This year we made good progress. You know, Linux gaming becoming better, Reddit fucking up, Metaverse failing etc. But on the other hand Big Tech has or are planning to make some moves. Such as, Google’s Web Enviroment Integrity API (EDIT: they backed off), UK’s encryption bill, etc.
So what do you think of the future? I’m currently optimistic. I think the best recent event was Reddit fucking up. Obviously one of the biggest information sources going down that path isn’t something to celebrate. But it was bound to happen. I believe decentralized social networks becoming more popular is what Aaron Swartz would have wanted if he saw how Reddit was being managed.
No way to predict the future but I have some hopes that people will be pushed to find decentralized open alternatives as companies squeeze harder and harder. It ultimately comes down to just how much the average person is willing to take.
Some people have philosophies and limits to just how how much they take from corporate overlords treating them as cattle, some just want their convinent entertainment/escapism and will tolerate just about anything. We will see just how many people still have standards and how many will continue to suck corporate cock for sweet sweet convinence until the end of time. It’s also time for the tech nerds to scream to the heavens. A big issue with decentralized social services is that nobody knows about them. Those of us in the know need to do our part to shill and shill and shill. Everyone needs to know about searxng, peertube, Lemmy, the fediverse, public Access Unix servers, the Gemini protocol, the lot. The average person NEEDS to know that there are community run free services that they can turn to in the face of corpos squeezing harder and harder to take your money and reduce your rights.
In the worst case scenario and google fucks the whole internet, we can start again.
Huge advances in radio communication technology and cryptographic blockchains allow the ideas of a mesh based decentralized internet to be really possible.
Imagine a world where everyone has their own slice of the internet in the form of a mesh router that also host their personal homepage, and everyone has a continually updated copy of the whole internet locally. All built on open technology and protocols. The ISPs cut out. Once and done payment for the router box. A truly free internet unshackled from companies.