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Re: "What are we? There is the clearnet or surface web, which..."
World Wide Web was concieved as interconnected documents. The format to facilitate this was HTML (hypertext markup language), which would be transferred over HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol).
The World Wide Web could link outside the Web to other non-Web URL schemas, such as FTP, SMTP, Gopher, etc. But these were part of the wider Internet, not the World Wide Web.
This is why Gopher is referred to as "an early alternative to the World Wide Web" as opposed to a component of the World Wide Web.
I think the breakdown is confusion over the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web, which was always a subsection of the Internet.
TLDR: If it's not on HTTP it's not on the Web.
Sep 16 · 3 months ago
What are we? There is the clearnet or surface web, which is everything that is searchable in the www, html world. Then there is the deepweb, which is www html that is not searcheable, password protected forum, wall garden etc. Then there is the darkweb, in onion and Tor nodes. There is the smolweb, which is hand crafted, but still www,html based. What is the web that is ssh, gopher, gemini, mud, moo, nntp based? Protoweb is partly the answer, but Gemini is not proto, for instance. I feel...