I don't want to be part of the "small web" - I want to be part of the web. If my stuff can't be found in a sea of a million ad-ridden whatever sites so be it, but I am not going out of my way to submit stuff to special search engines or web rings, I've been there in the 90s.
I doubt the web will allow itself to be transformed into our idealized version of it, so the question seems to just be: do you want to be part of the obscure circle or not?
Neither choice is right or wrong, but I like the idea of a cool community amidst the enshittification of the rest of the web.