Small Web Alternatives

Posted on by Shovas

I started moving back to the small web in 2025 as part of whole-of-life shift in the way I interact with technology and the online world. For me, this mostly involves moving away from social media platforms and big, corporate tech companies. And that meant rediscovering alternatives to what I had started to become dependent on, that is, subscription services, mainly, such as YouTube, Spotify, X/Twitter, etc. My goal has been to recreate those in a more human-centric way on the small web. This will be a living post that will serve to document how I went about that.

I’ve added a new page to cover The Small Web, in general.

YouTube

  • No alternative yet that wouldn’t sacrifice quite a lot
  • Potential alternatives: Archive.org, Khan Academy
    • Although these can’t replace livestreams and ongoig organizations of real community being formed by groups like Paul Vander Klay’s This Little Corner
  • I think I’ll let things settle for a year and see how I feel later. It’s already been quite a move so far.
  • I currently pay for YouTube Premium to avoid the ads, that’s the major dealbreaker for me, I can’t stand ads. But, looking back at the monthly payment and how much I’ve spent just on YouTube is irksome.
  • Sites like Rumble are indie alternatives to YouTube but still big consolidated platforms that aren’t really compatible with small web principles

Music

  • iTunes to iPhone from music I own, purchased online or ripped from CDs to mp3
  • Previously on Spotify Premium. Great service but accumulating regret looking back at how much I’ve spent on it. And just like every subscription, the price seems to go up every year or two.
  • I might consider going back to an old school music player at some point but one step at a time

Writing

  • WordPress (Self-hosted)
  • Instead of Substack, X Articles, etc.

Knowledge Base

  • MediaWiki
    • Wikis are a great way have web-accessible living documents for anything you can think of

Virtual Community Alternatives

  • Communities like Paul Vander Klay and the TLC who have developed virtual face-to-face meet ups over live streams using YouTube. Ideally, this would be accomplished using small web-compatible, decentralized means.

Small Web Friendly Virtual Community Streaming Ideas

  • Audio with still images, ultra low fps like animated gifs, or procedurally animated avatars
  • Size would be relatively small (30MB/hour) at around 64-96kbit/sec AAC/MP3
  • Could even archives files for later viewing/listening at that small size
  • Small Web friendly

Search

  • Brave Search – By the Brave privacy browser folks, completely independent web index. [My recommendation at this time.]
    • Set Brave Search as Default Browser Search Engine
      • This was tricky. You have to copy a real Brave Search url, right-click the url bar, manage search engine, add a ‘Site Search’, and paste in the url you copied, removing the extra stuff besides “q=%s”. But after that it’s smooth sailing.
  • Duck Duck Go – Privacy search engine and other privacy apps, based on Bing web index but privacy-respecting
  • Marginalia Search – Privacy respecting, non-commercial prioritization results
  • Wiby – “The Wiby search engine is building a web of pages as it was in the earlier days of the internet.”
    • “In addition, Wiby helps vintage computers to continue browsing the web, as pages indexed are more suitable for their performance.”

Set Custom Browser Default Search Engine

  • First, make a search on the desired search engine,like “Add Brave Search as default browser search engine”, and follow the instructions.
  • tl;dr Chrome/Chromium: You have to copy a real search url, right-click the url bar, manage search engine, add a ‘Site Search’, and paste in the url you copied, removing the extra stuff besides “q=%s”. But after that it’s smooth sailing.

AI

AI might not be compatible with small web ethos but there are still some small, independent, privacy-respecting AI services out there

  • Proton Lumo AI – From the gold standard Proton services guys who already do email, vpn, and more
  • Duck AI – From the Duck Duck Go privacy search engine guys, free and multiple popular LLMs to play with

Small Web Principles

  • Prefer self-hosting if possible but use third party services otherwise, just avoid small web-incompatible big corporate giants
  • Decentralizing over centralizing (ie. your own website vs big corpo platforms)

Questions

  • How to livestream on the small web?

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