
Is the Internet to Blame for the Rise of Authoritarianism? - howard941
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/12/internet-blame-rise-authoritarianism.html
======
whytaka
Surely no, not at least in the United States.

Are we really going to talk about the internet as though it made all the
difference? We're going to forget about:

\- The military industrial complex, the backlash against their never-ending
wargames and the complete betrayal of American values through the PATRIOT Act

\- Legalized bribery via lobbying and Citizens United

\- 5 conglomerates controlling all old (but still very relevant) media

\- The many great heists of the people's wealth in the form of:

1\. Offshoring jobs while diluting public education

2\. Tearing up public transport and forcing dependency on a substance that
compromises us morally

3\. The 2008 bailouts that left the little man to die in a gutter

The old guard entrenched themselves more and more, robbed the people of hope,
and gutted the nation's dignity. Now they are co-opting the bloodlust of a
humiliated people towards their own advantage.

~~~
CM30
This times a million. All these attempts to blame the internet/social
media/fake news/whatever for authoritarianism are attempts by those in power
to avoid accepting that they screwed up and now they're paying the price
(along with society as a whole).

It also wreaks of them thinking that trying to censor the population will make
these problems go away, when the truth is that until the current system is
replaced or fixed, things will get worse and worse until it crumbles entirely.

~~~
acct1771
reeks _

------
im3w1l
Internet has centralized power to an extraordinary degree.

Transactions that would formerly happen with cash now happen with digital
payments and if the payment processor doesn't like something it is cut off.

Communication that would formerly happen in person now happen on the internet
and if the forums don't like something it's cut off.

The article concerns itself with internet enabling irl authoritarianism. But a
much bigger problem is that free behavior in irl is being displaced by tightly
controlled behavior on the internet.

I know many people that have as a policy to only discuss controversial issues
face to face. If face to face disappears, then where does that leave us?

~~~
myrryr
Crazy amounts of authoritarianism happened in Russia, China, Germany and the
US, pre internet.

It went badly in all those places, but there have been a couple of generations
and people need to relearn the same lessions.

I don't think the 'net was responsible then, and I don't think it is now. It's
a thing which happens when we forget how bad it was.

McCarthy didn't need a home PC.

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flocial
I always thought that the early promise of the internet was built on a lie:
decentralized and anonymous. The architecture never really was, it's just that
the technology at the time and costs involved made it seem believable. Now
data storage is dirt cheap, AI is good enough to connect the dots, identities
are consolidated within major social networks, search history tracked, and
smart phones owned by most. I think it's just a matter of time before 1984
becomes prophetic.

~~~
emersonrsantos
The internet was never meant to be decentralized or anonymous: it was
conceived more as a redundant network that would enable communications in case
of a nuclear accident. I think we already live in Orwell’s world - I don’t
care or believe privacy is something that can be attained easily today unless
you are willing to cut your contact with every computer in the world, which is
just not feasible.

~~~
slowmovintarget
We don't yet live in Orwell's world of 1984. We live in Aldous Huxley's Brave
New World, which, incidentally, is how you get to Orwell's world eventually.

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soufron
Typical technocentrist: "politicians are ignorant, technologies are the most
important thing to regulate now, if politicians can't get interested in
technologies, they will be irrelevant soon"...

It does not answer the question asked in the title one bit.

And it completely forgets that there are huge fields out there that don't give
a shit about technology.

~~~
brokenmachine
What fields don't give a shit about technology?

------
sn41
One of the great pioneers of AI, Joseph Weizenbaum, foresaw some of this:
Here's a quote from an interview [1]:

" if it had not been for the computer...they [the banks] might have had to
decentralize, or they might have had to reorganize in some way. ... What the
coming of the computer did, "just-in-time" was to make it unnecessary to
change the system in any way. So the computer has acted as fundamentally a
conservative force, a force which kept power or even solidified power where it
already existed."

But I think there is also the Web 2.0 "echo chamber" effect, or positive
feedback effect, based on the filter bubbles, and customised news. We tend to
hear only from people who have the same views. Moreover, opinions are getting
amplified, and you get ignored unless you make extreme, polarising and
clickbait comments. Only such comments are "upvoted". I have disabled Disqus,
Vuukle, and other comment-based services available on most news websites by
redirecting all of these to localhost in my /etc/hosts file. Reading news
feels less disturbing now.

[1]
[http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html](http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html)

~~~
antidesitter
Why would banks have had to decentralize, if not for the computer? The given
reason sounds like a non-sequitur to me:

> Consider that, say 20, 25 years ago, the banks were faced with the fact that
> the population was growing at a very rapid rate, many more checks would be
> written than before, and so on.

How does this imply decentralization would be necessary? Banks would just
scale up their infrastructure and workforce, like any other institution over
the course of humanity’s history of population growth.

------
8bitsrule
Relevant article [https://www.wired.com/story/50-years-later-we-still-dont-
gra...](https://www.wired.com/story/50-years-later-we-still-dont-grasp-the-
mother-of-all-demos/)

Engelbart worried about this:

"Facebook used open source software to build a web application capable of
serving more than 2 billion people. Now it stands accused of enabling bad
actors to foment hate, divide societies, and manipulate elections. Meanwhile,
the National Security Agency is using some of those same open source tools as
part of its surveillance efforts. In other words, bad actors can continuously
improve too."

------
mbrodersen
Don't forget that historically Authoritarianism is the default. Democracy is
the rare exception. Also, let's not forget that there are plenty of countries
that claim to be Democracies, without actually truly being Democratic.

------
intended
Yes.

The internet is the unsterilized needle entering our brain and giving people a
free dopamine high.

It’s sold by large firms and research arms and not by some shifty druggie
standing on a street corner.

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nuguy
I have no idea why people are worried about misinformation. The information
that actually made an impact of the election was all completely true. Nobody
except a handful of extremists took seriously things like pizza pedos and etc.

~~~
parasubvert
I think the internet exaggerates conflict and amplifies outrage. Usually it’s
only a handful that start the problem or agitate. But then it becomes a social
media buzz and a news network picks it up. a lot more more than a handful get
repetitive broadcasts of terrible memes or crazy conspiracies on Facebook and
talk radio.

I suppose it depends what you mean by handful, but when folks in my rural
Northern Canadian area are quoting YouTube, Fox News, or Facebook
conspiracies.... the reach is broad.

Jade Helm was going to lead to martial law imposed in Texas. During that
period a poll showed 32% of republicans felt the government was trying to take
over Texas.

In the US alone, I’d hazard a guess at least 50 million people thought Obama
was a Kenyan Muslim socialist. Before you say “that’s crazy!” Remember that’s
only 15% of the populace. 6% believed the moon landings were faked according
to a Gallup poll in 1999.

The last election with that immigrant caravan is another example of exploiting
people’s tendency to believe things uncritically.

In short, people believe what they want to believe, and it gets worse when
propaganda is rampant.

