Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet
The dream of a free and open Internet isn't dead—but in 2025, it's definitely more complicated.
For the launch of Nothing Personal, Mozilla Foundation’s new online magazine, we wrote an essay about the people and projects that are building alternative digital infrastructures in what we call the post-naive mindset.
Many of the projects we talk about are ones that we’ve joined and participated in early on: Subvert, the collectively owned bandcamp. Metalabel, the platform for collaboratively releasing creative work. Trust, the community and Berlin-based network of utopian conspirators. Future Art Ecosystems, Serpentine’s project for building 21st century cultural infrastructure. Perfectly Imperfect, the newsletter turned social network for human-led recommendations. And many more.
Our thesis: as Silicon Valley makes its pivot into its “Hard Tech” era, where the disrupting force of last decade’s consumer apps will seem innocent compared to the world-dominating mind-intruding superintelligences of the future, the people building alternatives are also entering their post-naive era. To “just buidl” (as many now-long-gone web3 projects once proclaimed) isn’t enough anymore in light of the broader structural and systemic forces at play today.
Release date: October 15, 2025
Partner: Nothing Personal / Mozilla Foundation
CONCEPT & CREATIVE DIRECTION: Severin Matusek
RESEARCH: Nick Houde
DESIGN: Paloma Moniz
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Last updated: July 23, 2025 ■ 11:52am