
The Rising Threat of Digital Nationalism - chuhnk
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rising-threat-of-digital-nationalism-11572620577?mod=rsswn
======
paulddraper
> As the internet turns 50, the global vision that animated it is under
> attack.

The vision in 2019-50=1969 was in fact very far from globalist.

At that time it was the early stages of U.S. Dept of Defense project ARPANET.

It's largely the reason why IP/TCP largely lacks any security or DoS
prevention features: you needed a U.S. security clearance to even access it.

First non-U.S. access of any kind to the "internet" was in 1973, though
physical access continued to remain heavily restricted for years. (I say "the
internet" because it was still ARPANET and the Internet Protocol did not yet
even exist.)

Much later the WWW -- as the name itself suggests -- was a globally-minded
endeavor. The World Wide Web is 29 years old.

~~~
skissane
> First non-U.S. access of any kind to the "internet" was in 1973, though
> physical access continued to remain heavily restricted for years.

One could argue that the current "Internet" based on TCP/IP has only existed
since 1983, and the 1969-1982 ARPANET was a different internet given it was
based on a different and incompatible protocol stack (NCP).

"An internet" is just any network which connects networks. In that sense,
there have been (and may yet be) other internets running other protocol
stacks. "The Internet" is a particular internet running a particular protocol
suite (TCP/IP), and defined as such the Internet began operation on
1983-01-01.

~~~
paulddraper
Correct. It's a matter of semantics. Though "50-year-old internet" could only
refer to ARPANET.

As an aside, English style guides formerly required "an internet"/"the
Internet" distinction, however that has been changing in recent years to
lowercase "internet" in both cases.

In school I was marked down for writing "the internet", and now English
professors say that is in fact the right way to do it. Not even English is
immune to versioning.

~~~
jimmaswell
English teachers are generally petulant pedantic crocks anyway. We'd probably
have more/better writers without them ruining the subject for people as they
do.

~~~
aidenn0
It's interesting that you say this. I find that I had about as many good/great
English teachers as I did in other subjects, but there weren't many mediocre
English teachers.

I had a math teacher who literally never got up from his desk, visibly
counting down the years until he could collect his pension. I had similarly
checked out history and science teachers.

The not-good English teachers I had, however, seemed mad at the world and out
for blood. The name written on an assignment had a stronger correlation with
the grade than the content, so the only path to an A was to stroke the
teacher's ego

I even had a pair of friends do a blinded experiment to confirm this. They
each would type out their assignment, then would call each other and flip a
coin; Heads they write their own name, Tails they write the other person's
name.

In another occurrence, I had gotten on a teacher's bad-side and so the grades
on my papers had a hard ceiling of a C. I asked my dad for advice, and it was
roughly: Talk to the teacher, apologize for "not applying myself" offer to
redo back assignments. She didn't even have me redo any back assignments, but
suddenly I was getting As and Bs again.

Another occurance: I got my first paper of the class back with the only
markings on it "58, almost an A paper." Here was the dialog that ensued:

\----

Me: How many points is this out of?

Teacher: 100

Me: Is the class graded on a curve?

Teacher: No, straight 90/80/70

Me: So how is 58 "almost an A paper?"

Teacher: Well, just a few tweaks and it would be great,[encouraging tone] I'm
sure you'll do well in my course!

Me: ...

\----

To this day I still have not figured out what was going on in that teacher's
mind. It was a rare real-world moment where I honestly couldn't tell if I was
being trolled or not.

~~~
ianai
You probably needed to stroke her, his, or it’s ego again.

I had a math professor do that to me in undergrad. Fear of his type led me to
leave the field entirely after that degree. Just way too much power over me
with little to nothing I could do.

~~~
squiggleblaz
it's = it is. You were looking for "its"

gratuitous correction because of the topic. hth hand.

~~~
ianai
autocomplete made me do it.

------
esotericn
From what I can tell, the Internet still does effortlessly defy regulation.

The _businesses_ that operate on the Internet from meatspace don't.

Because they can't, at a fundamental level. They're based somewhere. They have
visible employees in jurisdictions. They represent enormous juicy targets with
tens, hundreds, thousands of millions of users to control.

They're huge companies. They have management structures, bureaucracies, whole
departments that result in the sort of nonsense we see like GDPR popups or
country blocks.

That's not the Internet of 50 years ago; it's not even the Internet of 20
years ago.

Alternatively, you could simply think of it like this - the everyman has been
regulated. The power users (for lack of a better term) are in much the same
situation that they were in 1990.

If you discount the fact that 'everyman' expects everyone to be on the "hip
new platform" (fb, snap, insta, tiktok, whatever) then honestly the situation
is way better than it was back then. It's just hard to ignore the cruft.

~~~
netcan
In the first point, I agree. What has changed is who's on the internet. The
average person may be snooped on, but they're not very regulated. What's
regulated are companies, especially large multinational corporations.

Essentially, when we say "regulate" today, that's kind of what we mean:
regulating bodies that that make rules for large corporations. Increasingly
regulated and a increasingly corporate came in tandem.

On your second point... I think it's kind of moot. Sure, the international
"old internet" still exists. You can take part in it like you did in 1996.
It's just dwarfed by the new internet.

I'd argue that's a technicality, the important parts of that internet's
"freedoms" are pointless when it's a vestigial artifact.

------
chatmasta
I thought this was going to be an article about people who feel more attached
to their digital communities than their geographical communities. That would
be an interesting avenue to explore.

~~~
nyolfen
as did i; my favorite on the subject is this one: [https://www.gwern.net/The-
Melancholy-of-Subculture-Society](https://www.gwern.net/The-Melancholy-of-
Subculture-Society)

> As ever more opt out, the larger culture is damaged.7 The culture begins to
> fragment back into pieces. The disconnect can be profound; an American anime
> geek has more in common with a Japanese anime geek (who is of a different
> ethnicity, a different culture, a different religion, a different language…)
> than he does with an American involved in the evangelical Christian
> subculture. There is essentially no common ground—our 2 countrymen probably
> can’t even agree on objective matters like governance or evolution!

> With enough of these gaps, where is ‘American’ or ‘French’ culture? Such
> cultural identities take centuries to coalesce—France did not speak French
> until the 1900s (as The Discovery of France recounts), and Han China is
> still digesting & assimilating its many minorities & outlying regions.
> America, of course, had it easy in starting with a small founder population
> which could just exterminate the natives.

> The national identity fragments under the assault of burgeoning subcultures.
> At last, the critic beholds the natural endpoint of this process: the nation
> is some lines on a map, some laws you follow. No one particularly cares
> about it. The geek thinks, ‘Meh: here, Canada, London, Japan, Singapore—as
> long as FedEx can reach me and there’s a good Internet connection, what’s
> the difference?’ (Nor are the technically-inclined alone in this.8)

~~~
joaksl
An american anime geek does not have more in common with a japanese anime geek
than an american evangelical. Race, nation, language, history, etc are far
more potent than what naive utopian people wish it were.

Communists used to think like you. They felt that a german factory worker had
more in common with a french or russian or chinese factory worker and that
introducing communist ideas would let awaken them to this "fact" and they
wouldn't join the army to kill each other. WW1 and WW2 proved that german,
french, russian, chinese, etc factories were more than willing to kill each
other by the millions.

> The geek thinks, ‘Meh: here, Canada, London, Japan, Singapore—as long as
> FedEx can reach me and there’s a good Internet connection, what’s the
> difference?’ (Nor are the technically-inclined alone in this.8)

I guess the "geek" hasn't tried to getting visas or immigrating to those
places.

Also, you have to realize that all it takes in just one nationalist movement
to spur nationalism almost everywhere. Nationalism has that kind of virtuous
cycle.

Look at the current US-China trade war. It not only increases nationalism in
the US, it also increases in China.

~~~
claudiawerner
>An american anime geek does not have more in common with a japanese anime
geek than an american evangelical. Race, nation, language, history, etc are
far more potent than what naive utopian people wish it were.

Studies on international otaku subcultures show large commonalities between
them. Perhaps you just chose a bad example, but I don't think your point is
convincing.

------
gz5
The article starts with: "A network that once seemed to effortlessly defy
regulation is being relentlessly, and often ruthlessly, domesticated."

And yet concludes with: "Fifty years after the birth of the internet, it may
well be that national governments, wielding enlightened regulation, are the
last best hope for maintaining a network that is—at least relatively—open and
free."

Am I missing something? How could "regulation" be a possible answer to
"digital nationalism"? Are there examples of what the author is referring to
as "enlightened regulation" in which regulation has had the desired impacts?
Seems to me that far more often we see a mix of intended and unintended
consequences.

I would add that web != Internet. Internet is closer to printing press. A
world in which there are billions of TCP/IP stacks on personal compute with
Internet access is not one which is easily controlled (for good or for bad) by
regulation.

~~~
gbanfalvi
> Am I missing something? How could "regulation" be a possible answer to
> "digital nationalism"? Are there examples of what the author is referring to
> as "enlightened regulation" in which regulation has had the desired impacts?
> Seems to me that far more often we see a mix of intended and unintended
> consequences.

How are net neutrality laws, a form of regulation, a safeguard to keep the
internet open and free?

> I would add that web != Internet. Internet is closer to printing press. A
> world in which there are billions of TCP/IP stacks on personal compute with
> Internet access is not one which is easily controlled (for good or for bad)
> by regulation.

This distinction is meaningless. The author may have have conflated the terms,
but most people’s primary (and often only) exposure to the internet is via a
web browser. They’re clearly not concerned about the spread of nationalism via
IP cameras.

~~~
gz5
> How are net neutrality laws, a form of regulation, a safeguard to keep the
> internet open and free?

Agreed, great example. The free market approach would be to ease the
regulations on access and spectrum which have limited last mile competition in
the US. Less regulation - not more - would lead to an enviro in which an ISP
who was preferring certain content would be genuinely risking losing customers
by doing so (and might gain certain types of customers, opening niches for
other ISPs to win other customers, which would be fine too).

~~~
gbanfalvi
> Less regulation - not more - would lead to an enviro in which an ISP who was
> preferring certain content would be genuinely risking losing customers by
> doing so (and might gain certain types of customers, opening niches for
> other ISPs to win other customers, which would be fine too).

Haha no, Ajit. You either take the ISP you get, charging whatever you for
whatever they want [https://www.google.se/amp/s/arstechnica.com/information-
tech...](https://www.google.se/amp/s/arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2018/07/comcast-or-charter-is-the-only-25mbps-choice-
for-68-million-americans/%3famp=1), or you go check your e-mail at the nearest
coffee shop.

~~~
blotter_paper
Less regulation would allow us to use all of those delicious adjacent bands
the television networks bribe politicians into letting them squat on -- as
well as the bands they actually use. Remove broadcasting regulations entirely
and we'll have a crazy free-for-all of intermittent DDOSing (accidental and
otherwise) coupled with legitimate free-market internet access where you can
choose any provider whose signal can reach you. I'll take it.

~~~
w1nst0nsm1th
Let's see what happen on the darknet to truly appreciate the absence of
regulation :

Free markets and month of barely enough practicable bandwith to buy your pot
on a darkmarket because hackers ddos as hell these market in order to
blackmail their owner to pay them a huge ransom to stop their attack, and what
should have been an easy transaction taking barely more time than to buy
shampoo on amazon take more than 4 hours.

And don't get get me started with vaping canabis oil cut with tocopherol which
cause an epidemic lipidic pneumonia or pedophile rings operating video sharing
websites.

~~~
blotter_paper
I appreciate the relevance of your username; keep loving Big Brother, brother.

Regarding cut products, it's an immature ecosystem, but thanks to efforts from
folks like The LSD Avengers[0] drugs on the old Silk Road were becoming safer
than normal street drugs when the government shut it down:

> Silk Road seemed to be a safe place to buy really good drugs, if you knew
> what you were doing. The prices might be higher than what you’d pay on the
> street, but dealers on Silk Road were held somewhat accountable by the
> community. The seller-rating system built into the site, along with efforts
> by unofficial groups like the Avengers, created a meritocracy that rewarded
> dealers who sold good stuff (with the exception of the infamous tony76
> fraud, in which a well-reputed seller took a bulk of orders and
> disappeared). And when law enforcement tested the wares on Silk Road, police
> found they typically had a high purity level of the drug advertised.

If you authoritarians would just stop hunting down and arresting drug users
then the ones who cared about purity and health would actually have options
they were well informed about. The problem isn't a lack of regulation, it's
that you've regulated the product so hard that it's legally dangerous to even
review it, and you keep attacking/dispersing communities of buyers and sellers
which means that it's difficult to keep organized/informed. That you would
blame this on the free market is ridiculous. Let people sell and review
products, they'll figure it out if you just _stop pointing guns at them and
locking them in boxes._ This problem is absolutely a result of regulation; if
you did not regulate LSD at all, finding a source of actual unadulterated LSD
would be trivial. Same with cannabis oil.

[0]: [https://www.theverge.com/2013/10/14/4828448/silk-road-lsd-
av...](https://www.theverge.com/2013/10/14/4828448/silk-road-lsd-avengers-
drug-inspectors)

------
cromwellian
Nationalism is a cult of humanity, and humans will use whatever tools are
available to aid in the continuance of their interests. Hence, no amount of
technolibertarian cleverness in engineering network protocols or cryptography
is going to stop it. It can only be stopped in the messy, human world of
politics and culture.

In the late 80s and 90s, I was a big fan of John Perry Barlow, the
independence of cyberspace, crypto-anarchy on the internet, the idea that some
combination of a uncensorable world wide internet (that could route around
governments), could displace even their national currencies, could be end to
end anonymous and encrypted, would be a nirvana from oppression.

The problem with the naive cyberlibertarian world view, is that it treats
government as a wholly separate actor from the people who create the society
they live in, and if your neighbors want to be Nazis, technological choices
aren't going to protect you. It's not just "Digital Nationalism" that's
rising. Nationalism is rising. You need only need at the US electing Trump,
Brexit in the UK, at some of the neo-fascists elected recently in the EU.

The optimism of the 90s, has been replaced with a mentality of scarcity, and
when that happens, people look to hoard, they become less generous, more
tribal, they circle the wagons.

We are not going to fix Nationalism until we fix the underlying economic and
social problems that are giving rise to it.

~~~
hyperdunc
You call nationalism a cult, I call it a grand narrative underpinned by shared
values that allow people to more easily trust each other (and hence coexist).

That just isn't going to happen globally.

~~~
richardjdare
It's the same thing at different levels of abstraction.

If you are from a locale where low-trust, feuding groups are interacting with
each other but on a largely negative basis, and you're tired of it - then
nationalism looks like something positive that can unify people into something
more peaceful, and more capable of doing large scale projects together etc.

If you are from a locale where low-trust feuding nations are interacting with
each other on a largely negative basis, and you're tired of it - then you want
to develop a global structure which unifies them into something more peaceful,
and more capable of doing large scale projects together etc.

What is it about nationalism that makes that particular level of abstraction
become reified and hard to move beyond?

~~~
Kaiyou
You can't abstract around how our brains are wired and they are wired in a way
that wants to define ingroups and outgroups. Unification is a futile concept.
Humans will just figure out how to create ingroups and outgroups based on a
different basis. Maybe they'll use clothes branding, like back in high school.
It would be better to go with decentralisation and fragmentation, so you have
lots of small groups, but everyone from that small group would be part of the
ingroup.

------
AzzieElbab
Why are the terms nationalism, authoritarianism, and chauvinism used
interchangeably?

~~~
Nasrudith
Because they are the inevitable correlaries of the root ideal. "The nation
above all else."(Nationalism) leads to "Dissent against the government is
wrong and treasonous. Obey the nation and make it great!" (Authoritarianism)
and "Others are less important." (Chauvanism).

~~~
mistermann
> "The nation above all else."(Nationalism)

Googling that phrase, the first hit I get is Fascism, not Nationalism.

[https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/fascism-1](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/fascism-1)

\----------------------------

Definition and Beliefs

Fascism is an ultranationalist, authoritarian political philosophy. It
combines elements of nationalism, militarism, economic self-sufficiency, and
totalitarianism. It opposes communism, socialism, pluralism, individual rights
and equality, and democratic government.

Fascism places the importance of the nation above all else. The unity of the
national community is prioritized above the rights of individuals. This leads
to an intense interest in defining which groups belong or do not belong to the
national body. Fascism is characterized by:

    
    
        strident, often exclusionary nationalism
        fixation with national decline (real or perceived) and threats to the existence of the national community
        embrace of paramilitarism
    

\----------------------------

These two ideas seem to have become synonymous _in the minds_ of most people,
but academically they are distinct.

------
csomar
> According to the New York Times, at least a quarter of the world’s countries
> have temporarily shut down the internet over the past four years.

I was a bit shocked reading this sentence. A quarter of the world's countries
is a big percentage. But apparently that is the case.

There is a good report by Freedom House that analysis "Freedom on the Net"[1]
and it seems that the trend of restricting access is a global phenomena.
(especially across "less-connected" countries).

[1]:
[https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/FOTN_2018_Final...](https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/FOTN_2018_Final%20Booklet_11_1_2018.pdf)

------
jadbox
As the article explains, the Internet is just a tool, and it's been
aggressively used as a way to control user behavior to mostly benefit
advertisers, producers, or conform behavior to governments. Even worse,
political warfare is very easily imposed on today's social networks because
they are designed to be echo chambers that receive outside messages from the
highest bidder.

However, this doesn't NEED to be the case as we can design online experiences
that bring people together. The last two years I've self-funded a foundation
[1] to work on on precisely this problem of using the Internet to try to unify
people together. Today we have two platforms we are providing to the public
and organizations.

The first [2] service organizes people at physical events by maximizing the
diversity of auto generated discussion groups, and we're having a fair amount
of success in schools and events in the US and Austria. The other service [3]
is purely an experimental free public social platform that matches people who
have different viewpoints to have a timeboxed live discussion to chat about
their views.

I'm not sure if what we've built so far can make a big impact online, but I
hope it can serve as an example of what kind of tools that could be built if
the focus is squarely aimed at unifying people instead of stuffing them into
echo chambers with pay-to-reach walls between groups of people.

[1] Foundation: [https://www.newdialogue.org/](https://www.newdialogue.org/)

[2] Group diversity mixer:
[https://www.mixopinions.com/](https://www.mixopinions.com/)

[3] Social platform:
[https://www.dinnertable.chat](https://www.dinnertable.chat)

------
cryptica
I think this article focuses on the wrong kind of nationalism. I think that
there are going to be virtual nations with virtual governments based around
cryptocurrency ecosystems.

The existing physical governments will slowly lose their influence.

As existing governments become weaker, virtual nations will realize that they
can seize companies (the means of production) and take possession of their
revenues by strategically corrupting employees inside those companies.

The virtual governments will use seized company revenues to buy-back and burn
their own cryptocurrencies to give their currencies more value and gain more
power.

Eventually the virtual nations will take control of physical land in various
countries by corrupting and manipulating existing government officials. Each
new nation will be scattered geographically through all continents.

~~~
drewstiff
Which virtual nation do I become a part of? Does one just join whichever group
of criminals make one feel safest?

~~~
TomMarius
Is crime that important to you that you would choose a group of criminals? I
would guess that most people would form peaceful pacts with their family,
friends, etc.

------
petery
A lot of these regulations are at democracies because of citizens demanding
data protections. I founded the company InCountry that's mentioned in the
article. What you're seeing here is that countries are starting to regulate
the Internet like they regulate everything else. McDonald's has to comply with
a ton of regulations on food, employees, tax, etc. everywhere they are. But
for the longest time, not how they treated consumer data.

~~~
ymolodtsov
Not sure I saw a single rally in Europe where people demanded their data
should be kept in the EU. Not sure I saw a single rally in Australia/UK where
people were saying “yeah, block that porn for us”.

~~~
squiggleblaz
I never heard of a rally demanding fines for people who run read lights,
either.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/M8592](http://archive.is/M8592)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191110215752/https://www.wsj.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191110215752/https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-
rising-threat-of-digital-nationalism-11572620577?mod=rsswn)

------
markus_zhang
Extreme Nationalism was and is the symptom of the time. Plus Nationalism is
perfectly normal as long as it doesn't go extreme.

~~~
squarefoot
There's no such thing as normal nationalism, as nationalism is a form of
extremism by itself, more accurately what the perfectly natural love everyone
of us feels for his/hers own country becomes once filtered and distorted by
propaganda with the purpose of making people do nasty things under the belief
they're necessary for a bigger good.

Try this test with some of the less extreme nationalists you know: show them a
photo of planet Earth taken from space and tell them "this is my homeland. I
love it and you should too", then watch their reaction. Some of them may
agree, but most won't. The point is that planet Earth does indeed contain
their entire homeland, but includes other countries too, which is what many
people don't accept. This plain stupid test demonstrates how nationalism isn't
about loving one's country rather than not loving other people ones.

~~~
pluma
Relevant video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ce_nNAfVq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ce_nNAfVq0)

Synopsis: there's a distinction between hypernationalism and nationalism;
nationalism has become normalised for a long time, so any "nationalism" that
sticks out tends to actually be "hypernationalism", which is destructive and
dangerous.

~~~
pluma
As an addendum, also compare recent nationalism in Turkey and Kurdish
nationalism:

Turkey is an established state. Nationalism in Turkey is a social movement for
increased conformity (resulting in a rise of Islam, slowly converting it from
merely a widespread religion into a state religion, and cultural homogeneity,
rejecting e.g. Greek shared history and ethnic minorities). It has also fueled
rhetoric strongly suggesting expansionism (though currently restricted to
depopulating Northern Syria to create a "security buffer" and relocating a
different, more trusted, ethnic group there).

Kurdish nationalism for decades was a struggle against Turkish nationalism (as
well as Iraq, Syria and Iran), fighting for cultural and ethnic recognition of
the Kurdish minority in Turkey. The stated goal was to create a separate
Kurdish nation state to define and protect a shared Kurdish identity.

More recently, Kurdish politics have moved away from the idea of a nation
state. Rojava, although predominantly Kurdish, was explicitly created as an
autonomous territory rather than a state and as multi-ethnic, multi-religious
and with all central power devolved to the lowest level (i.e. all power is
granted directly and explicitly by households forming neighborhoods forming
communities). They explicitly aimed to find common ground with Syria, aspiring
to become a mere autonomous territory in Syria, rather than a separate state.
They eschewed both nationalism (i.e. creating a homogeneous identity) and full
statehood (i.e. full political sovereignty and independence).

In reverse order, these are an example of the absence of nationalism,
nationalism to _create_ a new nation state (empowering a minority in an
existing state) and hypernationalism (refining an existing nation state
through increased homogeneity and militaristic expansionism).

------
pshc
Counter oppressive regimes by decentralizing. Build mesh networks.

------
cmdshiftf4
At this point I'm very pessimistic about the future of the open World Wide
Web, and see little in the works in terms of securely replacing it when it
does come apart.

We, its users, are all to blame. We've stood idly by as the concept itself
went from a largely decentralized protocol for sharing information via
hyperlinks, to a bastardized, immensely centralized platform for stealing
people's attention, even creating addictions, mine their data while they stare
on and use the two to sell them more shit they don't need.

At best we passively supported this, but most of us actively partook in it. We
use Google products, buy Apple products, share our data on
instagram/facebook/etc., click shitty clickbait links and more. In doing so,
we made some companies incredibly rich, enabling them to buy out or use their
money to fund lawsuits against emerging competition, further centralizing
their power.

Not satisfied with simply supporting these actions, we're on a platform right
here that actively encourages companies to spin up attention/data harvesting
platforms with the goal of "going public" or being bought out by one of these
giants. You could be easily justified in saying those of us in the tech
industry are the most culpable.

The governments, rightly so, have recognized the threat that power bears. Some
chose to work with them, and use FISA or other means to secure backdoors to
all the data they hoover up on us, and then work around pesky laws by sharing
it with buddies such as those in Five Eyes to give eachother mutual access to
one another's data. We know this. We did nothing about it. Others chose to
work against them, such as China.

Instead of taking a stand, the big, powerful tech companies we all revere bent
over and did what they were told in order to access the markets of those
working against them to steal more attention and make more money.

And we stood idly by. At the micro level, we're now in a phase where if a
vocal enough internet group takes offense to some sort of content within our
sphere of influence, or against something someone posted 10 years ago, that
they can pressure providers to deplatform their targets. Some stand idly by,
others applaud it as progress.

And so it will continue to crumble. Wise countries, recognizing both the
threat of the internet giants and the opportunity of getting access within
them, will apply the necessary pressure to have those giants make the internet
"their way". "Wise" internet groups, recognizing both the threat of wrongthink
and the opportunity to deplatform those who think wrong will apply pressure on
the same giants to make the internet "their way".

The only possible saviour is some sort of international body, comprised of
representatives of all nations, cultures and subcultures, coming together to
agree on keeping things open and clear. Given that we can't even make the UN
effective, such a group would never agree on anything and would merely
continue to justify its own take on censorship and thus wouldn't be viable
from the start.

And so the Web many of us came up on here, which provoked our interest in
computers, networks, software and hardware, is doomed, and it's all because we
are weak, and the giants we've allowed emerge are ultimately weak also.

And none of that has anything to do with nationalism.

------
SubiculumCode
Open digital borders has had a number of positive and negative consequences,
and of these the increase in foreign influence campaigns has been both
positive and negative forces from a moral perspective, to a nation-state an
open-borders internet is a huge security risk.

------
hirundo
Woodie Guthrie had a label on his guitar that read "This machine kills
fascists." I was naive once. I thought that the internet was such a machine.
But instead of a tool for decentralizing power it's becoming a tool for
centralized power to wield control, to enforce conformity in ever greater
detail.

What would a tool of actual decentralization look like? It wouldn't be
something that helps us communicate or brings us closer together, because
those things evolve into instruments of control. It would be something that
divides us into separate ecological and memetic niches. The only example I can
think of is a multi generational space ship.

We're in a race between diaspora and social lithification. I wish I thought
diaspora was the better bet.

~~~
npo9
I disagree.

We are moving into a world where people have more freedom and liberty.
Sometimes we take a (big) step backwards, but the trend is towards more.

These new freedoms and liberties are created by technology, increased wealth
distribution (globally), and changing social norms towards individual rights
and equality.

I can, for example, participate in international engineering efforts from any
one of a billion places with steady internet that will allow me to stay. I can
eat a greater variety of foods than my grandparents enjoyed. I can do research
and study about my own medical alignments and make better informed decisions
about my healthcare than every before. I have the option to marry anyone that
agrees to it, regardless of race or gender. I can practice the religion of my
choosing openly.

I understand that there is a lot of pain and a large risk of group think
associated with our global information system. I have the individual freedom
to choose which information sources I tune into, and I have never had a
greater variety than today.

~~~
__i___ii____
>These new freedoms and liberties are created by technology

Okay... let's see:

>increased wealth distribution (globally)

Trend began before the internet (the subject at hand).

>changing social norms towards individual rights and equality

Trend began before the internet (the subject at hand).

>I can, for example, participate in international engineering efforts from any
one of a billion places with steady internet that will allow me to stay.

Irrelevant to the subject at hand.

>I can eat a greater variety of foods than my grandparents enjoyed. I can do
research and study about my own medical alignments and make better informed
decisions about my healthcare than every before. I have the option to marry
anyone that agrees to it, regardless of race or gender. I can practice the
religion of my choosing openly.

All irrelevant to the subject at hand.

>I understand that there is a lot of pain and a large risk of group think
associated with our global information system. I have the individual freedom
to choose which information sources I tune into, and I have never had a
greater variety than today.

Disagree. It isn't about your basic individual freedom to choose. You can
choose, yes. But it is about the field of vision presented to the focus of
your mind, or rather the collective mind. It is about the narrowing of that
field of view. Narrow the field of view: narrow the choices people believe
they have. This, in effect, narrows their choices, regardless of their
ability, or freedom, to choose.

~~~
npo9
> Trend began before the internet

Exactly. It’s almost like the internet isn’t the most important thing
happening right now. Combining the world’s networks into one is really
powerful, but the world is a big place. The internet isn’t going to cause a
utopia or a dystopia.

------
TurkishPoptart
Hey-uh, is there anything we can do about this awful paywall? Perhaps the devs
should add a thing to all WSJ articles to bypass.

------
TurkishPoptart
How are any of you guys reading this with their horrific paywall?

------
swedtrue
Again, it comes down a lot to privacy, especially in response to the growing
inclusion of governments in our digital life.

-Alternative to Gmail: ProtonMail ([https://protonmail.com/](https://protonmail.com/))

-Alternative to Google: DuckDuckGo ([https://duckduckgo.com/?t=hk](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=hk))

-Alternative to Dropbox and GoogleDrive: Duple ([https://www.duple.io/en/](https://www.duple.io/en/))

-Alternative to Whatsapp: Signal ([https://signal.org/](https://signal.org/))

~~~
squarefoot
"Duple ([https://www.duple.io/en/)"](https://www.duple.io/en/\)")

100% closed source as for now. They promised to make almost all of it open
source, sadly except the most important part. Security is a chain: a 99% open
source app is still 100% insecure as a 100% closed one.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
There is plenty of insecure open sourced software and secure closed source.
I'd be surprised if there was any correlation here.

~~~
squiggleblaz
Depends on the definition of "insecure". I think we mean "the user is a victim
of the owner of the product" or "the user has no choice but to overconsent to
invasion from the producer". When ssh has a vulnerability, that's not a
problem of me overconsenting to something OpenBSD wants to do. It's a problem
where some third party has managed to fool OpenBSD into believing I want them
to do something on my behalf, when I issued no such instruction.

But the vulnerability that is Google Mail is that Google will read any email
sent to or from a Google Mail account, even incidentally, and use it to build
up a profile which paying customers can use to manipulate me into doing things
which, in the absence of the profile, I wouldn't've have done. Moreover
there's just massive risks from all that data.

