That was only a small part of "web 2.0". Just as important were syndication, embeddability and APIs. Web 2 were podcasts, blogs, RSS and pingbacks.

Web 1.0 evolved with user generated content and now more of the world's information is locked up behind a login screen than before.

What this has to do with what is being sold as "web 3.0" is not clear. Blockchains have their uses but it's not the web.

Wikis existed long before the term "Web 2" was invented, "Web 2" wasn't about user generated content or "socializing", but simply a commercial land grab.

Can't agree more. Creating and sharing content in a decentralized way is exactly what the web is about from its inception.

The only change that occured in the era marketed as "web2" is strong attacks against decentralization.

web1 was reading other people's content, web2 was about creating content and handing it to someone else to publish online, and web3 should be about retaining ownership of your own work. In theory, a web3 website could aggregate content produced by users while the users would be free to revoke the site's access, or they could move their content to a different site if they want, or they could delete it entirely. In a web3 world it should be the case that Reddit's access to content is by looking it up on a blockchain to publish, rather than claiming joint ownership of it.

This, obviously, assumes that you believe users retaining ownership of the content they make is a real and necessary benefit. I'm not sure about that yet. I don't really see why people need to.

Unfortunately however, regardless of whether web3 content ownership is a good thing or not, the current cohort of web3 businesses and evangelists seem more interested in shilling their own coins and many-thousands-of-dollars coding courses instead.

This all sounds very noble, but it will last precisely as long as it takes someone to right-click copy right-click paste.

Sure you can verify the hash and signature etc, but no one reading an article is going to bother verifying the signature apart from the real die-hards. Heck my mum can't even verify she typed in the right URI and ends up on all sorts of crazy scam sites (e.g. "I went to google and they said I had to call them about a virus and pay them £150 to fix it").

If someone posts something to reddit3, then someone copies it and reposts it again with a different hash and sig, what will happen? Nothing I expect.

The ownership aspect of web3 doesn't fix the problem you outline, sure, but it isn't meant to. Ownership of something isn't proof of uniqueness, it doesn't stop copying, and it would have no impact on what user's are able to do with other user's content. That's the same as ownership in the real world - the fact you own a Picasso doesn't stop me copying it, or photographing it, or telling people it's really by me. Ownership is about control of how legitimate third parties interact with your things, not how people copy them, illegally or otherwise. The control over copying comes from the legal mechanisms we attach to ownership, not the ownership itself. You can sue me for copying something, or report me to the police. The same would be true for web3 (if the courts choose to recognise that aspect of it all).

The benefit of web3 is about users being able to control how their content is published by web3 websites. Reddit3 would not be able to claim ownership of user's creations. Like I said, I don't know if it's necessary or even that useful for users to have that control, but people definitely complain about it a bit. Maybe it would be.

> You can sue me for copying something, or report me to the police. The same would be true for web3 (if the courts choose to recognise that aspect of it all).

So web3 is exactly like web2 then?

Legal system is still playing catch-up with web1.

Web2, in the social media sense, was about advertising and merchandising. Let’s not reinvent history with a fiction that never was.