ARTICLE 1
Reclaiming the Internet : webciricles
- Social media promised connection but delivered control: Breaking Free explores a move beyond algorithm.
- Can we reclaim the internet frontier and manifest digital spaces that foster non homogonized creativity and connection?
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg announced sweeping changes to Facebook’s moderation team, ending fact-checking and relocating the program to Texas. The move, symbolic as much as practical, reveals how far we’ve drifted into a dystopian digital landscape mined not with pickaxes but doom-scrolling and thumbing for likes. Zuckerberg rationalized this upheaval with a puzzling declaration: “Tech companies have lost their masculine energy.” A curious remark from a man whose empire was built on a voyeuristic foundation of ranking his Harvard classmates by appearance: a business predicated less on connectivity and more for control.
Elsewhere, in Twitterville, Elon Musk’s divisive antics dominate the news cycle daily. Whether it’s performative controversy or engineered chaos it all serves to ampy his platform. The result is the same: a collective detour toward internet monoculture. These oligarchs profit from our confusion and commodify our desire for connection. We thus connect with each other only through the warped prism of algorithm: opaque mechanisms that feed shareholders while leaving us struggling to untangle real dialogue from noise.
We’re stuck. Stuck trying to fit ourselves onto platforms that guise corporate interest behind human connection. These spaces once promised to democratize communication, but they’re gentrified by unscrupulous developers and algo-gaming-influencers who tilt the scales in not-subtle ways.
We bicker, we post carefully curated versions of ourselves, and we scroll endlessly through content juxtaposed with ads for Temu, Amazon, or the next thinly veiled celebrity-endorsed product. Authenticity is drowned out by a cacophony of distraction, and our attention span is trained to scroll rather than stay awhile.
Is this the only way?
Reclaiming the Digital Commons
The internet is still ours. It’s time we remember that it’s not just accessible: it is the metro. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are just suburbs, ones that have been overdeveloped and overrun by private equity HOA’s trying to convince us there’s nowhere else to live. That we wouldn’t know how to build a house, if we tried. Yet, beyond these platforms lies a sprawling, untamed wilderness of possibility, a digital frontier where we can build spaces that reflect our humanity rather than distort it.
What if we broke away from being content generators for billionaire losers? What if, instead of feeding the algorithms, we invested in creating our own landing pages, personal websites that we manage and curate ourselves? Imagine photo feeds without intrusive ads. Personal letters and observations shared without the pressure of likes or pull of a petty vacation pics a half inch above and below, and finally, imagine articles that prioritize creativity and nuance over engagement metrics or seo headlines. These sites wouldn’t be restrictive; they’d be boundless, driven by genuine expression and connection. These sites are what we had before a pimply and sexless Mark Zuckerberg used his miniscule imagination to network people that would always elude him. Let us return to the frontier and build a network of travel, linked by the same bonds that built trade in the American west or the subway corridors of your favorite city.
The Forgotten Power of Webrings
To make this vision a reality, we can draw inspiration from an overlooked gem of the early internet: the webring. For those unfamiliar, webrings are a collection of websites all bound by one thing: inclusion within that webring. Often, they were community-driven networks of websites linked together by a shared theme or interest. Unlike today’s platforms, which corral users into centralized ecosystems, often funneling us toward content we want to crawl away from, webrings fostered organic, decentralized communities. Instead of contorting our identities to a single template, we would have control of our landing pages while the webring provides the network. They are anti-algorithm, connecting people through mutual curiosity rather than corporate design.
Here’s how they worked: At the bottom of your website, you’d place a small banner or link to a ring of related sites. Visitors could explore the ring, discovering new creators and ideas without needing a search engine. It was almost like flipping TV channels, a non-algorithmic process some of us are still familiar with.
By resurrecting a version of this concept, we can rebuild the spirit of the early internet: a space defined by curiosity, creativity, and human connection. Imagine a network of independent sites forming a vast, interwoven tapestry, each one reflecting its creator’s unique perspective. This isn’t just nostalgia; it’s a blueprint for reclaiming the internet from the clutches of corporate influence. Let’s begin having dialogue on awareness of what is missing, is there something else and first consider what’s worked in the past, so we can continue maturing rather than regressing.
A Call to Action
Breaking away from the platforms we’ve invested years won’t be easy. Our existing friend networks are extensive with photo and story archives capturing our personal development. They feel like diaries and cherished journals, yearbooks with signatures. But, would you really hand over your parents’ family album to Mark Zuckerberg or the faceless board of directors at Google? These platforms have become habitual, offering instant but hollow gratification. We spend more time consuming than creating and what is created is monetarily rewarded and only certain kinds of expressions are propagated. Creativity is stifled as we seem to know many people, but less about each other. It’s quantity over quality and our knowledge is hodgepodge rather than concise.
What we’ll lose in convenience, we gain in freedom; the freedom to express ourselves authentically by connecting meaningfully through the curation of a digital space that reflects the complexity of our world.
We’re living in a cave, chained to the shadows cast by opaque algorithms and profit-driven design.
It’s why everything feels so discombobulated. The path forward demands true curatorship, a renaissance of independent creativity that prioritizes connection over consumption.
So, let’s break free. Build your own website. Start a blog. Share your thoughts, your art, your truth. We have the tools, the means are ours and we hardly need to stage a revolution or coup. Stop giving the directions to your life from the backseat and take the wheel.
Let’s consider webrings or at least begin a dialogue to what else is possible. Let’s rediscover the joy of exploration, the wonder of the internet, the place we’d spend minutes dialing into while listening to the sounds of a seeming hyperspace. Together, we can create a new internet, one that values intellect, spirit, and humanity over clicks and cash.
The time is now. The internet is ours, and they’ve given us no choice. Let’s take it back.
Geoff Callahan