Why this exists
README.txtThe modern web has become hostile to discovery. Search engines optimize for engagement and ad revenue, surfacing the same handful of sites while burying personal websites, independent projects, and genuinely useful resources beneath SEO-optimized noise and AI-generated slop.
We believe there should be another way to discover the internet than daily doomscrolling, hoping to find a pearl among ten thousand garbage posts. The good websites exist — they're just buried. This directory digs them up.
A directory for the sites that don't have marketing departments.
- The Web We Lost — Anil Dash
- Rediscovering the Small Web — Parimal Satyal
- Marking the Web's 35th Birthday — Tim Berners-Lee, 2024
- I Miss the Old Internet — terraaeon.com
- Human over algorithm. Every listing reviewed by a person. AI assists but never decides.
- Quality over quantity. 100 excellent sites beat 10,000 mediocre ones.
- Browsing over searching. Optimized for exploration and serendipity, not retrieval.
- Transparent over opaque. Curation criteria, rejection reasons, and infrastructure are public.
- Lightweight over bloated. Fast loading, minimal JavaScript, respects your attention.
- Independent over captured. No VC funding, sustainable by design.
- Undiscovered over ubiquitous. If everyone already knows it, it doesn't need our help.
| Original Content | Produces original work, not aggregated or AI-generated |
|---|---|
| Human Author | A real person or team is identifiable |
| Respect for Users | No dark patterns, aggressive popups, hostile cookie banners |
| Active & Maintained | Updated within last 12 months (exceptions for evergreen resources) |
| Useful or Interesting | Provides genuine value, information, or creative expression |
AI-generated content farms, SEO spam, aggressive advertising (more than 2 ads per page), deceptive practices, hate speech, paywalled content without free offerings, crypto/NFT promotions.
Submit a site
Know a site that belongs here? We welcome submissions from anyone — reviewed within a few days.
+ Submit a site