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I think original web standards were solving a completely different problem: sharing information.

Modern Internet is 45% appearances and 50% search traffic optimizations. For better or worse we lost all usable registries of websites, we lost appearance-less and traffic considerations-less websites. Information-focused Web is pretty much dead.

Maybe these ideas did not scale and did not monetize that well, but we will never really know what information-focused version of Internet would have looked like because evolution took it elsewhere. Unless we try building another one with different principles and limitations at the core.

by TFNA1 hours ago|

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I agree. Even where blogging and sharing information is still around, it is strongly linked with brand-building, monetization, and engagement-maxxing. Look at all the old Wordpress bloggers who switch to Substack in order to have some eyeballs on their posts, and then inevitably begin conforming to its ethos willingly or unwillingly.

For me, the information-sharing part of the internet now is the shadow libraries. I can get access to all (well, still not quite all) journals and university-press publications from the last century? Awesome. Vastly more informative than some blogger who nowadays is probably trying to monetize my attention.

by ravenstine34 minutes ago|

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The only sort of problem this might solve is the insanely low barrier of entry that the Web has in 2026. The Web was arguably a better (albeit imperfect) place when it was dominated by geeks and kids who could learn to use it faster than their elders. It was a club in a sense. Today it's a club where everyone on the planet is invited, meaning it's no longer a club. I know that sounds great to a lot of people, but I don't agree that systems become better with more participation and fewer criteria for that participation.

Even so, those who want to share and access information can already do that via the Web. Nobody has to use scripting. Nobody has to use The Google as their search. Nobody has to rely on an LLM. If there is demand for simple webpages that are free of scripting, they can be built and shared today. Because of this, the proposal comes off as very out of touch and deep within the HN bubble. Strict grammar for declaring documents is merely a fetish. If there's no scripting, then there's no reason for a document to break for some silly reason.