If you're not enjoying the internet anymore, you're doing it wrong — How to Internet Good

Let's make some changes around here

Fix reading

SEO, algorithms, feeds, infinite scroll, doomscroll, dopamine addiction. It's enough to make you want to throw your screens into oncoming traffic. Self-driving, no doubt.

But wait. Escape that hell with one simple method: RSS.

I have just spent the best few hours online in years on my phone just scrolling through an imported list of sites (HN readers’ blogs) in a free RSS reader from fdroid, Capyreader. I have starred 15 posts that will serve as inspiration for my writing and projects.

The quality, compared to most anything I've read on Twitter, LinkedIn and every other conveyor belt of click-slurry, is an order of magnitude higher. Just so much more effort and thought in the writing.

It's like taking a bath after months in the wilderness.

Get an RSS reader, find or curate a list of sites you can track, add them and refresh.

Fix writing

People do visit blogs, sure, but these are random people looking for solutions. People who want to follow individuals are forced onto platforms. RSS is definitely a solution, but once again cast into obscurity, for the most part.

So writers go to platforms and are offered pithy editors and max character limits. Quick hits are rewarded, and feeds soon resemble soundbites from alternative realities filtering through the membranes of string theory's stacked universes.

Worse, even if people do follow you their feeds only show what the platform thinks they want to see. All agency is lost.

Get on medium, get on substack, start a blog but most crucially build a mailing list. Now you're back in the driver's seat. Write for those who care enough to want to know more. And reach them without a third party.

Beyond this I would consider setting up a group where people can chat between themselves, of similar interests, and also feed back the latest from their worlds.

Fix search

Avoid tracking, content mill spam and the worst of the slurry by trying out:

Marginalia, duckduckgo, indieweb, local LLM.

More to add here, but these are great starting points.

Fix privacy

Check if you've been pwned. Change your passwords. haveibeenpwned.com

Install uBlock Origin in the browser. No more ads, a clean and fast experience done with simple whitelists kept up to date, and all tracking is gone.

No more shadow profiles built to manipulate you, no way for them to display manipulation.

Fix addiction

By doing some or all of the above you move from a passive consumer to more active curator of people and information.

This is a better place to be in to make the move to creator and net contributor or better yet, one who knows themselves more completely.

Now, you Internet good.