Some of you may remember web "rings" where one option was to get sent to a random site in the ring. it was fun. kind of like sitting down with a random volume of the encyclopedia, opening to a random page and just reading. People sometimes end up on obscure sites run by just... anyone. A page made by a local club was as easy to find as a corporate site.
Back in the early days of the Internet, any interest, no matter how niche, could be shared with anyone else interested. I still have a couple of "forums" discussing niche interests that I visit once in a while, but there are fewer every year. All of the communities that were spread around are now all just "groups" on Facebook or sub-Reddits The entire web feels somehow homogenized. It's as if the internet transformed from an interesting shopping district into a bland strip mall. And now with the rise of AI, it's going to get even worse. In the spirit of returning to the Human-centered internet of the bygone days, some folks have started a Human-made Webring , a webring of sites that are "human-made". They are against using AI slop in their personal websites, and if you have a human-made site, you can join and help this webring grow.
Back in the early days of the Internet, any interest, no matter how niche, could be shared with anyone else interested. I still have a couple of "forums" discussing niche interests that I visit once in a while, but there are fewer every year. All of the communities that were spread around are now all just "groups" on Facebook or sub-Reddits The entire web feels somehow homogenized. It's as if the internet transformed from an interesting shopping district into a bland strip mall. And now with the rise of AI, it's going to get even worse. In the spirit of returning to the Human-centered internet of the bygone days, some folks have started a Human-made Webring , a webring of sites that are "human-made". They are against using AI slop in their personal websites, and if you have a human-made site, you can join and help this webring grow.
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