Maybe this already exists. But couldn’t one theoretically create a world within a world that is like the Net we all knew and loved before it was enshittified? I know the wayback machine exists, but I was thinking something that is still alive. IRC chats, forums, flash games (maybe not, with security concerns…), video sites that didn’t suck absolute ass like Corptube, stuff like that.
If it does exist, I am sure this would be the place to find it! Or maybe is a matter of staying off of all modern corp sites. I don’t know. Maybe Lemmy is this fantasy world…
see here:
also, as you kinda hint at, the fediverse in general is aimed at giving us a space away from corporate social media.
ActivityPub and the fediverse were started specifically to deal with the kind of centralization that has lead to the shit state of the Internet today, so I’d say the fact that you’ve made it here means you’ve kinda found what you’re looking for already. Find and read/write WriteFreely/Ghost/Plume blogs (and shitposts) instead of Substack or Medium, use Lemmy for threaded conversations (and shitposts) instead of Reddit, and Mastodon for microblogs (and shitposts) instead of Twitter. Peertube is not a drop-in replacement for Youtube, but also 90% of the new content on Youtube is garbage today anyway, and there’s nothing stopping you from browsing older videos (with Freetube or similar to block a good portion of Youtube’s enshittified UI).
Plus if you do stick to these off-the-beaten-path alternatives, it’s still a fun time to be a content creator since you’re not focused on maximizing engagement or monetization – which is the true source of the godawful state of the Internet today.
IRC still exists. Forums are somewhat hard to host nowadays because lots of governments have passed laws imposing more and more regulation, liability and duties of care on operators of web platforms. We would need to start movements to repeal those laws first, I’m certainly in favor of that! But I think the future of forums is nonetheless ActivityPub; it is a lot better to be able to read about all topics that interest me on one website rather than having to click through many different ones.
Flash games: why do you want those back? Flash is a proprietary platform and it’s a good thing we can now do the things we used to do with it directly in the browser with HTML5 and JS. You can still play Flash games with Ruffle, there are still websites out there that host them.
Video sites that aren’t YouTube: nowadays videos can be much more easily hosted elsewhere than YouTube than was the case in the 2000s. Many social media platforms allow direct upload of videos and any website operator can easily directly embed a video without needing either YouTube or something based on Flash Player. So I’m not sure what you’re nostalgic for when it comes to this topic.
http://wiby.me/ is nice. I hit the “surprise me” a couple of times every morning 👴🏻☕️
https://search.marginalia.nu/ As well
I mean that is why I am here. Even with reddit what sorta drew me in compared to slashdot was the way it was a bit more like the alt. newsgroup type thing.
Start off with a different search engine:
Or explore some webrings:
A weblog with the best of the web (no idea how those cats got wedged into scanners, though)
A /c (with links to more /cs):
And as others have mentioned:
And once you’ve found an interesting website, follow its feed in a feedreader / newsreader / news aggregator:
You ask for a world within a world. I think we already have that.
I still host my own website. And many others do too. You can get individuals perspectives and content there.
Forums still exist. I see Lemmy similarly, in a - for me - better format.
Flash game websites still exist, and javascript-implemented flash-players are not a security risk. There’s various newer technologies as well now, which allows you to play those kinds of games too. And there’s many good and independent titles and kinds of online games out there. Be it individual or on accumulating websites.
There are efforts to do just that, neocities comes to mind. Problem is that it takes a lot more active participation.
IRC is still alive and somewhat kicking on places like freenode, obviously a lot of that kind of culture lives in discord today, but you’ve also got matrix as an alternative to that style, but I can’t say I’ve really clicked with it myself.
A few forums have managed to hang around (not that I recommend it, but I discovered somethingawful is still around recently), and the software to run one is still out there being maintained. Reddit really did a number on these sites though so Lemmy, etc is probably a good tool in the box for this too.
Flash games are dead for a pretty valid reason (security, etc), but sites like newgrounds still have a presence for the kind of stuff you’re thinking of. I can’t say I’ve browsed it in a very long time though. You’ve also got the indie game scene that blew up in the 2010s—I personally feel like that’s scratching the same kind of itch for me at least. Places like humble and itch.io are good sources.
alive and somewhat kicking
freenodeHaha. I think you’re a bit out of the loop, Freenode “died” like four years ago. Some fucking weirdo who claims to be the rightful king of North and South Korea bought it, started selling advertising on the web site and tried to turn the IRC network into a “cybernation” with himself as ruler. Cool, right?
The people who actually ran Freenode all left to found Libera.Chat and basically everybody moved to either there or the OFTC. Meanwhile, original Freenode was shut down entirely (i.e. all users, services, etc. dropped) and booted from scratch as … whatever the fuck it is now, some coked-up royalty LARP.
Has it really been at least 4 years since I checked on it?! Thanks for the correction! (And mild existential crisis)
I’ve just checked and quakenet still seems to be a thing at least!
IRC chats
IRC networks are still here. Grab an IRC client, connect to Undernet or whatever network you like. Fewer people, but not gone.
forums
You’re talking on one!
flash games (maybe not, with security concerns…)
You can probably run Flash stuff — I had some difficulty the last time I tried getting old Flash stuff running on Linux — but frankly, I’d rather run open stuff like HTML5’s Canvas and Javascript. It was one company’s attempt to establish a proprietary platform on the Web for multimedia. I’m really not sad to see it vanish into the past.
video sites that didn’t suck absolute ass like Corptube
I think that YouTube in 2025 is substantially better than the streaming video situation in 2003, but there are YouTube alternatives available today.
https://eonvpn.com/blog/youtube-alternative/
That includes the Fediverse’s PeerTube. I’m skeptical that the numbers are going to work out there for it to scale up due to bandwidth costs of video, but if you like the Threadiverse, it’s probably the closest video analog.
OP specifically says they’re not looking for the wayback machine or any other archival site, they want something “still alive”
archive.org IS still there. You can browse like it’s 1999 or 2007, whatever you want, some as far back as 1995, that’s its purpose.
An alternative is to age the browser and see what one from the era renders. I’d strongly recommend that you do so inside a secure environment.
use the wayback machine on archive.org. pretty much exactly what you want.
I write a tech blog on Gemini ( https://geminiprotocol.net/) , and read other people’s blogs from the Antenna aggregator on that network . IRC is still quite active for some topics, again on the tech theme libera.chat is the place to go now.
You’re really asking for a lot here.
There are some comments here that are pointing to sources that make you feel like you’re on the old net. But that’s all that they’re good for, is to give you the idea and feel of what it was like then, but you’re going off of someone’s personal memory of what they remembered about the old net. My memories of the old net differ slightly and I’ve been around for nearly 30 years online. So my experience was different and therefore, I can’t 100% relate with everything those sources put out although there’s no argument on whether or not they exist because they did.
But as for like for everything to be back as it was? Sorry but the spirit is long gone and it’s just a matter of you having to be there at the time and cherish what you remember. Such is the stage I’ve been in for a while now because today’s internet is fucking awful and has been awful for a few years.
I know it. And I think that’s fine. I can ignore the modern net for the most part and find communities like this!
It’s all still there, you just don’t read it because there’s not as much content just like in 2005.
I don’t understand this “the old internet was better” and I was first on the internet in 1985. (Technically bitnet)
What exactly are you looking for?
It’s like moving from r*** to lemmy. It feels fresh exciting and so far untainted by corpos. Plus people here/then we’re actually tech literate since computing didn’t care about the lowest common denominator like today. I’m baffled how many of my friends actually know nothing of technology but they use it every day all day… Thats what we loved about it i think.
It’s called Eternal September and it’s been going on for forever.
…tildes reminds me a bit of usenet culture before the eternal september…
That was a very hard habit to stop.
You don’t think the current corporate hellhole of the internet is different from the net of 2005?
Yeah corporate has expanded but so has the niches. There’s a huge amount of info in niche hobbies that has expanded over the past 20 years. Although I do hate how everyone makes a YouTube when some info would be better presented as a web page.
Imo things fell apart by the late 90’s when everyone stopped using Newsgroups and switched to Website forums for monetization.
