Maybe the disagreement is over what "free and open internet" means. Imo,it does not mean an internet governed by rules that supersede local laws and norms. Fre

Maybe the disagreement is over what "free and open internet" means. Imo,it does not mean an internet governed by rules that supersede local laws and norms. Free means additional restrictions on lawful self-expression should not be imposed and it also means freedom for site owners and content creators,not just content consumers. It means content providers are free to exclude anyone for any lawful reason. I think you might be confusing free as in freedom from free as in no cost to consumers. Open means initial access to content should not be for a select group of people but for everyone. It also means content producers have open access to content consumers. Both consumers and producers can restrict access at will(for example content moderation or DNT requests). For media companies,a free and open internet means a wide reach to consumers. If you meant free as in financial cost,it all depends on their business model. Ad supported is one model,another would be to use the free content as bait that lures consumers to a revenue generating product,be it premium content,premium experience and features or goods. For the whole "russian trolls" issue,being free and open isn't what allowed the problem. "Russian trolls" can pay for oremium content and find ways to access restricted content and post messages masquerading as allowed users. Imo,user targeted advertising is the problem. "Russian trolls" would not be all that effective if they were not able to target specific groups of people and exploit their biases. I think content-targeting (see what duckduckgo does) has a strong case against user-targeting. It maybe less profitable but it is stable and most reliable in the long term. I see a promising future for content being supported by premium users and content targeting and a bleak future for the dystopian corporate surveillance madness.