> you don’t want “the old internet,” you want a space that hasn’t been colonized by capital — [@[email protected]](https://mastodon.social/@emaytch/113110093615458124) It used to be someone's job in the friend group to supply the group with fresh memes and content. Now, that friend still pings the group chat, but everyone politely laughs as if they hadn't see the thing before. Over the last few years, I've reacquainted myself with the decidedly unincorporated spaces of the World Wide Web that I knew so well as a child. It exists well outside our corporate-sanctioned borders. Passed the algorithmic feeds, beyond the KPIs, and through the AI-slop blogs. There you'll find communities where the incentives for posting are intrinsic. There's no system to game, no master to please. Which means, grindset gurus and crypto bros are far few in between. No one is chasing celebrity, or playing the FYP slot machines. No one is taking the least charitable interpretations of what others have said just to milk a few more retweets. Just real people doing real things—free from the influence of governing corporate algorithms. I think you’d like it there. The open web has a particular charm that I cannot easily describe. I can only explain it as the feeling you get on a weekend road trip. The type of little excursions where discovery is the only item on the agenda. Make a left turn and suddenly you’re driving down a pebbled road with a row of store fronts and a public park. No, I’m not suggesting that the open web is a substitute for touching grass. Just that, if you’re going to spend time on the internet, why do it in the digital equivalent of a Walmart? Why not venture out to a place where some guy in a corner office isn’t dictating what content you should “discover”? On the hyper-scaled, ultra-optimized web, where growth and extraction are the only pursuits, the small digital community is an act of defiance. Its subversive. Its punk. If you’re still reading this, I assume you know some things. I know that you know that Meta, Google, and TikTok control most what we see on the internet. I know that you know—even if you’re not a social media expert—that Substack leverages the [Network Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect) to keep you on its platform. And I know that you know (that I know that you know) that our presence on corporate social media is starting to feel more liability than asset. Don’t panic. This isn’t a plea for you to delete your Instagram tonight (or ever, if you don’t want to). This here is just a first step, in many steps, to help loosen the corporate grip over your digital lives. It’s a way to recontexualize the *Internet Problem*, and offer solutions with gradual but meaningful effects. You see, on the web, there are communities and there are markets. Communities build, and markets extract. Communities form when the profit motive isn't suffocating the user-base. Markets form after the first venture capitalist check clears the bank. The problem is, there are far too many markets and far too few communities. Markets have become so dominant, we often confuse them for communities because we've lost any frame of reference. The social media of the past two decades have defined the medium, so to stumble upon a community—a place where there’s nothing nudging you to keep scrolling, and no one trying to sell you something—can be jarring at first. That’s okay. It’ll take some getting used to. And it’s worth it because communities are how we take back the web from corporations. Communities will set us free. In a market, your attention is converted into dollars. Corporations like Meta leverage those dollars into power. They build data center kingdoms to replace the internet’s critical infrastructure. They bribe congresspeople to enact regulatory capture strategies. They suppress speech they don’t like, while amplifying the types of anger and resentment that keep us tuned in. All of this accomplished with their ability to turn our attention into wealth, and wealth into empires. *Communities, Not Markets* is about finding opportunities to create shared digital spaces that help reduce the amount of collective attention we allot to big tech. There are no prerequisite technical specifications to form a community other than the absence of adtech—black box algorithms, and ads. Decentralized, centralized, the “tech stack” doesn't matter right now. *Communities Not Markets* works best when we tear down technical barriers, and we don't allow perfect to be the enemy of good. That necessarily means some communities should be scrappy off-label implementations. Get creative! Especially if you're not technically inclined. Don't be afraid to use the systems already at your fingertips. I endearingly call these communities “The Janky Web” (we’ll explore shortly). We can take back the World Wide Web by gradually shifting our attention away from market-driven social media, and towards community-based spaces. ## What is a market? A market is a vessel for extracting value for a small syndicate of beneficiaries (i.e. venture capitalists). A market's only objective is extraction through endless growth, no matter what the market's mission statement communicates. How we experience that extraction depends on the where in the product lifecycle the market currently exists. You may be familiar with this lifecycle through a term coined by Cory Doctorow—*enshittification*. To extract maximum value, markets use a governing system to control the content we see, and keep us engaged. This is the algorithm's role. Algorithms are the invisible hands of the market. Algorithms influence the things we create, and frames social media as a way to profit and gain celebrity. Few things in our culture have survived the influence of the mighty For You Page. And we're worse off for it. Restaurants design entrées not for taste, but for Instagram virality. Comedians favor improvisational crowd work over crafted sets because the former generates the most comments on Reels. Casting directors trade an actor’s X factor for the number of X followers they have when casting for a role. Musicians cut their songs down to under two minutes, because shorter songs gain more traction on TikTok. Algorithms aren't agnostic, autonomous, or apolitical. Markets commodify our attention for profit. Algorithms enforce the market's will, ensuring we spend the maximum amount of time shifting through the maximum amount of content, so that the market can serve us the maximum number of advertisements during a session. ## The Internet problem There are no shortage of people in the tech community creating dichotomies to explain why the internet feels broken, with solutions to fix it. No ideology is more active in the pursuit to fix what feels broken about the world wide web than techno-libertarianism. You are not a techno-libertarian. Unless you are. In which case, I assume you have stopped reading a while back and are now furiously typing out a retort. In *Protocols, Not Platforms*, Mike Masnick submits that it's Open Protocols vs Walled Gardens. In *Big Fedi, Small Fedi*, Evan Prodromou suggests its big user bases vs small user bases. In *Techo-optimism*, by Marc Andreessen, it's Free Markets vs. Regulated Markets. While each manifesto doesn't completely agree with each other, and each have a varying level of influence, all share a common techno-libertarian worldview that markets, not communities, will save the internet. From *Internet For The People*: > The Internet is broken because the internet is a business. While the issues are various and complex, they are inextricable from the fact that the internet is owned by private firms and is run for profit. > And Internet owned by smaller, more entrepreneurial , more regulated firms, will still be an Internet run for profit. And an internet run for profit is an Internet that can't guarantee people the things they need to lead self determined lives. It's an internet where people can't participate in the decisions that affect them. It's an internet in which the rewards flow to the few and the risks are born by the many. In other words it's the internet as we know it today. It's not big fedi verse small fedi, it's not protocols or platforms, it's not even open vs closed. It's communities verse markets. ## Section Technocracy is the belief that society should be run by elite technical experts who use technology to solve our social and political problems. Technocrats often throw about vague notions of meritocracy. Places where the best ideas win. They call it the market place of ideas. The problem with framing the Internet problem with technocracy is technocracy leaves the door open for us to partner with the same corporations that got us here in the first place. We don't have to accept solutions presented by the people who caused the problems. We can first scrutinize the dichotomy in which the problem is framed. On the web, the *Protocols, Not Platforms* dichotomy frames our problems as a matter of inadequate technology. *If only we had used the "correct" technology, we might've avoided the rise of Meta*. But, it's not the underpinnings of a tech-stack that gave us the plundering platform era of the last decade. And it's not a protocol that will liberate us from the techno-oligarchs. ## Make communities Get comfortable with the fact that communities are not efficient modes of communication. The trappings of the social web is overvaluing efficiency in systems. It's the technology equivalent of running our country like a business. Get comfortable with the fact that most of the communities you build will still be at some level part of the system. At least for now.