I remember when I first heard about it around 2000/2001. Interesting idea of distributed hosting of all material, but at the same time seemed like something you really needed to go all-in on to get any benefit from it.
Coverage at the time was mostly "you'll never know what horrible things you're hosting on your own machine."
Freenet was my first and only taste of the "deep web." I was honestly a bit afraid to explore it. Not because it is illegal or anything, but because I am always afraid of stumbling into something heinous and abominable.
I do think there is something wildly intriguing about exploring a space outside of mainstream protocals, like walking into a secret library, or an outsider art gallery. Maybe I will discover some revelation provided by a mysterious benefactor unconcerned with broadcasting to the masses.
Oh you pulled the words right out of my mouth. I'm both scared and fascinated with obscure corners of the internet. Its like finding a little house in a forest.
I am old enough to had accessed the internet right as it was becoming mainstream so it was that "old web" people are nostalgic for, yet young enough that I did not understand some of the fucked up shit I saw. I have vague memories of stuff that I frankly will never mention, as well as all the porn my older brother looked at because he was too stupid to clear his browsing history.
Still, I think these things are worth exploring. This fear we have I feel is a reason why large companies were quickly able to take control. People wanted a safe space, a sanitized internet. Now we talk about the good old days of the web like it doesn't exist anymore.
It does, we just don't know how to find them anymore, and most people want instant gratification instead of taking the time to explore lovingly crafted websites that often were like mazes and held secrets waiting to be discovered. It is art.
You're totally right. I've been on OldWeb@lemmy.ml the past few days, its a community focused specifically on finding websites with an oldweb vibe. They're still there, it just takes effort to find and get away from the modern web.
Yeah I've used freenet for a bit. There's really not much on it except for some random blogs, most of which have onion and clearnet versions. Its an interesting concept but it hasn't really done much.
The Wikipedia still says platform: Java. Maybe they're doing a rewrite?
Freenet was always cool to me because every user gives a certain amount of hdd space which then downloads and provides frequently used content. So if you want a website on freenet you don't host it yourself, you just publish it. They're only static of course. But that is a pretty different idea than i2p and Tor.
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