
Pirate Bay founder: We’ve lost the internet, it’s all about damage control now - benevol
https://thenextweb.com/eu/2017/06/09/pirate-bay-founder-weve-lost-the-internet-its-all-about-damage-control-now
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benevol
_In Sunde 's opinion, people focus too much on what might happen, instead of
what is happening. He often gets questions about how a digitally bleak future
could look like, but the truth is that we're living it: "Everything has gone
wrong. That's the thing, it's not about what will happen in the future it's
about what's going on right now. We've centralized all of our data to a guy
called Mark Zuckerberg, who's basically the biggest dictator in the world as
he wasn't elected by anyone. Trump is basically in control over this data that
Zuckerberg has, so I think we're already there. Everything that could go wrong
has gone wrong and I don't think there's a way for us to stop it." One of the
most important things to realize is that the problem isn't a technological
one. "The internet was made to be decentralized," says Sunde, "but we keep
centralizing everything on top of the internet."_

~~~
ilaksh
Things tend towards centralization in capitalist or communist societies. When
need to rethink things to avoid that by leveraging technology to allow for
diversity and evolution, with holism where it is needed.

I think in terms of the internet the answer is meshnets.

~~~
cJ0th
> I think in terms of the internet the answer is meshnets.

No it's not b/c that would assume the average person is willing to learn about
meshnets.

~~~
jononor
Why? The average person doesn't need to know about TCP/IP to use current
centralized networks

~~~
cJ0th
correct. Perhaps the word "learn" wasn't a good choice. What I meant is that
people have to be willing to change their behavior because mesh nets are not
something a powerful entity is going to force them to use.

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pedalpete
"companies will always have to put their financial gains first"

Though there is a ton of evidence for this, I've always disliked this type of
statement. A company does not have a mind of it's own, and therefore has no
concept of self-interest. It is the people at the company who are making the
decisions. It's why there is a backlash when companies don't behave the way
their customers expect them to.

In the end, it all does come down to people and the cultural influence. For
the past 50 years, we've culturally been dragged into a big business,
security, get rich mindset which has driven aspirations at the cost of our
freedoms, environment, and general social good.

I personally don't believe the Zuckerberg is 'evil'. Though the news feed has
issues, his overarching goal is admirable. I believe that Facebook now
understands the political difficulties the news feed creates, but if Facebook
were truly a dictatorship, they wouldn't be spreading multiple oposing
propaganda, would they? Zuck would have picked the candidate he liked, and
promoted that person. Facebook didn't do that, they let the people decide what
they wanted to see.

~~~
wayn3
if you lead a company, and dont do whats in the best interest of your
shareholders, youre getting sued and then you go to prison.

unless you get the law changed, companies absolutely have to put their
financial gains first.

~~~
kaffee
Isn't the bar for criminal liability fairly high? Doesn't a CEO usually get
fired and/or fined?

I'd be interested in learning about an case where a CEO goes to prison because
he didn't pursue shareholders' interests aggressively enough.

~~~
odonnellryan
Never has happened. You can be socially responsible even if it means "making
less than absolutely possible."

It's idiotic to think that any C-level has to always be doing what will
absolutely maximize profits. It's impossible for them to be doing that
constantly, all the time.

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geogriffin
For one, we've lost these services to capitalism, because it's difficult for
any alternative to operate in a capitalistic society. How many are going to
work on the open source alternative and still make enough to live comfortably?
Decentralized services are difficult to design to be usable and operate
reliably. We can't underestimate the amount of resources that goes into
software development.

Which is why I appreciate when a startup like WhatsApp spent so much effort on
end-to-end encryption with little to no financial incentive..

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louithethrid
I think we can still have free internet, in the lagrange points between the
giants, if we propell them against one another in fierce clashes - to try
users to migrate from one walled in garde to another. There will always be
little pockets of freedom for a short period in new markets emerging. There
will always be open source where companys have no real interest to maintain
near public infrastructure. I think one way to get open source to win, is to
have it as a way for companys to discard liability. If the plattform you hosdt
is open source, why should you be responsible if somebody else uses it to
fling viruses into the world. But to win against companys in user space, that
is near impossible.

