As a IT Professional I deal with acronyms and truncated names all day long so it is understandable that some people think DWeb relates to the Dark-Web where child predators and hacked user credentials live. Fortunately, DWeb is very unrelated to the darkweb.
What Is The DWeb?
DWeb is short form for “Decentralized Web” or “Distributed Web”. It is the term used to group technologies and policies that allow people to own their own data and control their own experiences on-line. DWeb is a response to corporate concentration of internet shared information. It looks fondly on the ‘good old days’ of the early internet when people said and did whatever they wanted without moderation or control because they were doing it on websites and chat rooms they owned (or managed).
Who Is Behind DWeb?
By definition DWeb would not be controlled by any one, person company or oligopoly. However, the first time read about DWeb in any formal way was this 2018 post from the Mozilla group (which was formed from the ashes of Netscape). Today, much of the work is being done by the good folks at Archive.org; the group behind the WayBackMachine.org which lets you browse the web pages of nearly any website at any point in history. You can look at GetDWeb.net for the most current discussions, webinares and resources.
What Are The Principles of DWeb?
Officially, DWeb has 5 principles.
- Technology for Human Agency
- Distributed Benefits
- Mutual Respect
- Humanity
- Ecological Awareness
However, the core concept is to take “platforms” (like Twitter and Facebook) and convert their usefulness in to “protocols”. For instance, a DWeb based system, would allow you to interact on Twitter when you want to and then pull your data and allow other chat/message applications to use the records of your activity on Twitter.
Is The DWeb a Place or a Product?
No, the DWeb is not a product or a place on the internet, it is a set of ever developing protocols and standards.
Does DWeb Work Against Big Tech Like Google, Twitter, Apple and Facebook?
Not really. DWeb systems can happily use all of the big tech names you can think of but DWeb wants you to to in control and not Google, Twitter, Apple or Facebook.
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