It’s a bit of an idealistic view of early internet. Trolling came pretty much as soon as IRC was online. And early internet was probably reflecting a subset of the population of early adopters, academics and engineers who did not reflect the general population.
The population has a distribution of characters, most are good people, some are angry and heinous. The internet is no better or worse than the population who uses it. These calls to censor and control aren’t about the technology, they are calls to censor and control what people tell each others. I think every time we are considering a new rule for the internet we should consider what is the physical world equivalent of that rule, where we have wealth of experience and history to assess whether it is a good idea.
Tracking your browsing? It’s like having to show your ID everytime you buy a newspaper for the state to monitor what you read.
Scan emails and chats to monitor extreme groups? It’s like bugging everyone’s phone line and having a mic behind every radiator to check what everyone is telling each others in private.
Kicking people off facebook because of non compliant speech? It’s like a venue cancelling an event because they disagree with the content.
Some will agree with those measures, others won’t. But there is nothing there that is inherently specific to the internet.
I don’t think the general population is as bad as the internet makes them out to be.
Ever go to a townhall, join an interest group for hobbies or exercise or done some vulanteer work? You’ll meet all sorts of people at those, and most of them treat each other well.
I’ve seen my share of assholeness on the internet, I’m old enough to have been on it before usenet has its eternal September after all, and I think it’s different today. Much more political than its ever been.
I agree that there is a social control tempering the aggressivity and nastiness in individual physical interactions. But in a sense this is merely social norms inhibating people into not being themselves. I think the anonymity of internet is more similar to the anonymity of a crowd or mob. And mobs behaviour often isn't pretty.
The population has a distribution of characters, most are good people, some are angry and heinous. The internet is no better or worse than the population who uses it. These calls to censor and control aren’t about the technology, they are calls to censor and control what people tell each others. I think every time we are considering a new rule for the internet we should consider what is the physical world equivalent of that rule, where we have wealth of experience and history to assess whether it is a good idea.
Tracking your browsing? It’s like having to show your ID everytime you buy a newspaper for the state to monitor what you read.
Scan emails and chats to monitor extreme groups? It’s like bugging everyone’s phone line and having a mic behind every radiator to check what everyone is telling each others in private.
Kicking people off facebook because of non compliant speech? It’s like a venue cancelling an event because they disagree with the content.
Some will agree with those measures, others won’t. But there is nothing there that is inherently specific to the internet.