this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
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People are just going to get sick of the Internet, if they haven't already, and start to look at it like a necessary evil they have to use to do certain things instead of what it once was which was fun and exciting. It's sad.
A much larger segment of people than you think are already off. You just don't hear about them, because, well, they aren't online. Lmao
Yep. The internet is becoming what a mailbox in real life is. An abused gateway that has a narrow set of legitimate uses.
At least we're not burning dead dinosaurs (and plankton) to deliver dead trees.
We will have private mesh nets
Overlay networks are also feasable.
funded by whom? (legitimate question)
Currently private users and enthusiasts. As networks grow, there will probably be universities joining. Eventually corporations will start marketing plug and play equipment while selling access to server space and long distance connections. Other businesses will join and finance their services by selling subscriptions, advertising, and user data. Various government agencies will add hardware they can also use to track traffic. Someone will inevitably bring in bots, AI models, and internet connected devices. After that someone will coin the term “dead mesh network theory” and all the nerdlings will start developing the next knitted network or something.
The catalyst there is businesses (and to a degree governments).
I used to pay attention to my physical mail. Then it was all "junk mail" and the signal-to-noise ratio got hard to manage.
I migrated the important stuff to "electronic mail", where I had a curated list of people and entities that sent me items, so I could focus on things that were important. Then my address/mailbox became common knowledge and that filled with "spam".
I started using SMS/text for the important stuff. But that also became a common place to send me stuff I didn't care about, so I used specific apps on my phone that had permission to notify me when something needed attention, and now my phone gives me so many notifications I just ignore them all.
Our attention is the prize, and it won't matter where our attention goes: The businesses will follow.
The same will hold true for connectivity. If the current internet becomes a wasteland and we migrate to Mesh, then it's only a matter of time before corporate interests take that over too; then knitted, or fabric, or the glob.
The solution will be protections for personal identity and privacy, which have been and will be fought tooth-and-nail by the companies because they want that info so they can be where our attention is so they can make profit. I think we can also fight the profit motive, but that'll be harder than getting protections in law... so small steps.
Well, users for users. There was a co-op teleoperator iirc.
You mean the Web.