I keep hoping that one day we’ll have a true “alt-net” like mastodon and Lemmy are starting to form, but for the most part these services (freenet/tor/etc) are dead or full of unsavory or illegal material.
Seems like it needs a bit more work. It does seem to be interesting, but what’s the point of a network with no one on it?
Having a simple site with no ads and no js is just a matter of intention. We can have those on the web if people really wanted to.
I don't have the answer but freenet isn't it.
There are legitimate reasons to use tor, but onion sites don’t seem to be part of it, and when I’m evading censorship to watch Netflix or something I’d rather use a vpn.
Freenet is more like a depository of documents, so you can't really host a site on it, there is no 2-way communication. In many ways it's a predecessor to ipfs.
In a liberal democracy, it makes sense that its use cases are mostly criminal, because the censorships it evades are mostly eroded by social reform. Those who are left are not hiding from censorship but from democracy.
However, when democracy and liberty are set aside, by fascism or war, these tools really shine. (E.g. BBSes being run on network printers during the wars in Europe in the 90's.)