7 ms·

Is the Internet to Blame for the Rise of Authoritarianism?

55 points by howard941 8y ago

im3w1l 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
flocial 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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.
soufron 8y ago
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 8y ago
  What fields don't give a shit about technology?
  - babz 8y ago
    https://linkkoin.com https://linkkoin.com is giving 5$ in BTC for registration, check it out
whytaka 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    reeks
- PinkMilkshake 8y ago
  What I took away from Adam Curtis's film HyperNormalisation is that the internet didn't cause these issues, but it is to blame for us not being able to do anything about it.
- throwawayepgpp 8y ago
  Don't forget the ludicrous gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement ("anti-fraud") laws.
mbrodersen 8y ago
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.
nuguy 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
- user2426679 8y ago
  Where do you place Jeffrey Epstein in relation to pizza extremism?
8bitsrule 8y ago
Relevant article https://www.wired.com/story/50-years-later-we-still-dont-grasp-the-mother-of-all-demos/ https://www.wired.com/story/50-years-later-we-still-dont-gra... 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."
sn41 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
intended 8y ago
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.
OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
irrelevant peanut butter and chocolate

55 points by howard941 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.

flocial 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.

soufron 8y ago

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 8y ago
What fields don't give a shit about technology?
- babz 8y ago
  https://linkkoin.com https://linkkoin.com is giving 5$ in BTC for registration, check it out

whytaka 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  reeks
PinkMilkshake 8y ago
What I took away from Adam Curtis's film HyperNormalisation is that the internet didn't cause these issues, but it is to blame for us not being able to do anything about it.
throwawayepgpp 8y ago
Don't forget the ludicrous gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement ("anti-fraud") laws.

mbrodersen 8y ago

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.

nuguy 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.
user2426679 8y ago
Where do you place Jeffrey Epstein in relation to pizza extremism?

8bitsrule 8y ago

Relevant article https://www.wired.com/story/50-years-later-we-still-dont-grasp-the-mother-of-all-demos/ https://www.wired.com/story/50-years-later-we-still-dont-gra... 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."

sn41 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.

intended 8y ago

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.

OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago

irrelevant peanut butter and chocolate