The open web isn't dying, we're killing it
by benwerd on 4/3/2026, 2:05:20 AM
https://ouvre-boite.com/the-open-web-isnt-dying-were-killing-it/
Comments
by: PaulDavisThe1st
When @home first started figuring out how to IP-over-cable in the mid-90s, one of its early employees was incredibly excited that the promise was to offer symmetric up/down bandwidth, with the implicit goal that people could run servers at home.<p>The entire industry, from IP providers to software developers, dropped this as a goal very early on. Bandwidth wasn't available, server installation and management was too complex for almost everyone, security issues turned into a swamp of nightmarish proportions.<p>Had we been clear in, say, 1995, that goal of IP-at-home was "run your own server (appliance), it will be as easy as using the iPhone that you haven't seen yet", the state of the web would be very, very, very different.<p>But that turned out not to be the goal, certainly not a goal that was even remotely close to achieved, and we're stuck with what we now have, for now at least.
4/3/2026, 3:44:10 AM
by: kunai
I do find it quite ironic that this piece reeks of LLM-writing while also simultaneously decrying the death of everything that is in antithesis to things like that. Is there a single shred of originality or shame left in the SV-adjacent writing sphere?
4/3/2026, 3:43:38 AM
by: Gagarin1917
It’s not “dying” but it’s being “killed”? Come on…
4/3/2026, 4:24:46 AM
by: idle_zealot
Am I missing something or is the thesis of this piece, or at least its main action item, a demand that everyone all of a sudden "grow up" and accept personal cost and inconvenience, and that will somehow save the open web? It acknowledges systemic problems, and then totally ignores them in favor of prescribing a pie-in-the-sky solution. It's like saying we could solve homelessness if only enough people would give to charity and take someone in off the street. Technically true, and I'd love to meet the alien species to whom it is relevant, because they sound swell.<p>I find it particularly disappointing as a conclusion because its a strange curveball on what otherwise seemed to be the obvious conclusion it was building to: if we want the open web to survive then it has to be convenient to use. We need to grow up from our RTFM tendencies and build technology that people can intuit how to use without a manual. Approximately nobody wants to spend their time reading a manual to learn to operate a chat application or publish a blog. We even have an opportunity afforded to us by enshitification and declining software quality. The bar is lowering on being the easiest option!
4/3/2026, 3:26:10 AM
by: chromacity
Yes, but here's the realization I had some time ago: no one cares. The billions of people online don't care. The internet is overwhelmingly accessed from mobile devices and used chiefly for shopping, scrolling through TikTok, watching Netflix, swiping on Tinder, and so on. More importantly, <i>we</i> don't care, not really. We pay lip service to it, but what have we done to foster the open / small web today?<p>Many of us work at companies that aren't moving the needle in the right direction, and in our free time, we seem to be content debating AI-generated think pieces and press releases from AI vendors. As I write this, in the top ten HN stories, I see press releases from Deepmind, Cursor, Tailscale, and Qwen. Even when commercial interests don't dominate and someone's passion project makes it to the top, how often do we offer meaningful encouragement or support?<p>The "old web" is something we like as an abstract idea, but in reality, we don't lift a finger to preserve it. I'm guilty too. When I'm done writing this comment, I'll probably go back to doomscrolling on walled-garden social media for a while.
4/3/2026, 3:29:22 AM
by: lwansbrough
I won’t be taking responsibility for the scrapers that are molesting the free and open web and destroying its economic viability. Somebody else is doing that.
4/3/2026, 3:48:14 AM
by: mitchbob
Related:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562214">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562214</a>
4/3/2026, 3:45:33 AM
by: raincole
The idea of open web only works when only a small portion of the population access the internet.<p>Feel prophetic in regards to the fate of democracy.
4/3/2026, 3:34:21 AM
by: musicale
> We embedded the follow buttons, added the share widgets, installed the trackers, and told our friends, readers, coworkers, and communities that the right place to find us was Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Substack, or whichever silo was ascendant that year.<p>So you're the ones who did it!<p>But youtube is actually pretty great with the appropriate extensions and scripts.
4/3/2026, 3:33:55 AM
by: boca_honey
So it <i>is</i> dying.
4/3/2026, 3:22:06 AM
by: LoganDark
I don't understand the point of the distinction. We say the open web is dying because a vocal minority <i>does</i> do all they can to preserve it and reject the influences of the worse platforms. But the rest of the world doesn't care and so the open web is dying. Its proponents aren't killing it; it's dying despite their best attempts to keep it alive.
4/3/2026, 3:52:14 AM
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4/3/2026, 3:54:39 AM
by: banziha104
[dead]
4/3/2026, 4:50:11 AM
by: yalogin
Why use the present continuous tense? We can safely use the past tense as llms definitely killed it. The web of course isn’t going to vanish but there is no motivation for anyone to create a new site now.
4/3/2026, 3:25:05 AM