NETIFESTO
Guidelines for a less shitty web
“The web is dead. Long live the web.”
INTRODUCTION
The web is shitty because people made it that way on purpose even if it was not their original purpose. Big Web wants you to pay for everything you do online. Big Data wants to profit from, and encourages you to profit from, anything you put online. And Big Social wants you to fear ever getting offline. The shitty web’s monetized surveillance transactions are an endless mid-level marketing scheme where the only reason people want to get to know you is so they can make money off you. What follows is not a vision of what the web should be. It is a few actionable guidelines for non-participation in and divestment from the shitty web.
SUGGESTED GUIDELINES
- Hand code a static website and find free hosting. One more low-carbon, hand-coded website published for free is one less website built and powered by the Big Web, i.e. Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, etc.
- Make things you can’t profit from and don’t know who’s using. Analytics and tracking pixels are the twin engines of the shitty web.
- Find people in the homes they’ve built for themselves on the web, not in the prefab housing of the Big Web or in the feeding pens of Big Social.
- Read and contemplate their work for the sake of their work, not for the sake of leaving a comment or being seen leaving a comment or to share or be seen sharing, or to collect, curate, or repost.
- Delete your Mailchimp account because you are either collecting subscribers to a) profit from them, or b) one day profit from them.
- Say hello to the weirdo on the bus.
RESOURCES
DOWNLOADS
Download the No Big Shit sticker by Weird Bubba Studio for your website!
