Watching the Internet develop since the 1980s, this leaves a lot of stuff out. Yes, decentralized protocols like NNTP are not around like they used to be. The

Watching the Internet develop since the 1980s, this leaves a lot of stuff out. Yes, decentralized protocols like NNTP are not around like they used to be. The reason for this is because Usenet was effectively crushed by the US government. Many net luminaries, scientists, mathematicians, journalists, artists etc. were users of Usenet. In the 1990s and on, the Baby Bell monopolies used their monopoly powers to crush ISP competition. Then in 2008 Andrew Cuomo strongarmed the remaining monopoly telcos in New York to shut down Usenet saying "This literally threatens our children, and there can be no higher priority than keeping our children safe". Obviously you can't say you want to crush decentralization in order to take power away from the individual and place it in the hands of corporate monopolies and the government, so you have to hear from the RIAA/MPAA about how artists are being ripped off (although many artists say the RIAA and MPAA are the ripoffs), or about terrorism, or the "think of the children" stuff from this case. > "it's controlable, it's governable, ..., it's walled gardenable,..., it's brandable, it's ownable, ..., it's auditable, it's copyright checkable, ..., it's safe for China searchable,..., it's monitorable" Well this is correct. Now we can be more controlled, more governed, more owned, more copyright checked, more monitored - these are all the benefits for them as they remove our decentralized communications. As the tendency toward recentralization seems to be in the US, a broader metric is the ratio of US GDP to world GDP, i.e. centralization of the world economy. This ratio has been falling since World War II - each year the US economy becomes less and less significant. So while network control is being centralized in the US, economic control in the world is becoming decentralized.