[um_ya]

There needs to be "content as a protocol" in the same way email is.

If I don't like one email provider, I can always move to a different provider without losing access to all the user's that remain there.

If I could make a Facebook post and have it's content propagate to other providers, websites would act more like UI filters rather than gatekeepers.

[kiwidrew]

That content protocol is called HTTP and the service discovery protocol is called DNS. I know that it's a bit cliche to say that these days, but acquiring a domain name (either directly from a TLD registrar or indirectly through e.g. a DynDNS provider) and pointing it at a webhost is what allows content publishers to "mint" their very own globally unique URLs. Any consumers that are equipped with a suitable user agent can then plug that URL into their browser and view that publisher's content.

Now let's be serious, there are numerous barriers that stand in the way of "normal" users that want to escape the evil platforms. Why not direct our ire at the real problem: Why Johnny Still Can't Host a Website!

And if we fix that, perhaps we can move on to Why Johnny Can't Get Any Visitors (Because Google Won't Index It) and Why Johnny's Visitors Don't Receive His Updates (Because Google and Mozilla Killed RSS).

[cookiengineer]

While I agree with you I think that most of the described effects do only exist because the way the internet works is centralized, and humans have to remember domains which they aren't very good at.

...otherwise the most googled term would not be facebook, just to click on the facebook.com link.

If there would be something like decentralized trackers (similar to the torrent architecture) you could have lots and lots of specialized communities that provide meta information about those websites and urls.

This would also allow different sources of traffic and updates if the discovery aspect of similar semantic content would be provided by something like a tagging system or a search field.

[kiwidrew]

> Humans have to remember domains

Humans don't have to remember domain names (and email addresses and URLs) because we have address books, contact lists, and bookmarks. We do have to recognize domains (and email addresses etc) when we see them, but that doesn't seem to present any issues in the real world.

Domains are absolutely everywhere in modern life: business cards, restaurant menus, outdoor advertising signage, and even in people's conversations with each other. People do, in general, understand how to use domain names.

Of course I do agree with your overall point that we need better protocols for content discovery, but I just don't think that domain names themselves are a stumbling block here.

[surajama]

You are basically describing IPFS. Content-based addressing instead of location-based addressing. Allowing content to be decoupled from any single hosting platform

[dfcowell]

This sounds like ActivityPub?