I used the internet for decades before any of the services you list existed. These days I use a few of them, but if they disappeared tomorrow I'd just go back to how things used to be.
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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It's one of the thing I would like to know: how many of us have had a taste of the old web and how many of the younger people have no idea anon corporate(US)-owned Web was even a thing.
Like I said in my answer, 'my' Web wouldn't change much either: blogs and emails wouldn't go away, just less blog/emails to and from the US, probably ;)
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I would use the internet like I did back in 2005 I guess. Seriously... the necessity of these tech companies is a mixture of them sniffing their own farts too much, propaganda from them to ensure they are perceived as essential, and finally people being too lazy to find alternatives.
US tech is a big pile of garbage.
All of it is to make you addicted, to track you, to influence you, to collect all sort of intel about you, and then use that against you. And they will serve you ads as the cherry on top.
For me they can all disappear and be gone. There are plenty of activities (internet or otherwise) that can be done without that pile of shit.
I have Proton with custom domain as email service, I have my own encrypted backup in an European VPS, have my own private cloud also in European VPS.
Don’t need US garbage.
How would I use internet?
Pretty much the way I use it now?
For maps I use OSM, with eventual searchs in HEREwego in case I don't find something.
I use proton and tuta as mail services.
I don't have any social media account (that is xitter, fb and the likes).
I don't use youtube at all (I prefer reading to watching a video):
For gaming I mostly play indies and they are rarely from the US, I could live without the US ones. Worst case, I love retrogaming, I can go for years with my chinese retro-handheld and the amount of roms and romhacks that exist right now
As for streaming? I'm all in stremio, and I despise usonian content (even more lately) so all I watch is European shows, korean shows and anime.
As I was writing this, I came to realize that I really don't depend at all of usonian shit. They could go to hell and banish from this world for what I care.
The only difference is I wouldn't be able to use Amazon gift cards that I get given at work.
Is wikipedia in or out? Because that affects my answer a lot.
Same for xkcd.com
Good point. I would say we should consider Wikipedia as big-tech not "corporate owned" and since it's also open source we should be able imagine it would not be tied to being US.
Get a VPN and use Euro internet. Actually I'm starting to think that's a good idea anyway.
For me the web is mostly the place I read blogs. I read a lot of US-based ones that are maintained by smart people. I would miss those, but the rest of the world is certainly not lacking real smart people. If they were to remove access, the US would be the real loser imho.
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The same thing I use it for now, except it would be slower since I assume latency still matters.
Well I guess I'd use a different Lemmy server. Probably a different Mastodon server too. I think I'd have the same Matrix server though, so that's nice.
I do use Youtube. Through newpipe though. I'll extend your premise , and presume there is no large tech company holding any site or service online. That also includes any generative AI.
How would I use internet?
Well, the same I did in the early 90s I guess. I can't fathom it would be long before some kind of search engine popped up though. I guess I'll be searching art online and sharing mine on platforms similar to Deviantart or the likes, if DA doesn't exist I one hundred percent believe there would be online forums dedicated to sharing art and connecting through messages. I would probably also be text roleplaying in forums as well. Those things still exist on a small scale today.
I guess I would also connect to check news to a couple official news sites if there is no such thing as rss. Same for weather forecast.
I wonder what the situation would be about maps. Without Google, would we still have something large and accessible such as OSMand? I believe not only we would, they would be better, and they would probably be easier to use downloaded locally so that's probably another thing I'd do.
Do we still have torrenting? I can see myself torrenting even more if I don't have any streaming platforms.
I would use that corporate-free Web for email, like we used to in the 90s) and for the Fediverse (the little of it I’m using). I would use it to read… blogs, and to post more regularly on my own blog too.
I don’t use social media much (beside here) and would not miss not accessing Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter or whatever else. I have not used Google for search for quite a few years now, so that would not change much for me.
I would probably miss YT, though. I would try find alternatives to it and... to the majority of US content I’m subscribed to on YT.
I’m not much of a gamer and would not miss much there. I do play chess, mostly IRL and against people not machine, but I would probably still play from time to time online chess on Lichess (not US and not corporate owned, no tracking, no ads, free and open source).
I’ve quit using streaming services a few years ago, moving back to owning physical copies of the media I watch or listen to, and read.
Since, I use Free/Libre Software there is also no real dependency on any country of origin for them. Also, all those apps all work fully offline too. No need to even connect to the Internet to use them.
Without ICANN, the domains (market & tech) would become so much less US centric. A dream!
I would probably need a different phone (iPhone) and would replace YouTube with Nebula or something. Other than that nothing would change for me.