Table of Contents
The Good Web
A term for the part of the internet built in good faith — broader than the IndieWeb, though it contains it.
Definition
<mark>The Good Web</mark> is any part of the internet built in good faith, in the specific contractual sense:
- The maker is not optimizing against the user
- No dark patterns
- No retention schemes
- No bloated scripts designed to keep you scrolling past the point of nourishment into compulsion
- Nobody is selling your reading habits to an insurance company
The Good Web is not a technology, not a protocol, not even a community — though it contains all of those things. It's a disposition toward the person on the other end of the connection.
The difference between a neighbour who bakes you bread and a supermarket that puts the bread at the back because they know you'll buy chips on the way. Both offer something. Only one gives a shit whether you leave full.
What It Includes
- Personal websites and blogs
- Webrings, blogrolls, directories
- Alternative protocols — Gemini, Gopher, twtxt
What It Is Not
The Good Web is not innocent or pure. Its failure mode is human failure — thoughtlessness, clique formation, accessibility gaps. Not structural failure. Nobody built the Good Web to extract from you.
Why Corporate Social Media Fails This Test
- 48% of US teens say social media has a mostly negative effect on people their age (Pew 2024, up from 32% two years prior)
- 58% of college students would prefer a world without Instagram; 57% without TikTok
- 62% of UK young people aged 16–24 believe social media does more harm than good (More in Common)
People know something is wrong. The dissonance is not channelled into finding something better — by design. Learned helplessness. The belief that migration would take too much effort. But these beliefs are manufactured.