I think it's time to establish a successor to the web that we can once again call home. This doesn't mean we need to give up on the web or stop using it—it can run in parallel to the mainstream, a niche home for hackers and techies and people who care about freedom. It needs to be simple, like Gemini [0], but also have enough interactive features to enable old-school social apps like HN or the old Reddit. It should have a spec and a governance process that discourages rapid changes—we've learned from hard experience that more features does not mean better.
I realize this sounds like a cop out, and that getting people to use such a thing in sufficient numbers would be extremely difficult. But I'm pretty convinced at this point that the web as we knew it will never come back unless there's a reset—unless we create a new niche tech that isn't big enough for corporations to want to take over.
In the last few days browsing Fediverse platforms I prefer the smaller communities for that old internet spirit anyway.