Yes its true. Privacy through a VPN doesnt work often as sites secretly block the proxies. You are no longer anonymous, or you need to use your own server and thats fingerprintable.

I am not so worried. Metaphysical reasons aside, why can't a proxy do what needs to be done?

There is 0.0 things that can stop an edge proxy that appears trusted from the proxy on out, and but is doing what the end-user wants from the proxy on in. At some level, network traffic is physical...once data enters the physical realm, it is the end-user's data.

The irony is...if the information was that important & valuable, it could be printed and purchased by consumers, you know, like...it used to. lol.

A lot of these services have a network effect. Being the only user on the platform doesn't create any value. You need to have someone on the other side to interact with. I was able to get my entire family using Briar as an SMS replacement. I'm working on a few ideas for networking people who want to use Briar with each other so we can have private forums for an array of interests.

Another idea I thought of was copying static websites (won't work for websites that are a service) and then putting them out there as a .onion website using OnionShare. I think it would be a good idea to create sites that are lists of .onion sites or add them to Ahmia (http://juhanurmihxlp77nkq76byazcldy2hlmovfu2epvl5ankdibsot4csyd.onion/) for people to find.

We might not be able to build a web that looks like the web of today but we can build one that's on par or better than what existed in the 1990's. In a lot of ways, that could be a very good thing.

If people who are smarter and more capable than me really care about communal privacy and respect, I think the best thing that could happen is for all relevant non-user friendly apps, services, OSs, etc. to have their benefits ported into new applications that are as pleasing and easy to use as Windows and Mac. I love Linux and Debian tools, but trying to do anything on one of those systems feels like being forced to learn Chinese; therefore I can't recommend them to my friends and family. Which, after going down the rabbit hole, is depressing to say the least.

How can the privacy alt web correlate with the content of data itself and the ability to access the data? How might private storage compete with corporate super hardrives for websites?

The problem really isn't the internet, the problem is how big techs, which have the necessary resources to build complex infrastructures, are dealing with it trying to costantlyincreaseing their profit, and that is son of our broken economical system.

I'm a strong believer that for changing the internet we'll first need to think about a new and different economic system, where there aren't central institutions printing money for nothing, and that, as always happened in history, has to start again by switching back to a deflatory system.

Now if i think about a deflatory economic system on which software can be built on i cannot think something else of Bitcoin, if lightning network is the layer granting micropayments on it, software built on lightning network can be what makes us detatch from this shitty web based on ads and unrestricted profilation.

It's still on its infancy but honestly i don't think a decentralized network more trusted than bitcoin exists worldwide. Installing a full node/lightning node with every internet modem ineveruy home would make the infrastructure for a completely different internet.

I've been seeing some projects built on lightning network like the impervious browser, it kinda vanished, much more work is still needed.

In my opinion that's what we would need to work for, we can't exclude the economic model from the internet because that's just how our society works and always worked, collaboration is needed to build something better togheter, and that most of the times requires and is facilitated by some form of economical incentive. But we need a different type of incentive.

Threema for messaging. More private and secure than Signal. I use it for 10 years with no issues.

I'm building a protocol that's lies on top of IP; secure, anonymous, and takedown safe.

You can use it to make a website, or a chat program (I've got crude but working examples), and not Xi nor Putin can take it down as long as there are people using it.

I have a working version but I'd need a community trying it out, use it, give feedback etc.

Any recommendation greatly appreciated!

Cheers