For many of us of a particular vintage, the internet blossomed in the ’90s with the invention of the Web and just a few years of development. Back then, we had the convenience of expression on the WWW and the backup of mature services such as IRC for all that other stuff we used to get up to. Some of us still hang out there. Then something happened. Something terrible. Big-commerce took over, and it ballooned into this enormously complex mess with people tracking you every few seconds and constantly trying to bombard you with marketing messages. Enough now. Many people have had enough and have come together to create the Tildeverse, a minimalist community-driven internet experience.
Tilde, literally ‘ ~ ‘, is your home on the internet. You can work on your ideas on a shared server or run your own. Tilde emphasises the retro aesthetic by being minimal and text-orientated.
The Tildeverse also supports Gopher and the new Gemini protocol, as well as IRC (I saw over 700 active IRC users across the 9 servers), wikis, RSS, Jitsi, Cryptpad, news aggregation, a Minecraft server, a Gopher proxy, a radio service, their own Mastodon instance, and lots more. Due to its nature it is lightweight, fast and clean.
A modern web browser will work with much of it, but RSS readers, IRC chat clients, NNTP (Network News Transfer) clients, the Lynx browser, and similar lightweight clients really rule here.
The Tildeverse is the main site which has links to many of the other services available. It is very much like going back in time to a cleaner, simpler, well-meaning world. Yes, commercial entities won’t be there as this is the world they tried to swamp with their banner ads, tracking, 3rd party cookies, pop-ups, and glitzy advertising. None of that works on the Tildeverse.
There are two videos at the linked post below that explain a bit more about it.
See https://hackaday.com/2024/09/14/taking-back-the-internet-with-the-tildeverse/