sunset's gemlog

The Internet of Money (Re: Orphans of Netscape)

I was interested to read Solderpunk's remarkable post on Gopher, "Orphans of Netscape." I highly recommend reading the post in its entirety, but if I am understanding the post correctly, the central thesis is that smolnet use is driven by the nostalgia of a particular generational cohort for a specific moment (specifically the late 1990s) and for the future as foreseen from that moment. The post further argues that other generational cohorts are unlikely to share this position, and that that is understandable and valid. Solderpunk compares the smolnet to a retirement home, a sanatorium, and to group therapy.

With sincere and grateful respect to Solderpunk, I believe this argument greatly undersells the value of smolnet. Smolnet illustrates the stark contrast between two internets - one heavily subjected to enclosure by capital, and fundamentally captured by capital's interests, and another that is, in an embryonic form, an internet that prioritizes humans and their interactions.

Technological Enclosure

Enclosure - the process by which public grazing lands (the commons) were enclosed for private use - occupies a prominent position in the history of capitalism. Over time, enclosure resulted in the end of economic independence for broad swathes of the medieval peasantry, and allowed the development of generational, self-sustaining wealth by the people doing the enclosing. Over time, this resulted in the development of what is recognizable in the modern era as the capitalist class; via the process of "primitive accumulation", society underwent severe economic stratification and economic mobility was reduced. The employing class and the labor class became radically distinct sections.

The Internet underwent a similar process. What was once a network in which individuals could communicate with each other on their own terms has increasingly become a cluster of incompatible, corporate-controlled, siloes. The large majority of communication on the Internet - with email as the largest exception - is done on these siloes, on the terms allowed by capital, and for the purpose of generating profit. Recommendation engines, massive learning systems, seek to maximize user engagement in order to maximize ad revenue. Moderation, likewise, is performed in the interest of capital; posts contrary to those interests risk removal.[1] Worse, companies heavily discourage use interaction outside of the silo.[2] This is a fundamentally undesirable state of affairs, and one that risks a far worse global future if allowed to continue.

And In The Other Corner...

Smolnet - and the larger collection of non-corporate Internet protocols, components, and communities, which I call the Outernet - is different. The Outernet is not primarily driven by monetization, and in general, is not friendly to target ads or similar means of turning eyeballs into positive cash flow. Mastodon instances, pubnixes, and similar services generally operate on the basis of conviviality and community-building. The profit model is "none", and as a result, the overriding interest tends to be the health of the community rather than the ability to increase shareholder value. This is a fundamentally distinct model at a far deeper level than pure technical differences in a protocol.

The differences go beyond that. Outernet discoverability tends to be organic, rather than built around recommendation engines designed to juice up engagement numbers. There is no nebulous and all-powerful Algorithm that content needs to satisfy. Reputation matters more. This is a double-edged sword - it means that it can be harder to discover new things - but the end result is that the things that are most seen are the things that the community, by and large, considers interesting. Outernet protocols also tend to play nice from an interoperability perspective; thousands of ActivityPub-compatible servers talk to each other despite no common ownership. Siloing is seen as a downside, not as a feature.

Another question is sustainability. Modern enclosed web platforms are resource-intensive, both on the server and client side. The web is constantly developing new protocols, tools, and stacks, many of which assume the presence of a fast CPU, a capable browser, and an aggressive Javascript VM. By contrast, Outernet protocols - even those using HTTP, like Mastodon/ActivityPub - are accomodating to independent implementations; a basic Gemini client can be written in about one hundred lines of code, and can be used on systems that will never be capable of running a modern browser. Mastodon clients have been written for platforms as diverse as 68k MacOS and the Amiga. While this is nominally possible for corporate social media, circumstances have never aligned in a way that would encourage it to actually happen on a broad scale.[3]

Where Smolnet Fits In

In short, "Outernet" can be defined as "the parts of the Internet that are about communication outside of the corpo enclosure bubble." That's a broad term; that encompasses personal web pages, Fedi, independent meshnets, etc. It also includes smolnet. In this wondrous collection of people-centric technologies, where does smolnet fit in? Why not just write simple web pages, if simplicity is the most important thing?

For me, at least, much of the importance of smolnet comes down to one simple thing: It's a demarcation line.

Smolnet (Gemini+Gopher, as well as their less common offspring like Spartan) spaces are not, in practice, monetized. From where I sit, I'm not even convinced that smolnet *can* be practically monetized at the infrastructure level, despite interest[4] shown in the idea by people within the corposphere.[5] No major company has a smolnet presence. No targeted ads lurk here. No PR groups flock to Gemini to put out canned statements. The platform's development, unlike the web, is not fundamentally dictated by the need to generate revenue for a clique of corporations.

That has value - in its simplicity, in its ease of implementation, in its smallness, and most importantly, in its demonstration that the Internet can be more than a group of enclosed fields, with boundaries set by billionaires in their own interest.

Replies

A thoughtful response by jns.

A reply from Solderpunk.

Footnotes

[1] The ElonJet debacle is a recent illustration - but hardly a unique one.

[2] Twitter was widely rumored to suppress off-site links in its recommendation system prior to its recent takeover; its new owner outright attempted to ban them.

[3] Things like https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/16/17699626/twitter-third-party-apps-streaming-api-deprecation have not helped. The situation for Twitter in particular has recently worsened.

[4] https://techhq.com/2022/07/gemini-protocol-cybersecurity-websites-platform/

[5] Referring specifically to large-scale monetization of infrastructure, not to all commercial activity.