The Quiet Erosion of the Open Web (And What We Can Do About It)

There's something we don't talk about enough. The internet that made the web magical—that feeling of stumbling onto a stranger's GeoCities page at 2 AM, of building something from scratch just because you could—that internet is quietly disappearing.

We're handing our digital lives over to a handful of companies, one Terms of Service update at a time.

But here's the strange part: the answer might already exist. It comes from a place known for fjords, hygge, and surprisingly harsh winters. It's been keeping communities alive for hundreds of years. And it's called dugnad.

What Exactly Is Dugnad?

Say it like "doo-nad." Now forget everything you know about charity, because this isn't that.

Dugnad is when a whole community comes together to maintain something shared—repairing a church roof, clearing snow from elderly neighbors' paths, painting the local school. Nobody gets paid. Nobody keeps score. You just do it because the community's wellbeing is your wellbeing.

Think of it as a collective effort where everyone's contribution matters and everyone shares the benefits.

André Skjeggestad, a Norwegian developer, asked a question that stuck with me: what if this mindset could save the open web?

The Problem Nobody Talks About Enough

Let's be specific about what's happening:

A few companies own everything. Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft. They decide how websites get built, hosted, and discovered. One policy change, and your entire online presence can vanish or become suddenly unprofitable.

The web keeps breaking apart. Remember when a link worked everywhere? Now every platform wants its own ecosystem, its own rules, its own walled garden. Interoperability—the thing that made the web special—is eroding fast.

Your attention matters more than your needs. Corporate platforms optimize for engagement metrics. What keeps you scrolling beats what actually helps you. The incentive structures are fundamentally misaligned.

Personal websites became a technical nightmare. Fifteen years ago, you could launch a simple site in an afternoon. Now you're managing domain registrars, hosting accounts, SSL certificates, CDN services, analytics, and god knows what else. The complexity tax keeps rising.

Where Dugnad Meets the Digital World

Here's the beautiful part: this isn't some abstract philosophy. Dugnad already exists online.

Open-source work is pure dugnad. When developers spend evenings maintaining Let's Encrypt (the service that provides free SSL certificates for millions of websites), they're participating in digital community work. Every startup that saves money because of this project benefits from the commons—even if they never contributed a single line of code.

Standards organizations run on dugnad logic. The IETF brings together engineers from competing companies to figure out how protocols should work. Not for their employers' advantage—for everyone's. That's dugnad in practice.

Small businesses helping each other. When independent hosting companies share DDoS protection strategies, when registrars collaborate on fraud prevention, when agencies mentor junior developers for free—these tiny acts build the web's resilience.

The Domain Problem (And Our Approach)

At NameOcean, we think about this constantly.

Domains are foundational. They're how you stake your claim online. But the domain industry has gotten complicated in all the wrong ways—registrars focused on upsells, hidden renewal fees, interfaces designed to confuse rather than help.

A dugnad approach to domains looks like this:

• Education should be free. DNS shouldn't require a CS degree. Every tutorial, every explainer, every blog post that helps someone understand how domains work—that's a contribution to the commons.

• Tools should benefit everyone. Built something genuinely useful for managing domains? Open-source it. Non-proprietary tools make the whole ecosystem stronger.

• Advocacy matters. ICANN decisions, transfer policies, pricing structures—these affect every person with a website. Registrars that push for accessibility instead of just protecting margins? That's dugnad in action.

What You Can Do Today

You don't need a company or a budget. Here are concrete ways to participate:

Support the projects you rely on. Use WordPress? File bug reports, write documentation, contribute code patches. Rely on Let's Encrypt? Consider donating to the Internet Security Research Group. These projects survive on attention and contributions.

Share your knowledge publicly. Solved a gnarly technical problem? Write about it. Answer questions on forums. Mentor someone who's just starting. Knowledge hoarded benefits no one.

Vote with your wallet. Sometimes that means paying slightly more for ethical services that don't harvest your data or trap you in their ecosystem. Sometimes it means choosing free and open alternatives even when flashier proprietary options exist.

Show up to governance discussions. ICANN needs voices beyond big corporations. Standards bodies benefit from people with real-world experience. Your perspective genuinely matters.

The "I'm Just One Person" Problem

You might be thinking: "The web is massive. I'm just one developer/small business/random person. What difference can I make?"

This thinking is precisely why the open web keeps shrinking. We assume someone else will maintain the commons. We assume the big players have it covered.

They don't. And they won't.

Every developer who chooses open-source tools over vendor lock-in makes a statement. Every business that pays slightly more for ethical hosting casts a vote. Every individual who registers their own domain instead of relying entirely on social platforms draws a line.

The dugnad tradition survived for centuries because communities figured out a simple truth: your community's wellbeing is your own wellbeing. Waiting for someone else never works.

Building Something Worth Keeping

At NameOcean, we believe the web works best when it belongs to everyone. Not owned by one corporation, not fragmented into incompatible bubbles, but genuinely open for anyone to build and create.

That's why we focus on practices that strengthen the digital commons. Free SSL on every domain. Pricing you can actually understand. Tools that give you control instead of creating dependency.

But we know one company's commitment isn't enough. The open web needs collective action. Shared responsibility. The willingness to contribute to something bigger than any individual bottom line.

Dugnad worked for Scandinavian communities because everyone understood: participation benefits everyone. Silence benefits no one.

The web is our shared community now—maybe the most important one we have.

The real question isn't whether we can afford to invest in the open web. It's whether we can afford not to.

How do you practice dugnad in your web work? We'd love to hear about it—whether through open-source contributions, community building, or simply maintaining your own little corner of the internet with care and intention.