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Re: "What are we? There is the clearnet or surface web, which..."
I think there are a few different uses of "web"; sometimes it can refer to anything with a URL, although sometimes it is a more specific meaning that does not include everything with URLs. However, not all internet services have URLs, and not all URLs refer to internet services.
Some people including myself will use "small web" to refer to Gopher, Gemini, etc.
Also see:
— https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41164188
Sep 16 · 3 months ago
💎 istvan · Sep 16 at 16:45:
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.
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...