If you’re new to the internet, allow me to give you a brief explanation.

The “Internet” is series of connected networks across the world that form bigger networks. A network is a series of connected things (computers and routers in the case of the internet).

The world wide web (www) sits on top of the internet (as does email and other things too) The world wide web is what a lot of people are referring to when they talk about the internet.

Most of the web now is basically a bog of surveillance advertising. Where pretty much all of your interactions on the web — and often email now too — are being tracked by companies looking to make money off knowing exactly what you get up to online.

It’s an absolute fucking disgrace.

The world wide web could have been such a beautiful thing — democratising publishing and giving everyone an equal voice. And for a while I think it was heading that way. But big technology companies grew out of this web, like spiders catching all the flies. These big companies then started merging and coalescing into the Googles, Facebooks and Twitters we now have.

This is the world that has been born out of capitalist greed and the surveillance used to accrue wealth.

There are some awesome people that are doing their best to create alternatives to all of the surveillance honeypots that take up the majority of bandwidth.

People like Aral Balkan and Laura Kalbag at the Small Technology Foundation. They are building a viable alternative to the cancer of “big tech”.

And Eugen, who created Mastodon — living proof that you don’t need millions in investment capital to build something for the web that gets used my thousands and thousands of people.

We need more people building for the future of people, not corporations, and I want to be one of them.