The old internet is dead. Long live the old internet!

So, we all know that the internet we know today is broken. Its full of trackers and all sorts of other garbage, and people are starting to get sick of it. Almost makes you long for the good old days of the internet, when things were a bit simpler, and companies like Google and Facebook didn't have an iron grip on the web. Well, there are some developers that feel the same way, and in trying to fix the web, they're taking some cues from the old web. These projects do this by doing things like cutting out all of the crap from websites, or even just straight up recreating good ol' sites from the past in a more privacy focused way.

One of these projects is called Gemini. Gemini is an internet protocol made for simplicity and privacy. It isn't made to replace the current internet, but it's meant to co-exist with it. The websites made with this protocol are primarily text based, so they are fairly limited, but simple and free of unnecessary crap. Think back to older websites from the 90s that are just text and links, and that's what a Gemini site looks like. One of the most popular uses for the Gemini protocol is for blogs, since those are mostly text anyway. You will either need a special browser or a proxy website to access Gemini sites. But its a pretty neat project, so I would definitely recommend giving it a shot!

But there are also some neat projects on the normal internet too, like SpaceHey. SpaceHey is a social media site made by a German programmer named An, and it is a literal recreation of the classic MySpace site. It's built to bring some nostalgia and privacy to the world of social media. I never used MySpace since I was too young to use it in its heyday, but from what I've seen and heard, it looks and works just like MySpace did in the early 2000s. It has all of the same features like blogging (in fact, you're reading this in SpaceHey right now) bulletins, messaging, and even customizing the look and feel of your profile! After using platforms like Instagram and Facebook over the past 7 years, It's actually quite refreshing to use a simpler social media platform! It's especially neat to be able to take a look into the past and use something like MySpace after hearing about it for years.

The old internet was definitely an interesting place. Of course, I don't see the entire internet reverting back to the way it was a decade or two ago, but its nice to see different projects that take cues from that era of the internet, and brings them into the modern world!

This is post #18 of #100daystooffload.