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Note: this article was inspired by:
"Splitting the web", an article by Ploum
The recent group of events surrounding the corporate-driven world wide web is increasing even further the tension from the community, asking for an alternative:
It is an accepted fact that we the community have lost the web to billionaries, AI models and surveillance capitalists in general. But it is only lost if we do not change the perspective.
Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++, once famously said:
Within C++, there is a much smaller and clearer language struggling to get out.
Differences aside, both the web and C++ share a considerable amount of bloat. But, similarly to C++, there is hope for a smaller, sane subset for the web to come out one day. A few months ago, I wrote a quick proposal for such a subset that would allow the community to regain control of the web, by aiming towards a (much) smaller yet stable specification of the modern web:
The Small Web Browser, an inclusive proposal
Surprisingly, this proposal achieved some unexpected popularity when boosted by a well-known Mastodon personality, which can only mean there are many people out there asking for a better web.
Despite the subset, writing a formal specification and building a small web browser are still non-trivial feats. So, please let's unite to claim the web back!