this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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Thanks to @mike, I just had an epiphany about why centralization of the the world wide web happened: (atomicpoet.org)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Thanks to @[email protected], I just had an epiphany about why centralization of the the world wide web happened:

Web browsers like #Chrome and #Firefox are stuck in an old paradigm of webpages -- which is an ancient way of viewing the web.

But that's not how the actual web works anymore. The real web is no longer about pages but about feeds, and the folks building web browsers -- Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla -- still don't realize this.

Even worse, feed functionality that used to exist natively in web browsers no longer exists. For example, it used to be that when you visited a webpage, web browsers would detect an #RSS feed -- giving you the option to subscribe. But starting with #Chrome, this feature was removed from modern web browsers.

However, that doesn't mean feeds have disappeared from the web. No, many have coalesced into walled gardens like #Twitter and #Instagram. And they're downright hostile towards access if you do not have an account on their services.

But that doesn't mean feeds have disappeared. Quite the opposite: they're more prevalent than ever with forums, podcasts, video, and more. They're still here, just harder to see simply because web browsers are stuck on that webpage paradigm.

So @[email protected] is essentially a web browser, not with a webpage paradigm, but a webfeed paradigm where -- instead of inputting URLs into an address bar -- it grabs feeds across from RSS, #podcast, and #socialweb feeds.

And frankly, this approach is brilliant. I use #Surf every day, and it's literally the first thing I check when I wake up in the morning.

With Surf, we've moved away from mere Fediverse clients. Now we have a genuine web browser for feeds!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Now if only Surf could hand out invite codes that work, that'd be dope. I'd love to actually give it a spin!

(what happened is that my play store account uses my normal mail, but when registering I added a +surf to the end of the identifier, which works for everyone but not surf, as they expect my play store account to have that, too - but interestingly I cannot request another one with just my base email, there they notice it's an optional part, and say the root part has already been used - siiiiiigh)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

@atomicpoet @surf I think we all feel a disconnect between web & browser, but I never saw past the paradigm. Your explanation was right on! Going to check it out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

@atomicpoet @surf This is giving me lots of thoughts that I need to elaborate on (not tonight but hopefully soon). Suffice it to say that treating feeds as first-class entities on the web opens up an absolutely enormous space of possibilities.