Imagine there is no YT, no Twitter/X, no Facebook, no Netflix, no Amazon, no Apple, no Google to to search the Web, no chatGPT. Imagine there is no TikTok either (even though it’s not US). Just imagine there is no ‘giant’ tech from anywhere owning any app or service that millions if not billions of people are willing to use.
A world without any of those giant (US) tech companies and services that many of us take for granted.
In that world, what would you use the Internet for? How would you use it? And how much time do you think you would spend online, compared to now?
(my own answer in the comments)
Like I did 25 years ago. We’d all use more different websites and that would be it. I’ll gladly take these giant corpos for granted because if they disappeared, the market would not disappear with them. There would be others which would replace them and in the beginning, they would all be small companies or community driven efforts. A glory to behold.
What do you really think there corporations can offer that can’t be replaced by anyone else? Shit, google in the 90’s was two guys in a garage and ebay was someone’s old computer used as a server and it worked. It can all be replaced.
This question looks odd on the fediverse. It seems to assume there’s no european alternatives to the sites mentioned here, which for most of them isn’t true. Or that there are only giant tech alternatives.
You do realized piefed.social isn’t giant tech, right?
I think with a world without access to US apps and online services, the biggest loss to humanity would be Wikipedia. If we narrow it to just giant tech, I think it’s easily doable. It would be a shame to lose the wealth of content on Youtube, but it’s something we can manage with.
In that world, what would you use the Internet for? How would you use it? And how much time do you think you would spend online, compared to now?
About the same as now? I mean, again, hobbyist social media exists, it’s not just giant tech. We’re literally using it. In such a hypothetical world, stuff like the fediverse would be much more popular.
This question looks odd on the fediverse. It seems to assume there’s no european alternatives to the sites mentioned here,
I see your point but no, not really. I only listed the few most obvious example of big tech I could think of, as a trigger.
You do realized piefed.social isn’t giant tech, right?
I do. and that is a neat example of why it matters to keep things in perspective: how many of us is there compared to gigantic Reddit? So, when I was mentioning those few big tech I only mentioned what most people do use, it implied nothing on what alternative may be available.
As a matter of fact their existence is the very reason why I decided to ask the question: wanting to see how people were using the Web and if/how they would need to change that usage without access to US-tech. Reading the many answers, a lot of seem to be fine without US tech but, obviously, we’re also aposting that on Lemmy which make most of us already biased against big tech ;)
I’m very happy suddenly. I would spend exactly the same amount of time online and do exactly the same things
Other companies would come in to fill the void and we’ll have new tech giants, if not in the US then elsewhere. The point is nothing will change, these tech giants are what they are today is because they ultimately provides services that a lot of people want to use. I don’t see them going anywhere.
However, for the spirit of your question, if we just remove the corporate world from the internet, the internet will be what it used to be 20-30 years ago. It’ll be largely run by nerds and enthusiasts, and the user base will be a lot smaller and more niche based.
yeah, you’re describing China. it fucking sucks ass if I’m honest
you can “just use VPN lol” but you might be surprised how difficult it is to use a lot of websites with a VPN IP address block. and people around you will generally not be using any of these websites, so the social networks are kind of useless. you basically live on The China App
I feel like Zuckerfuck made this post for ideas on how to circumvent competition.
How did you manage to notice me?
Lemmy. Peertube. Matrix. Codeburg. Mistral if i cant reach local AI.
Only real lack i have access to movies and shows, and losing steam for new downloads. So that time would have to be spent elsewhere
Of course too, how much of these services would be wiped out with out big tech for auth (sign in fron google, etc) and big tech from cloud services (AWS, Cloudflare, GCP, etc).
The same way we did it before those things existed or had taken over. Believe it or not, the internet used to be that way 👴
Funny, but for me very little would change. The only one of those I use even occasionally is YT, and the videos would start appearing elsewhere. Peertube, maybe?
EDIT: Oh, I’d lose my steam library. That would be a nuisance!
You’d lose most of everything. If you think AWS and cloudflare and such arent U.S. owned, ignoring Microsoft, we are missing most of it.
Edit: your domain you are posting this on is cloudflare I believe, so U.S.
I self-host my own shit including game servers, so I would read lemmy while playing Terraria or AssaultCube.
So pretty much no change.
OP only listed consumer services, not the infrastructure side. I completely agree with you that if we would take that part into consideration then … Not a lot in the beginning. And in the end because the whole financial sector is also dependent on various US companies and their online services to process most payments … Shit. I don’t know which other critical infrastructures would break because stuff behind the curtain disappeared.
–
That said if it’s really only “what I as consumer use” then things would look different - even though it all comes down to the details. I.e. no smartphone would be a nuisance … unless Linux phones count.
You know the internet was around before AWS and Cloudflare? People could go back to hosting their own websites on their own hardware. Sites would take longer to load without the cdns.
Yeah, I am currently using a PieFed instance that is behind Cloudfare, because my regular instance has problems. But I have preferred instances not behind Cloudfare.
AWS, it’s not really legal for any public institutions in EU to use AWS. Many do anyway, though. So yeah, some stuff might break in the society. But not that many things I use personally. Hopefully they have backups of their code on their own servers as well, so that if AWS ever disappears, they can quickly run the same code on some sensible platform. Wonder where their databases are physically located, though :D
deleted by creator
It’s also not as if there wouldn’t be search and alternative hosting services, which all existed to varying degrees outside of US control.
Yes, this is the best answer.
I used up so much of my youth on mIRC. I was even on a server that had a make shift 1 pn 1 yugioh online battling platform that I believe also ran through irc. Those were the days.
In that world, what would you use the Internet for?
Pretty much the same as before?
The only giant tech firm from your list I am actively engaged with is
GoogleAlphabet because of Android and YouTube. Apart from that, there is PayPal because of online payments and WhatsApp because of other people. But for both, I have 1:1 replacements already in place to be used wherever available.AOSP is opensource, MicroG, a Play Services alternative is developed by European guys. Huawei also has a similar alternative framework, as they are already banned from using Play. Obviously you would loose access to your paid apps, and some spy apps would stop working, but Android can totally work without the goog. I’ve been using it this way for ages !microg@discuss.tchncs.de
Google is in fact Android. The AOSP is just a fig leaf.
Written from my phone running GrapheneOS and MicroG.
Most of those US services (YouTube, Twitter, etc.) arose to fill a niche which was opened by expanding access and bandwidth. Take YouTube as an example, the idea of sharing a video on a dial-up connection was simply silly. Just downloading the contents of a 1.44MB floppy on a 14.4kbps modem took forever. Even when we got to a 56kbps modem, pictures could still be slow and GIFs were painful to download. It wasn’t until home DSL or cable connections became common that sharing a video was even close to reasonable. In that environment, we saw the start of media sharing services rushing to fill a previously unknown “need”. The most well known was Napster for music sharing, but we also saw the start of bittorrent clients. While not exactly legal, early music sharing and torrent sites showed that people wanted to be able to download media. And with sites like MySpace or GeoCities cropping up, it was apparent that people wanted to also create and share media. YouTube simply married up those two desires at a time where the technology could reasonably support it. And they have massively capitalized on the first mover advantage. With them also having Google money to scale the service, they now sit in a fairly privileged position in their niche.
I bring this up to say that, were US based services snapped out of existence, new services would arise to fill the gap. If you look at somewhere like China, where access to US services is highly regulated, they aren’t simply doing without, they are creating their own alternatives. TikTok is a good example, while it lacks the longer form videos of YouTube, it did provide media sharing in China. Were YouTube to be blocked at the Great Firewall, TikTok is in a good position to expand into the longer form videos. China also already has WeChat which fills much of the Twitter and FaceBook nice. Russia has VKontakte for those spaces as well. Basically, any place which isn’t well served by US based media giants has their own solutions to fill those gaps.
Western Europe (using EU as shorthand, though yes I know the EU isn’t all of Western Europe) has the issue of being closely linked with the US economically and culturally. US based services can operate in most EU countries with little friction. Sure, they have to figure out GDPR and Data Privacy issues, but that’s not a major barrier, despite US companies’ whining. So, given the size, first mover advantage and money behind the US based solutions, there hasn’t been space for reasonable EU based replacements. Why use some second rate EU based system, when the US system works so well, and the EU and US are such good allies and closely linked?
Of course, that last bit is changing (which is part of why you’re asking the question, no doubt). With the US Government going quickly off the rails, and US tech giants doing their damnedest to enshitify everything, the deep cultural links between the US and EU are starting to slip. There might now be space for EU based services to try to step in and replace services like YouTube or Twitter. And that’s the answer to your question. If those services go away, they will be replaced by something else. In time, they are probably bound to be replaced anyway. At one time everyone though MySpace was here to stay, these days I suspect some folks had to google it to figure out what the hell I was going on about. It may be a long time to come, but I’d bet on YouTube eventually being replaced. I have no idea what will replace it, but nothing lasts forever.
Of course, that last bit is changing (which is part of why you’re asking the question, no doubt).
maybe? :)
And that’s the answer to your question. If those services go away, they will be replaced by something else.
I would be tempted to agree (while also recognizing a minority (like myself) would try to steer away from anything remotely looking like a clone of those ‘original models’ and rekindle the interest for a smaller more fragmented Web) but, at the same time, suffice to see how that less-democratic USA we now have to live with is dealing with anything that even remotely looks like a threat: invading a country, taxing it do death (unless they withdraw any law deemed unfair for US businesses),… I doubt those USA would allow any serious alternative to grow and to reach a large enough audience… But then, in my first hypothesis and for some mysterious reason we would already have lost access to US tech/services, and therefore one may conclude that at the same time USA would have lost access to us as a potential market and wouldn’t have any leverage against our own attempts, well, maybe? ;)
but nothing lasts forever.
Not even empires, or wannabe new empires. But isn’t it what history is all about: failed dreams of grandeur?
edit: typos.
and rekindle the interest for a smaller more fragmented Web
Why wait? https://indieweb.org/
Thx for the link, I will check that and see if my own tiny, silly blog can fit anywhere with them.
Just FYI when switching to light mode the layout on your website breaks (doesn’t have a max-width any more)
How do you switch mode on my blog? I mean, it’s static and, to the best of my limited understanding, I’ve removed anything in the theme that remotely looked like a script… so I’m surprised you can toggle its theme. Is there a toggle I’ve missed somewhere? (Also, maybe we could discuss that through MP to avoid making useless noise in the thread ;))
Your blog follows the system theme.
porn? no change, furry porn sites aren’t run by big tech
gaming? very little change as all I seem to be interested in lately is Space Station 14 and that’s open source with a standalone launcher that doesn’t require Steam
social media? nearly all of that for me is just mastodon and lemmy.
youtube videos going away would suck for the lost knowledge and art and discussion, tho if it meant google died that’s a price I’m willing to pay
So… Just like I already do today?
I suppose you didn’t mean litterally just those, but many American companies.
But of the ones you listed, sure I don’t really use any of them.
Tiktok? Really? Yuck. Facebook? Never have. Netflix? Do they even have anything good on anymore? Google? I haven’t used their search index long time. And so on.
My email has never been a major provider.
So… Just like I already do today?
Maybe? That’s the whole point of my question (and why I also briefly shared my own usage in a comment): getting an overview of what it would change, if anything.
I suppose you didn’t mean litterally just those, but many American companies.
Indeed, I just listed the most obvious. Maybe it was also a way to trigger reactions?
Email is an interesting one. I haven’t used any major provider, and I always use my own domains.
I used to just host my own.
But hosting your own email is tricky now. Getting the major providers to trust your domain is a pain in the ass.
Yes, I tried self-hosting too. Too much frustration for me. Heck even with my own domain that is hosted by a tiny but legit host, can sometimes have issue with emails not reaching their destination.
I’d use a different search engine… and the rest of those I don’t use now. That’s not the Internet to me. I read webcomics and blogs, check fora, and play online games. I go directly to the websites I want, or I use RSS to get there from my aggregator. Hell, I still use webrings.
