I think equating "the internet" and "the web" is sloppy; the author does this in the first paragraph and throughout the article.

> It [The Internet/The Web] took off with hackers running independent servers in their basements.

Is that true? Maybe if we're talking "the internet", things like MUD, IRC, Usenet, or BBS servers were run by individuals, but looking at the "List of websites founded before 1995"[1] it seems like there were big players outside of labs/universities pretty early on in the history of The Web. I'm asking a legitimate question here: was www successful (at least in part) due to websites from individuals (let's maybe say "students on university networks" rather than "hackers in basements") over large institutions (like the magazines)?

> The informational landscape today shifted from people sharing personal websites to sharing social posts.

Again, I question the accuracy. Did more people have personal websites than BBS/Usenet/Web-Forum accounts?

Regarding the dpage.io site this article is promoting:

> As you can see, there are no ads, no clutter, only information that was created by the user.

This is a problem I think the "distributed web" community has to deal with: What if the user wants to monetize their content, perhaps with ads? Either people are going to do some "pay per view" of articles on your network (which seems to be antithetical to "information for the masses" that I have a feeling most decentralized developers identify with), or they use ads. Want your ads to do better? well don't fund the network that has reader anonymity built in.

> The domain name system enables any person on earth to have his human-readable address on the web. This system is decentralized by design and is owned by nobody.

So they want to fork DNS from ICANN so your identity is always linked to your website?

> Dpage.io is not a website builder, and it is not a blogging platform.

Design your own website, upload it to us and we'll host it for free.

Reading the contents of the strange little iPad on https://dpage.io/ it says:

> Your user profile details along with your data are by default stored on a free Blockstack's Gaia storage hub. DPAGE doesn't store your data on its own servers. You can run your own storage hub on a server of your choice.

So it is that kind of distributed server: the one you run yourself.

<aside>
The phrase "a free Blockstack's Gaia storage hub" is strange and feels very corporate, being sure to indicate that it's not just any Gaia server, but the one OWNED by Blockstack. Sometimes it's the little things that show you how much control the marketing department has.
</aside>

I'm not going to comment on their blockchain stuff.

I'm only criticizing because I think people are putting lots of effort into solutions that are misguided: "The people WANT to have their own websites! This is the platform they'll want for sure!". I very well may be missing the point here, but inaccuracies and romanticizing the past lead me to skepticism.

XAMPP[2] is still around after 17 years, (last updated 4 days ago), which I remember being super easy to setup your own site, and I have a feeling it's even easier now. CMS platforms like Wordpress.com, SquareSpace, etc, do allow you to own your own content, easily use themes/plugins, and backup/export everything if you want to move (for a price, because they're providing a service, which is reasonable).

I think the most interesting decentralized platform is dat/beakerbrowser, because

A) There's already a tangible working product (Beaker)

B) There's no login/user-admin: your browser upon startup is a node in the network

C) Backwards compatible with http(s), so it's not like there's a hard fork of the DNS namespace and links no longer work.

D) No concept of privacy/encryption (that I'm aware of). You really don't own your data, you publish it and the system is designed to allow anyone/everyone with the link to copy it, change it, host it, seed it. If you don't like that, don't use it.

Of course you have to seed your site, so again there's a chicken and egg problem of hosting your own server (but if it's just running the browser until your friend says they've downloaded the site, it's easy, right?)

I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant, but I guess it did.

I wish dpage/decentus/blockstack/gaia good luck because I think distributed webs do have a future and every player can bring something to the table, but I hope their message/intentions become a little more focused.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_founded_befor...

[2] https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html