The old web never went away, it never died. It was you who left. You who runs a corporate browser that can't even load HTTP pages anymore. You who only post on massive corporate run social media (like I am with HN). You who host your website on github or behind cloudflare or don't even bother and just have a mastodon or facebook page (both exclusively javascript applications).

The old web is still there, almost invisible under the piles of corporate javascript applications. There's probably more old web now than there was when the old web was new. It's just that in terms of relative ratios it's buried under so much crap and search engines are so bad no few can surf it. Heck, there's even still usenet and people posting there like myself. It's not dead and it's not spammed anymore, and it's a true federated protocol.

But it is easy to be the change. Self host your website from your home computer. Don't use Chrome or Chrome derivatives. Don't put computational paywalls in front of your services like cloudflare or even Anubis. The truth is that for most websites in most situations, all that is not needed. And most importantly, surf the web. That'll require setting up the modern version of webrings: feeds. And sharing feeds with your friends and peers.