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the.web-is.fail
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``the dash is in the middle''
The Web Has Failed Us
Don’t get me wrong—web technologies such as JavaScript, WebAssembly, HTML5 Canvas, and Web Audio, have placed tremendous power in the hands of website authors, and with them, some truly amazing, awe-inspiring applications have been built and deployed on the Web.
...But that’s exactly the problem. Because, while web technology has enabled the creation of some very awesome things, that same technology allows site creators to also do some decidedly un-awesome things, too.
And just maybe, like me, you’re becoming more than a little bit tired of
- The barrage of “Accept/Manage Your Cookies” boxes
- Beginning to read an article, only to suddenly have a paywall blocking your view
- Ads plastered absolutely everywhere you look
- Sites that actively inhibit you from sharing links to their competitors’ sites
- The “doom scroll” and other techniques designed to stimulate addictive behaviors that keep you engaged on their platforms
- Feed and search algorithms that are less efficient at actually getting you the content you want, so that you spend more time scrolling around amongst the ads
- Pages that start blaring sound at you with no forewarning, the moment you interact with them
- Absolutely everything begging, pleading, cheating, and manipulating you into spending your attention anywhere but where you wanted to
- Non-existent privacy, where marketers and data miners know more about you than even you do
Maybe you, too, are beginning to feel that your forays into the web are draining your mental energy and your focus, drained by dribs and drabs at each encounter of the various obstacles and impediments that have become the standard price you pay, for the privilege to take part in the bounties of the Internet.
Of course, a site author can simply choose to forego these things. Not use cookies, adhere to a strictly text-oriented, undistracted, unobtrusive style. The problem is, as a user, there’s no way to know whether a site will be one that extracts that mental tax, or one that doesn’t.
And, even once you’ve identified that a website has been constructed in a friendly manner, you have no way of knowing that any links found on that website, will also be to friendly sites.
And even if a website author has staunchly refused to provide any links to un-friendly sites, there’s nothing stoppoing any of those sites from _becoming_ unfriendly at a later date.
Enter the SmolNet
The small internet, affectionately dubbed SmolNet, is a series of sites, built not on the web technologies of HTTP(S) and HTML, but on protocols and text formats that are deliberately simple and “unpowerful” (specifically, Gopher, and Gemini). They don’t do any of those bothersome things mentioned above, because they are literally incapable of supporting them. In fact, the primary SmolNet protocols only really support two kinds of content, at their core: text, and links!
Not only that, but these protocols provide no way for either the server or the client to send each other anything but “I want resource X,” and “Okay, here is resource X.” There is no metadata sent, except what the type of the content is, no HTTP Headers or any kind of equivalent, and the protocols are designed for it to be impractical-to-impossible for anyone to try to add such things to the protocol later on.
As a consequence, not only can you be absolutely certain that the site you are visiting will not unexpectedly annoy or distract you in the ways we just covered, but you can also be sure that any sites linked to will _also_ be simple in nature, provided they are links that also use SmolNet protocols. And, fortunately, many of the clients (~browsers) that speak them, will mark SmolNet links very differently from non-SmolNet ones, so that it’s always very obvious if you’re about to leave the safety and simplicity guarantees—because your “browser” has marked out the safe and the unsafe paths.
The SmolNet is primarily for people who want to be reading. That is what you’ll be doing with the bulk of the content available on the SmolNet—and while you are reading, you will be doing little else, because little else is possible on most pages.
There are games, there is art, there is music, there are “applications”. But the art never loads unless you asked for it, the music never plays unless you clicked for it, and all the apps and games are governed by a simple rule: nothing can ever change in the page you’re viewing—once you’ve loaded the page, the content is stable, until you click a link to reload the page, or to visit another. There is no “dynamic content” on the SmolNet, and that is what prevents much of the annoyances of the modern web.
Anti-User Practices, Solved by the SmolNet
For more details on anti-user behaviors that the SmolNet saves you from, and how it does so
Try It Right Now!
Use the link above if you're impatient to see what I'm talking about! It's a SmolNet Portal, for exploring these alternative internet protocols, and has a few suggested links for getting started.
Or, continue reading to get a bit more information you might find useful as you explore, as well as suggestions on excellent starting points for your explorations.
Surprising Aspects of the SmolNet
Before you get started, you should probably know a few of things first, so they don’t surprise or confuse you.
- There is no inline hypertext—all links are on their own lines
- There is virtually no formatting for text—not even bold or italic
- Images are not automatically lodaed into a page
- Some of the SmolNet protocols (Gopher, Spartan) cannot reliably detect an aborted download
- Instead of HTML-like “form submission”, pages may prompt for a single text-input value
- Clients accept self-signed server certificates on the principle of Trust On First Use
- Logging in uses TLS-certificate identities, rather than username/password
- (Gopher only) the content type is associated with the link, not the resource
- SmolNet is a rather small community (duh)
If you’d like to know more details about most of these notes, see
Smol Surprises
Let’s Get Started!
Getting Started
How to get started on SmolNet
A Glossary of SmolNet Terms
Possibly-unfamiliar terminology you may encounter on the SmolNet
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