I like the #smallweb the way it is. Quiet, a little rough around the edges, not trying to sell me anything every five seconds. It reminds me of how the internet used to feel before everything got optimized and polished into the same shape.
That said, there are a few things it could use without losing that spirit.
First, better ways to read. Not fancier, just smoother. If I’m following a handful of gemlogs, a couple Mastodon folks, maybe a Lemmy thread here and there, I shouldn’t have to juggle three different apps and a dozen tabs. Give me something simple that pulls it all together and lets me just sit and read. No ads, no tracking, no friction.
Second, a little more durability. Too many good sites just disappear. I get it, people move on, but it would be nice if there were easier ways to mirror or archive things so the good writing doesn’t vanish overnight. The small web has a memory problem.
Third, discovery that doesn’t feel like an algorithm breathing down your neck. I don’t want “recommended for you.” I want “here’s what someone else thought was interesting.” Old-school blogrolls, human-curated lists, maybe even random links that actually surprise you. Let people point to things they care about, not what performs well.
And maybe this is just me, but a bit more cross-connection wouldn’t hurt. Gemini, Gopher, the web, the #fediverse all feel like neighboring towns that don’t always have good roads between them. You can get there, but it takes effort. Smoother bridges would go a long way.
None of this needs to be big or complicated. In fact, it shouldn’t be. The whole point is to keep things human-scale. But a few small improvements could make it easier to stick around, read more, and maybe even contribute something back without feeling like you need to build a whole platform just to say your piece.
That’s really all I want out of it. A place that’s simple, a little more connected, and worth coming back to at the end of the day.
On the first point, one of the reasons I use and would suggest either Mbin or Friendica. Both are hybrid, meant to bring together microblogging and threads, like Mastodon and Lemmy, and by extension, a bigger chunk of the fediverse.
On the second point, if you want to keep things floating around, maybe cross-post them to a personal community in a separated instance. The line between preservation and redundancy is often non-existant. Other than that, there are some things you could do like commenting or boosting derelict posts from dead instances, to help keeping them floating.
On the third point, I suppose Lemmy can be a bit laborious to find new stuff, so specially for it, I’d suggest places like !communitypromo@lemmy.ca and !trendingcommunities@lemmy.cafe, though maybe those would defeat the purpose. Alternatively, and bringing Mbin and Friendica a third time, they have boost features, so if someone you follow boosts posts, they get included in your feed (note: boosts in the feed are opt-in on Mbin).
On the fourth point, on the threadiverse side of things, Lemmy can be a bit isolated indeed. With microblogging and by extension (ahem) hybrid thread/microblogging platforms, there are more options, like trending tags bots, RSS Parrot, Bridgy Fed, and easier connection to less standard places using ActivityPub. RSS Parrot in special I’m finding pretty useful. Most stuff I follow is in places with RSS, so I can add them to the bot to have in my feed.
And back on point 1, whatever I can use on browsers, I do. If I don’t get a function natively, I make Ublock Origin filters and Violentmonkey scripts. If I can’t figure out, I ask LLMs to generate something that works for me. If I need to open links to other instances because of e.g. RSS, I have an userscript I keep increasing that redirects the links to my instance’s search page, since searches are hardcoded in the link.