When I was young, I realized that eventually the problems of the real world would catch up to the internet. It was in the mid-2000s that I realized a well-staffed company, with people working on problems for 8+ hours a day, for years, could always outpace individuals. Just as has been true with all human affairs: better-resourced groups can overpower lesser-resourced groups.
It has been true for years now that the problems of the real world have spilled onto the internet. In its infancy, the internet was an "island of sanity," a (socially and intellectually) secure enclave from the real world.
In the 2010s, (and particularly the late 2010s) this problem accelerated, and now rather than merely bringing the problems of the real world to the net, the net is home to brand new problems which would have been impossible without the net.
It's no surprise that government wants to step in. It should be telling that both the left and right have plans for the government to regulate the internet. (and at least in my estimation, both of these plans are not well founded: either eliminate section 230, or enforce some kind of "fairness," or simply do more for censorship)
I honestly believe this is mostly a losing battle. Companies and the government, (and really people) will not have any reason to become less invested in the internet, and so the interests of individuals will be steamrolled. It's a totally unavoidable problem for most people, although a tech-savvy elite can avoid a lot of these problems.
What finally clicked for me is that power dynamics form a positive feedback loop that naturally compounds inequality. If you have a little more power, the natural thing do with that power is to coerce/force/encourage/persuade others to give you a little more. The longer you let that system iterate, the greater the power imbalance. This is why the majority of human history has had massive inequality.
Every now and then, an event happens that goes against that. For example, WWII destroyed massive amounts of physical infrastructure, so it was a force towards equality. Those with more to lose did lose more. (Heart-breakingly, the pandemic is the exact opposite, since COVID-19 doesn't harm material goods, just people.)
One kind of event is a rapid technological change. These work sort of like a rainstorm for power. All of a sudden, bits of empowerment from the new technology rain down semi-randomly onto humanity. Anyone with a cup to catch it gets some. The early Internet was like this.
But, eventually, the system iterates like it always does and eventually those with a bit more power use it to build the rain catchment systems and gutters to route that new power over to themselves. Sometimes, this gets routed to new powerful people who were the ones who caught a lot of the early rain. But the technology itself ceases to be a force for equality. This is where we are today with the Internet.
Our American founders, who are so venerated as the architects of the country's acceptance of free speech, were not too keen on an unfettered discourse of the masses. Coming from a time when the public’s reach was limited by expensive distribution methods and a lack of literacy, the assumption was that this free speech they proposed would be mostly limited to learned men like themselves. This similar assumption was initially made for the internet, who’s culture was primarily defined by tech savvy, college graduates. The internet was an "island of sanity" because it was limited to a relatively small group of likeminded people choosing to use it. What is happening now is the success of democracy, not its failure. For all its fanfare within our culture—very few countries, organizations, institutions have supported true democracy and its unlikely they’ll start now.
I almost agree with the first two sentences, with this modification:
> American founders ... were not too keen on an unfettered discourse of the masses
I expect the founders' thinking about information sharing was largely based on their circumstances (printing presses, traditional mail service, town announcements, etc). Perhaps most founders considered them as immutable realities. Did any think of them as movable constraints?
Did any think about the downstream economic and political consequences of lowering the cost of communication? I don't know off the top of my head. Have you seen any evidence of this?
Yes, and happily so, for me at least. I use HN via RSS(except when making the odd comment), YouTube-DL via terminal, and the mainstream internet for ecommerce.
It has been true for years now that the problems of the real world have spilled onto the internet. In its infancy, the internet was an "island of sanity," a (socially and intellectually) secure enclave from the real world.
In the 2010s, (and particularly the late 2010s) this problem accelerated, and now rather than merely bringing the problems of the real world to the net, the net is home to brand new problems which would have been impossible without the net.
It's no surprise that government wants to step in. It should be telling that both the left and right have plans for the government to regulate the internet. (and at least in my estimation, both of these plans are not well founded: either eliminate section 230, or enforce some kind of "fairness," or simply do more for censorship)
I honestly believe this is mostly a losing battle. Companies and the government, (and really people) will not have any reason to become less invested in the internet, and so the interests of individuals will be steamrolled. It's a totally unavoidable problem for most people, although a tech-savvy elite can avoid a lot of these problems.