I don't know what "Old Web" the author is remembering but when I was first paid to make a website in 1997, it had banner ads on it.
But the author isn't entirely wrong. There were/are a lot of websites that simply did not run ads. Hosted not for money, but "for love of the game".
This is something that was lost with the shift to exclusively platform-based hosting. A facebook page or subreddit simply is never going to be ad-free in the way that a lot of former or legacy forums were and are.
What you’re talking about was geocities or aol’s members sites that anyone could build a site with. Anyone running CGI wishes for that sweet ad revenue to pay for the Sun servers…
I am not disputing that ads were a thing. I am not disputing that ads were common.
I said that there were a lot of sites that chose not to run them.
> They all wish they had the viewership for ads.
This is just not true. Like, c'mon man, the very site you're on right now takes this approach.
Same thing with the "old web." It was about the very early 90s before Netscape Navigator (the Mosaic days) and when everyone was just throwing up a single HTML page with a bunch of links... that's the "old web".
The modern WWW kicked off with the ability to make credit card transactions online (1994). That... and porn (1995).
For "old web" sites that still exist, check out wiby
Want no ads, start browsing gopher sites. No ads there. Or find people making blogs just because they want to. They exist. Github + Jekyll is a great option for free static blogging if your willing to spend a little time getting it setup and learning something new.
Why can't at least tech people use only traditional forums which are easily searchable, readable without login, etc?
And Discord, which is terrible for that.
This doesn't sound like blogs + rss, this sounds like phpBB + AOL instant messenger. Social media is at its best when real people are interacting with real people, not when real people are interacting with a blog post/tweet/etc., (and definitely not an algorithm)...
Man, what a time.
What we also need is privacy. I only want my friends to see my blog or rss feed. Not the entire planet and every greedy spyware.
I don't mind the entire planet of human beings seeing my blog, but I don't want what I write to be monetized by grifters and trillion-dollar companies.
For that reason, my personal blog is behind security so only invited people can see it.
It works very well, but no, I'm not going to explain how it works because there are plenty of people on HN who have no morals, work for crappy companies, or are part of the trillion-dollar machines that are destroying human creativity so some C-level can buy a third private island.
I ran phpBB boards, my own blogs, an instance of a German php-based MMORPG I long forgot the name of. But it simply wasn't fun any more to keep up with the bad actors, to wake up and find someone found yet another bug in the MMORPG software or phpBB and in the best case just spammed profanities, in the worst case raze the entire server blank.
It's just not feasible any more to be an innocent kid on the Internet with a $5 VPS. And that's not taking the ever increasing share of legal obligations (CSAM and DMCA takedowns, EU's anti terrorism law, GDPR, you name it) and their associated financial and criminal risk into account - I know people who did get anything from legal nastygrams for thousands of euros for some idiot uploading MP3s onto a phpBB to getting their door busted down by police at 6 in the morning because someone used their TOR exit node to distribute CSAM.
The only thing that's somewhat safe is a static built website hosted on AWS S3. No way to deface or take down that unless you manage to get your credentials exfiltrated by some malware.
I’ll admit that when I lament the web we used to have, I’m never thinking about viruses, malware, pop ups/unders, &c. Seems like all that stuff was just a small price to pay for connecting with likeminded people.
I have a slice of that with Mastodon but maybe being 20 years older and jaded is making me wistful, yearning for something that is never coming back.
Added this to other comments: old web had ads (iframes, banners, popups!), and also was completely self-hosted, which gave you more freedom than any other cloud platform. If you want to resurect old web, just give a free hosting with FTP.
Blatantly false information? Internet Explorer required for everything? Adobe Flash and Java all over the place? Websites that frequently actually could hack your computer? Geocities and AOL being the meeting places, reincarnated as Discord? Terribly slow, low-resolution imagery that our brains filled in the details for? The worst font and font color choices known to man? Shock content being absolutely rampant? Constant pop-ups? Every company wanting a toolbar?
That's what I remember. It's the same phenomenon where people think their Nintendo 64 or PlayStation 2 was a masterpiece never paralleled, revisit it in 2025, and realize: "wow... this... sucks actually." It's the same phenomenon where people think cars were better in the 80s, but they sit in an 80s car, and realize we've come a long, long way.
On a CRT display, a game’s aesthetic could thrive but fall flat on modern displays.
Learning patience for slow internet speeds versus immediacy to see stuff you actually don’t wanna see anyway.
It’s all perspective, really.
Sure, a lot of them suck, especially on Nintendo 64, because of the 3d transition, but from the NES onward there are timeless classics.
My kid beat super Metroid several times, he decided to play it on his own on his switch, and he loved it. He plays the old pokemon games too. In other words, that's a terrible analogy.
Also know as: How to get a visit from the FBI or a state agency equivalent once someone discovers you're a viable conduit of unsavory content.
The old web is dead, it will never come back because it relied on ignorance, naivety, charity, and good faith. Those are mostly all gone. You can still stand up one of these hosts and pages for yourself but you must still be incredibly vigilant because automated attacks on your host will be happening non-stop. Jumping into hosting for others is no longer a hobby and it never will be again.
I fail to see what a new protocol would bring to the equation. I see it more as a human behaviour issue, network effect, worse is better etc etc.
My grandma uses Facebook because someone taught her how, she doesn't have the capability to explore technology on her own. That honestly goes for most people, they treat their computer as necessary for getting along in modern society and nothing more.
Facebook is the internet.
This point is made very often, and I do believe it was true for many people, but I honestly didn’t care about individual blogs at all when I was a young net user.
I didn’t care about the 1,000 words a single person wrote about their trip abroad. There was no way to interact with it? All the action for me was on forums and chat rooms. Like the author mentions, it’s exactly the type of excitement that naturally led to early social media, which I was also a huge fan of for the close friends I already had.
The defeatist in me feels like I will just never have that same feeling again online. In part because I am no longer a child, in part because there are just too many people online now, in part because too many of those people’s brains are twitter-rotted.
It’s fine, I have my close circles to keep my human social spirit alive.
Wow. This was me too. I was excited to hop on the Rockman.EXE Online forums and tell people about my homepage I was constantly redesigning/rebuilding.
> The defeatist in me feels like I will just never have that same feeling again online.
I feel you, but I’m still chasing that. Close circles are where it’s at though, maybe we gotta be happy with that. SIGH
I wonder, have you ever read a novel? Hundreds of pages a single person wrote about a story that happened (usually) entirely in their head, printed on paper, no way to interact with it. It's a great experience if the author has some skill at this.
Be independent. Running your own website is not that difficult. And seriously, spending the minuscule amount of money on hosting should not be a problem. It's a hobby, hobbies cost money. If you own your website, you can move it anywhere quickly. Nobody will start showing ads. Nobody will pester your users with annoying "SUBSCRIBE" modal popups. Nobody will sell the platform along with you and your content to a new owner.
I do not know enough about this particular platform — maybe it's different from others, maybe not. But I have seen enough platforms undergo progressive enshittification to be wary of any place that wants to host my stuff under their domain/URL.
Unfortunately sustainable is somewhat equivalent to money. Whatever work you do, and even if you love it, in general it needs to have a functional business model. Businesses that can financially support the people who provide them, tend to continue.
Personally, I believe this is the fundamental problem with many of the things that we now fondly think of as "old". Google groups? What was the business model? Did it make money? How could you make money from doing something like that?
The fundamental business model IRL used to be "fee for service". Not lock in. Not subscription. It works, because if people want the service they can pay for it. Okay, so hint: what are the issues of implementing fee-for-service on the internet?
hint number 2: someone mentioned banner ads in a comment. Is that fee for service? If not, for extra credit, what would be the side effects of a banner ad type business model? Are there useful services that could be provided with an alternative business model. Etc.
wiether•51m ago
If anything else, if one wants to resurrect the "Old Web", one shouldn't do it on someone else's platform.
Parts of the "Old Web" disappeared when the platforms hosting it stopped.
The brutal shutting down of Typepad should be another reminder of this reality: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/one-time-wordpress-c...
HermanMartinus•27m ago
I think as long as platforms have an easy way for people to backup and migrate, that's fair.
Additionally, part of the appeal of Bear is that I've made it my personal mission to get the platform to outlive me. Take that as you will. I can't prove that Bear will live on in perpetuity, but I can try my best.
NetOpWibby•17m ago