The good
- HyperText is awesome.
- Personal websites are awesome.
- RSS/Atom is awesome.
- HTTP is fundamentally very simple.
- Modern TLS is reasonably secure, you just need to trust your certificate authorities. Certificates are available for free.
- HTML is fundamentally very simple. While its syntax is a bit cumbersome, there’s a reasonable wrapper.
- CSS is very powerful.
- JavaScript let’s us built highly interactive applications that work cross-platform. While the language is a bit weird, there’s a reasonable wrapper.
The bad
Most websites are part of some centralized silo instead of being independent.
There is no good search engine. Google tends to drop search terms unless you quote them, DuckDuckGo still cannot compete for obscure queries (which I do most of the time).
There is no independent browser (Google develops Chromium and controls Firefox by being its major sponsor). No fork actually has the resources to maintain the software themselves. Since the web has become incredibly complicated and is continuing to get more complicated, competing with Google becomes increasingly more difficult.
Firefox and Chromium do not provide adequate privacy out of the box.
Many websites are needlessly inaccessible to people with disabilities.
Many websites are needlessly broken without JavaScript.
Many websites are needlessly bloated.