First of all: melodramatic much? “Doomsday device”

A corporation run by a manchild on short leash from investors? Come off it

this tool is as nothing more than the guttennburg press equivalent for the 21st century and nothing more

it could have been a way to torpedo the rich and powerful but that ship has sailed since we sold it out to them (virtually from day one might I add)

this article is so off that mark that it hardly qualifies as an opinion

more like eternal September first ever essay “hai government regulators are like violence - if they are not working it’s because we are not using enough, i can haz into forum post?”

There’s a notion that the social web was once useful, or at least that it could have been good, if only we had pulled a few levers: some moderation and fact-checkingy here, a bit of regulation there, perhaps a federal antitrust lawsuit. But that’s far too sunny and shortsighted a view

Please

that is the sunny outlook? Oh my...

Let me burst that bubble for ya champ: the notion that social web once was good is BS

geeks have been explaining this one from day one of the advent of so-called social media platforms

it’s always been a fallacy and is now standard fair - the dogma that The Problem is the wild, wild west of the worldwide web

nothing could be further from the truth

on the contrary - any system with a single database under the control of a single legal entity is the very antithesis of an open net; it is the subversion of the idea of a free association network where everyone has the right and means to publish uncensored information

that’s fundamental and first and foremost - if your post doesn’t get that right the rest is either self aggrandising drivel or paid-for promo

the fact that people are now trying to regulate this very same database under the watchful eye of oversight committees (under the thinly veiled guise of “public outcry”) is mere endgame political posturing of a long term strategy - over three decades in the making - to reign in free exchange of information that the Pandora’s box of World Wide Web opened up; in spite of every effort by APRANET’s paymasters to design monitoring into the very fabric of the TCP/IP infrastructure

and every advent into the network design to make it more distributed has been downplayed and shot down ever since

just as every advent which makes it more restrictive and corruptible has been promoted and hailed as good

illegal exchange of ideas notwithstanding (drug trafficking; illegal pornographers et al) - all information exchange on a free network would be monitored by law enforcement in any case

this was never in doubt

a single database approach only makes it easier to identify and keep watch over the neutral players which constitute the bulk of the masses and data traffic on the internet; exchanges of garden variety, regular run of the mill information like food recipes and service complaints (interestingly enough about big business and government)

in other words - Facebook-like facilitation of Internet-based communications does nothing to deter or prevent people exchanging harmful information and gives only the power to big player agents to intervene and monitor and/or incite outrage of mass populous when it suits them and for a price

which makes it both profitable and exclusive to those that can afford it

this final nail in the coffin only serves to outlaw all other possible channels which hav...

First of all: melodramatic much? “Doomsday device”

A corporation run by a manchild on short leash from investors? Come off it

this tool is as nothing more than the guttennburg press equivalent for the 21st century and nothing more

it could have been a way to torpedo the rich and powerful but that ship has sailed since we sold it out to them (virtually from day one might I add)

this article is so off that mark that it hardly qualifies as an opinion

more like eternal September first ever essay “hai government regulators are like violence - if they are not working it’s because we are not using enough, i can haz into forum post?”

There’s a notion that the social web was once useful, or at least that it could have been good, if only we had pulled a few levers: some moderation and fact-checkingy here, a bit of regulation there, perhaps a federal antitrust lawsuit. But that’s far too sunny and shortsighted a view

Please

that is the sunny outlook? Oh my...

Let me burst that bubble for ya champ: the notion that social web once was good is BS

geeks have been explaining this one from day one of the advent of so-called social media platforms

it’s always been a fallacy and is now standard fair - the dogma that The Problem is the wild, wild west of the worldwide web

nothing could be further from the truth

on the contrary - any system with a single database under the control of a single legal entity is the very antithesis of an open net; it is the subversion of the idea of a free association network where everyone has the right and means to publish uncensored information

that’s fundamental and first and foremost - if your post doesn’t get that right the rest is either self aggrandising drivel or paid-for promo

the fact that people are now trying to regulate this very same database under the watchful eye of oversight committees (under the thinly veiled guise of “public outcry”) is mere endgame political posturing of a long term strategy - over three decades in the making - to reign in free exchange of information that the Pandora’s box of World Wide Web opened up; in spite of every effort by APRANET’s paymasters to design monitoring into the very fabric of the TCP/IP infrastructure

and every advent into the network design to make it more distributed has been downplayed and shot down ever since

just as every advent which makes it more restrictive and corruptible has been promoted and hailed as good

illegal exchange of ideas notwithstanding (drug trafficking; illegal pornographers et al) - all information exchange on a free network would be monitored by law enforcement in any case

this was never in doubt

a single database approach only makes it easier to identify and keep watch over the neutral players which constitute the bulk of the masses and data traffic on the internet; exchanges of garden variety, regular run of the mill information like food recipes and service complaints (interestingly enough about big business and government)

in other words - Facebook-like facilitation of Internet-based communications does nothing to deter or prevent people exchanging harmful information and gives only the power to big player agents to intervene and monitor and/or incite outrage of mass populous when it suits them and for a price

which makes it both profitable and exclusive to those that can afford it

this final nail in the coffin only serves to outlaw all other possible channels which have not been vetted and approved by government

so basically only regulated information will be legal and anything outside of Twitter, Facebook and the like can either comply or become subject to law enforcement

by and for in the name of the will of the people

game, set, match

Thanks for playing “The Declaration of Independence of the Internet”

I for one have welcomed our new technocrat overlords eve since The Zucc blew past his first million users some ten years ago

That was checkmate for me. We have just been dancing around the finishing touches ever since: little bit of controversy here, some censorship there, experiments with riots in the middle east, bit of tracking to advertise better here and there and here we are

ps there are only two industries that refer to their customer base as “users”