It’s Time To Go Back to Web 1.0

Invasive tracking and pay-for-play search engines has broken the internet. It’s time to reclaim our independence with the Small Web.

Guys, I’m tired.

Like most people, day in and day out I’m on the internet viewing websites, searching, using social media, and doing the things that are simply commonplace. But standing in this firehose of connectivity is also exhausting. Ads, cookie consents, popups asking for you to subscribe, paywalls, tracking notifications, forms to require you give up your email or phone number in order to do basic things, etc etc etc.

What the hell is going on with the modern web?

In two words: data mining. But in reality, it’s the Enshittification of something each of us have experienced daily for a decade or three. We’ve been boiling in the pot for so long we’ve forgotten what we’ve lost. There’s a “ Digital Sovereignty” that existed at the beginning of the Internet. You purchased goods, searched on sites, and did your thing. If you wanted to give information to a website or make a purchase, you chose to do that. Then the companies got greedy.

Cookies, which were designed simply to save your information when you re-visited a site were abused into oblivion. Now instead of just keeping you logged in, they track everything you do because companies like Google, Facebook Meta, and more will save cookies to your computer and track its usage. Just when that problem looked to be solved, the “tracking pixel” got popular. Companies simply dropped a 1x1 clear pixel into EVERYTHING that made a request to a tracking site like… Google, Facebook Meta, ad companies and data brokers. Ads themselves are also keys in doing this as well. Did you know medical portals have added these tracking pixels and then leaked your medical habits to Facebook?

Ever heard of Klaviyo? ContentSquare? Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Taboola, or DoubleClick? Each of these companies is in the business of scooping up every single thing you do on a website and then package it up to be analyzed, sold, tracked, and to build a profile about you. Every second of every click or mouse hover or search term or interaction you do on many, many websites is tracked.

“ Who cares?” you may say. “ I don’t care what they collect about me. I just want to do my thing.”

I could give you the analogy how you enter a furniture store and someone is hovering five feet away the entire time watching everything you do, writing it down, and then selling & handing it off to their friends at other stores. So you then go to an electronics store and they already know everything about you, but they’ve paid for that and haven’t asked your permission and they use this data for anything they want. And if you wanted a say in any of this, too bad.

I’m tired of dealing with this intense battle simply for the right to have my search history, browsing habits, and anything else I do on the web to be private.

Then there’s AI. For the past two years we’ve had company announcement after company announcement laden with AI integrations. Sam Altman, the teflon CEO of OpenAI announces new versions of ChatGPT every few months while news circulated that members of the “superalignment team”, a group with ensuring that AI stays aligned with the goals of its makers, rather than acting unpredictably and harming humanity, are no longer with the company. All the while, Microsoft also announced “ Recall” that records everything you do and uses AI to surface what you need. Now your computer spies on you too because… AI.

Computing and the internet was never supposed to be like this. And in fact “Web 1.0”, the original web before slick interactive websites came into being by injecting 9000 javascript trackers into your browser, was what the Internet was supposed to be. And it’s what it SHOULD be again. With AI infiltrating everything, the internet and computing is no longer what we were promised. CEO after CEO promises ‘the next big thing’ and all it does it erode the original deal of computing and information being used to serve us, the users.

It’s time to stop believing these charlatans beholden only to the shareholders. And there’s still time to do it. The Small Web needs a resurgence.

For starters, search is fundamentally broken. Let’s face it: you Google everything. Because Google has been so good for so long. The entire appeal of Google has always been to search what you want, find it in a moment, and leave Google to be on your way. But is Google now in 2025 the Google you remember from 2005? Or the Google from 2015?

Let’s try a little experiment.

Open a new tab, go to Google and search for “What are the best “X” for a family?” replacing X with anything you want. Did you get a list of links to a relevant website that isn’t trying to sell you something or filled with affiliate links? Was anything useful on the first two pages? Did you even find the real answer to what you were looking for?

Search, especially Google, has been abused to a point where useful results are either nowhere to be found or are buried under: AI answers, ads, SEO-ranked pages, listicles filled with affiliate links, and any other of the plethora of pay-for-play tactics Google uses.

Social media is obviously broken too. I’ve written endlessly about how bad Twitter became after Elon bought it, but it’s well-documented how bad Facebook abused its power with data collection and how it presents information to its users.

The web has slipped into this barrage of demands for our money (e-commerce), data (endless collection) and emotions (social media) that the internet just isn’t pleasant anymore. It’s all about making a buck and selling out to the highest bidder.

The Small Web is what the internet used to be and not a “platform” you have to play in like Twitter or Discord. Email solved this from the beginning. You pick an email service you like, sign up, done. Anyone using an email system can get and send email to you, and you’re in control. Don’t like your email provider anymore? We sign up on a more-appealing service, migrate your data, and move on with our lives.

Social seems to have solved this with Mastodon. It’s literally the same thing as email. You sign up with a service you like and start following & posting however you want. Anyone using the Mastodon system can interact with you and you’re in control. Don’t like how your server is ran? Simply sign up on a more-appealing service, migrate your data, and move on with our lives.

The web is getting there. Simple, static (not-constantly changing) websites are providing information for people to find. This can be in the form of blogs, personal websites, or just places for people to put interesting things online. That’s literally what the web was back in the 90s and a major part of fighting back against how things are going now. It’s a website you control, post what you want, and it’s to provide an outlet instead of collecting every ounce of value-blood from your visitors.

In many ways, this site right here, TimeMachiner, IS part of the Small Web. Yes there are aspects I ask for people to support me, but I also make sure 99% of what I write is available to everyone and put out there simply as a place for me to write and for others to choose to read.

And that’s the thing. These giant companies don’t care about what you read or post or do on their websites or platforms. Their goals are to keep you there as long as possible in order to extract your money, habits, and any other value you can give. If you have to be manipulated into it with Rage Bait or endless scrolling or showing you an ad for the same damn thing endlessly until you click on it and buy, then that’s what companies will do.

And it’s happening right now. This isn’t a “in the near future” thing. Go to any big company’s website and click on the little slider icon in Chrome or the shield icon in Safari or Firefox. The amount of trackers listed will easily be more than 5, and in many cases over 10–15.

So when it’s time to buy something, maybe it makes more sense to seek out the actual website of that small business instead of buying yet again from Amazon. Maybe instead of defaulting to AI slop for information, looking at Wikipedia or Wolfram Alpha or the Small Web for what you seek. Google has not been good or useful or serving in the best interests of its users for over a decade. Shocker, there’s competition out there from DuckDuckGo (which I’ve used for 7+ years), to Kagi, to StartPage. Each of these has some small trade-offs, but they prioritize privacy.

Instead of being tired and wanting to take a break from the web, I’ve decided I need to wake up and take back what’s rightfully mine: my independence from companies that don’t respect me as a user. It’s not hard. It simply takes courage to try something new.

Before You Go…

TimeMachiner is my one-person project I run in my off time when I’m not working my day job in IT. If you enjoy my work, consider subscribing, leaving a tip or becoming a member. Your support is appreciated and goes a long way to keep my work going.

Originally published at https://timemachiner.io.