How can a group of volunteers build at least the tech for a replacement for the internet?
I was hoping that each individual user could run and maintain a piece of the infrastructure in a decentralized grassroots way.
How can users build a community owned and maintained replacement for the internet?
I hope that we can have our own servers and mesh/line/tower infrastructure and like wikipedia/internet-archive type organization and user donations based funding.
How could this be realized?
Can this be done with a custom made router that has a stronger wifi that can mesh with other’s of it’s kind? like a city wide mesh? or what are ways to do this?
Edit: this is not meant as a second dark web but more like geocities or the old internet with usermade websites
Maybe but that’s irrelevant. The question is how to improve things. I respect your idealism but I think that we’ll get much more progress by building on past achievements than by “replacing” them. Starting over always represents a giant penalty and so is almost always always a bad idea.
But sometimes whoever owns the infrastructure has you by the balls/ovaries and the only way to break free is to host everything yourself and own, run and maintain the infrastructure from a grassroots level.
Issues like net-neutrality stem from users not having control over the underlying systems.
The underlying system, if you mean the IP layer, is controlled by non-governmental organizations like ICANN. It’s already as open as any system can be in a world of nation states. If someone is censoring you then you can host in another more liberal jurisdiction, or even with a geopolitical enemy like Russia. Sure, your home jurisdiction could still block your site. But this is a problem of laws, it’s not something that has an easy technical fix. Same goes for net neutrality, which is a legal concept not a technical one.
The way to get a better internet is above all to vote for it and lobby for it. Boring but true.