There's an element of nostalgia, certainly but it's also a reaction to the overwhelmingly commercial web. Why not build something instead of scrolling through brief videos interspersed with more and more ads that follow you everywhere?

Large companies have helped build the web but they've done at least as much, if not more, to help kill it.

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Karrot_Kream 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The small web can be a lot of things, but IMO it gets too overrun by the ideologically zealous. One does not have to believe in primitive anarchism to enjoy camping, for example. In general it seems any niche idea on the internet is like candle flame to zealous moths.

	▲	krapp 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Ideological zealots are more or less the only people who hate the modern web so much that they want to quarantine themselves within an entirely different and functionally limited protocol or ecosystem. Everyone else is fine discussing camping in Facebook groups and on Reddit and wherever, maybe just using an ad blocker.