The small web is the universe of personal blogs, small independant sites, forums, and sources that recall the early internet, sometimes called the cozy web or the indie web. One great tool is by the paid search engine Kagi, https://kagi.com/smallweb/, which is itself powered by a simple public list of "small" websites.

The list is full of sites written out of pure passion, or written with such non-commoditized intentions that they brim with authenticity and unique perspective. In the universe of platform-organized content, people speak within the conversational frames made by 'the algorithm', to viewers who are engaged through the interface of a slot-machine. Isn't it refreshing to be reminded of the more primitive but nevertheless beautiful internet experiences of the small web?

While some will say that preferences and markets are the end all be all, I strongly believe there's a problem to be solved here. Suppose you've just discovered Kagi's SmallWeb, and you want to stay in this human-centric content ecosystem as much as possible. What can you do? Use Kagi for search sure, but for news you'll still end up on AdSense-driven pages, or searching on ad-supported platforms.

Maybe you figure out how to join a mastodon server, or try BlueSky, or start joinging user-moderated forums. Nevertheless you find yourself going to the platforms for discover, because its just so much more engaging.

The small web is in some sense defined by its not having been commoditized. That's to say, I think the solutions to this problem cannot be very profitable. What we need are user-alligned discovery tools built on public-service indeces.

The discovery tools (the "algorithm" that delivers us content) should clearly be in a marketplace where crappy echo-chambers are embarassing vices, and innovations to maximize learnedness and informedness are encouraged and rewarded. I want to pay netflix-subscription amounts for a tool that transforms youtube, reddit and twitter from the time sucking mind-holes into perspective-enhancing, knowledge-accumulating tools.

One of the big problems is that internet indeces seem to be natural monopolies, which is why I think we need the public-service indeces.