The Internet Is Dead — Let’s Take It Back

There was a time when the internet felt like a frontier.

Strange, wild, deeply personal. People had blogs, message boards, weird little sites about frogs or poetry or UFOs.

It was decentralized, chaotic, and beautiful.

Then came the platforms. The centralization. The billion-dollar data farms. The ad-driven incentives. The throttling of reach. The killing of RSS. The erosion of identity into algorithmic sludge.

And now?

The web is a monoculture. Controlled by a handful of tech companies who function more like nations than businesses. Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, TikTok — they don’t just host the internet. They are the internet for billions of people.

It’s time we walk away from all that.

It’s time for the independent internet to make a comeback.

The Web Wasn’t Supposed to Be This Way

The promise of the web was simple:

• You could be anyone.
• You could say anything.
• You could build something from nothing.
• And no gatekeeper could stop you.

That dream didn’t die overnight. It was slowly strangled under the weight of monetization, surveillance, and compliance.

Big Tech learned to exploit attention. Governments learned to control narratives. Users were herded into algorithmic prisons, fed content that maximized outrage and minimized thought.

The result? Digital homogeneity. A few sanitized platforms, controlled by interests with more power than entire countries.

But there's a way out. And it doesn’t require burning the whole thing down.

What We Need is Connection Without Control

Here’s the paradox: we crave connection, but the tools we’ve been given to connect are designed to own us.

You post on X. You don’t own your audience — Elon does.

You build a community on Instagram. Zuck controls the reach.

You write on Medium or Substack or YouTube. They dictate the terms, the visibility, the monetization.

You’re the product. Not the owner.

What we need is a way to stay connected without giving up control.

And that’s where ActivityPub comes in.

A New Internet Powered by Protocols, Not Platforms

ActivityPub is a W3C standard protocol that allows social apps to talk to each other — sort of like email does. You can post on one platform and have people on another see it. You can follow someone across servers. You don’t need permission from a trillion-dollar company.

In the Fediverse (short for federated universe), platforms like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and WriteFreely all use ActivityPub. And it’s growing.

Here’s what that means:

• You own your identity. Your username is portable.
• You own your content. You can export and move at will.
• You aren’t locked in. No algorithm decides your fate.
• You can leave anytime. Without losing your followers.

This is how the web was meant to work.

Protocol over platform.

Function over manipulation.

Connection without exploitation.

The Promise of Singular Voices

When you write on your own blog, run your own server, or join a small instance, you become a singular voice. You’re no longer just one more drop in the algorithmic flood. You matter because you exist — not because you’re viral.

The original internet was full of singular voices. That’s what made it great. The guy with the conspiracy site next to the mom blogger next to the CSS wizard next to the emo teenager sharing journal entries. Each site was a window into a world, not a content farm.

We need to return to that. Not to be nostalgic — but because that’s where the value is.

Your weirdness, your honesty, your vision — that’s the antidote to the manufactured reality we’re being fed.

Big Tech and Governments Are Teaming Up — Against You

This isn’t just about platforms. It’s about power.

Governments are now pressuring tech companies to moderate speech, suppress dissent, and enforce “approved” narratives. Whether you agree with the cause or not, the result is chilling:

• News feeds curated to serve political goals.
• Independent creators deplatformed without warning.
• Voices silenced for stepping out of line.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s happening in plain sight.

YouTube bans channels. Instagram shadowbans posts. Facebook throttles visibility. And all of it happens behind the scenes, in black-box systems with no appeal.

That’s not freedom. That’s serfdom.

How to Reclaim the Web (In Plain English)

Let’s say you’re done with Big Tech. Now what?

You don’t have to go full homesteader. Just start small:

• Start a blog. Use something like WriteFreely, Ghost, or even Bearblog. Write what matters to you.
• Join the Fediverse. Mastodon is a good start. Find an instance or host your own. Ghost is also working on getting ActivityPub integrated into their software.
• Own your newsletter. Use platforms like Buttondown or Ghost that don’t trap you.
• Support creators who are building their own thing. Not influencers. Creators.
• Talk about this. The more people know this movement exists, the more momentum it gains.

We don’t need millions to switch overnight.

We just need thousands of singular voices lighting their own beacons again.

This Isn’t About Nostalgia — It’s About Survival

This isn’t about pretending it’s 2003 again.

This is about resilience. Freedom. Creativity.

When you own your platform, no one can take it from you. You’re not “one strike away” from digital death. You’re not trapped in the dopamine casino. Your digital identity is up for debate with the data pimps.

You’re free to build something real, something lasting.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s how we save the soul of the web.

This Is the Long Game

Yes, Big Tech is powerful.

Yes, the Fediverse is small (for now.)

But movements don’t need permission to grow.

Think about it:

• Email survived.
• Podcasts survived.
• Blogs survived.
• The open web never died — it just got buried.

The only thing missing is your voice.

So start now. Take back your corner of the internet.

Build something you own. Say what only you can say.

And don’t wait for permission.