduce people to it, rather than putting all of your blood, sweat and tears into making content for platforms you don’t own.

Now, to get to the part I know is going to be a hot-button debate: AI. My particular rule is never to use it for writing and to use it only very sparingly for other purposes (none of which are related to this website). However, I won’t pretend that it can’t be a useful tool for someone wanting to start an independent web project, and so I don’t think it should be ruled out entirely. AI can help with things like web design that you simply don’t know how to do, or you might use it to edit your blog posts if you aren’t a particularly confident writer. There are plenty of legitimate uses for AI, but I think the common thread is that the creative ideas should be yours, and AI should be, at most, an incidental tool that you use to bring them to fruition. Some people will disagree and say that AI has no place at all in reviving a more independent web because it was heavily trained on data scraped from the web and used without permission, while others will say I’m being too restrictive and that greater use of AI can help individuals or small teams scale a project far faster than they might otherwise be able to. None of these points of view is invalid, and it really all comes down to how you see the issue. Maybe the best gauge to use here is whether you’re proud of what you’re creating and happy with how you’re creating it. If the answer to both of those questions is “yes,” I don’t think you’re likely to go wrong.

8) Realize That Your Choices as a Consumer of the Internet Have Actual Power

If you take absolutely nothing else away from this extended rambling of my thoughts on the trajectory of the internet, take this: You, as a consumer of what you see and interact with online, actually do have some tiny amount of say in what the internet looks like. Too often, I think many of us give ourselves over to thinking something along the lines of “Well, it sucks, but that’s just the way it is.” After all, what do one person’s choices about what kind of online content to view actually matter in a world where billions of other people will happily keep giving their every free second to the social media behemoths?

But remember what I said earlier about choosing to visit and engage with sites that you actually enjoy, rather than just the ones that are so big that you and everyone you know is on them, whether anyone actually likes them or not. Every time you go to an independent website instead of watching the latest mindless reel or TikTok video, you’re making a consumer decision that helps to determine what gets prioritized online. Sure, maybe you won’t change the world on your own, but giving your attention to the people who are actually delivering value instead of the AI bot that cranks out slop to keep you scrolling endlessly is a better deal for the content creator, the web, the real world and yourself.

The early internet wasn’t great just because there weren’t yet a handful of gigantic platforms that formed the backbone of every online experience. It was great because real humans decided to use a novel communication technology to explore the world, access new ideas, find friends and opportunities they never would have encountered in person and have some fun along the way. The landscape doesn’t look the way it did back then, and it almost certainly never will again. But you can still choose to use the internet the way you did 20 years ago; it just takes a little more effort and a willingness to disconnect from a continual flow of cheap dopamine that, left to their own devices, the big platforms will keep feeding you until the day you die. Your experience of the internet could change profoundly and for the better, and that could happen today. All you have to do is choose which version of the web you actually want to see and support.

Thanks for reading. Now, get out there, start something cool and run with it.

Featured image credit: https://pixnio.com/media/buttons-button-electronics-computer-keyboard-peripheral, user sergeispas