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The internet never "went wrong". Nor did it go right. If we want to talk about the internet going wrong, we can talk about running out of IPV4 addresses, the

The internet never "went wrong". Nor did it go right. If we want to talk about the internet going wrong, we can talk about running out of IPV4 addresses, the garbage that DNS/BGP can be. The insecureness of SMTP etc. Yet from a technical standpoint, it has gotten amazing. There was a time https/ssl was not a thing, when everyone shuffled data via FTP, when telnet ruled, when NFS was world rw and rlogin/rhost was the way of things. So the net as a tool has gotten better to address it's weakness in relation to privacy(crypto), spam (captcha/ML), fakes news (ML) Spam, Fake News, Trolls, Privacy Abuse etc is all about people. We can ask, how did the world/people get so wrong? But then, when we sit back and think about it, this is the world that brought us a few world wars and tons of other wars. All that crap going on over the net is annoying but nothing. I'll take all the spam, fake news, trolls, ad stalking and attempt to capture my data than live through a war.

DataWorker 7y ago
“So the net as a tool has gotten better to address it's weakness in relation to privacy(crypto), spam (captcha/ML), fakes news (ML)” I think that’s a debatable point. I don’t feel safer and I preferred simple tools like ftp, telnet, Usenet over Facebook, Dropbox, google cloud or whatever app is the focus of the current tech hype cycle. “I'll take all the spam, fake news, trolls, ad stalking and attempt to capture my data than live through a war.” That seems like an odd nonsequitur. Surely you don’t think there’s a dichotomy between war and Facebook? We have both now, and will have both in the future. Zuckerburg ain’t Jesus, apps are just widgets.
cntlzw 7y ago
Thanks. I wanted to write something similar, but you said it way better than I ever could. It is always about how we use technology, not the technology per se. For the good, for the bad, for making money. Whatever.
Shivetya 7y ago
Right. The technical issues are what went wrong, how to protect the net itself from those who would damage and abuse it. Those we seek to improve. The people side will come with time. If anything perhaps it opens people eyes to just how many people who do not fit within the idealized society many expect or want to be part of. People will learn limits, learn about others, and eventually it will even out. What it did right is free people from most every government out there and now those governments are fighting back. When you can now see for your self what conditions are elsewhere you are much harder to manipulate which means loss of control. It also shows that no matter how good you thought your government is/was there is room for improvement and their is a dark side. They will seek to divide us, make us fear others all with the promise that if we just let them take control of information again all will be right. Some do it at the point of a gun while others use a TV ad. Simply put, mommy and daddy were wrong, that were no monsters, not real ones, but there are, they are us.
gph 7y ago
Also somewhat ironic that the author mentions the internet was created/funded by the military as part of a program to keep up with the Russians technologically during the Cold War, then goes on to complain about Stuxnet and nation states using the internet for cyber warfare like they were never even involved in the first place.
K0SM0S 7y ago
Right, this is exactly what I try to explain in a long comment[1] (different thread, comparable topic). I essentially argue that we should not confuse the medium (internet, a "network of networks"; like air or water or space) with the usage and information passing by said medium (the "high level" stuff like "speech" or "websites"; like oral speech or stores and parks in the physical world). I'm surprised that a researcher who contributed to building the medium, the infrastructure itself, would fail to recognize we're talking at very different levels, totally different scopes when we conflate 'internet' with any private company or citizen operating over the medium. It's romantic and doesn't help solving any kind of issue, whether low-level or high-level. I will echo user `riazrizvi` in this thread: > Simply the internet has always reflected the segment of society that used it. Now that everyone uses it it reflects society at large. So I don’t think this is an internet problem, but rather an opportunity to see the worlds social problems being translated into a more transparent codified form. I reject the author’s two solutions as being low effort addendums. Let us acknowledge we are not seeing new problems, but rather we are seeing old problems with a new lens. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21383074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21383074
auiya 7y ago
> All that crap going on over the net is annoying but nothing Sorry, but no. Ask all the US banks that were DDoS'd between 2012-2013 by (presumably) Iranian nation state actors if "all that crap going over the net was annoying but nothing". Ask Sony if the property and PR damage done to their networks was nothing. Ask Saudi Aramco if the thousands of computer disks they lost were nothing. Ask the Bangladesh banks that lost $81 million to online theft if that loss was nothing. Ask all the businesses who had to pay out incident responders to fix their networks when they got hit by Wanna Cry if those costs were nothing. Large scale crimes happening over the Internet can be more than annoying, they can incur physical damage and costs.
triangleman 7y ago
It should be noted that the author of the article did not mention "Fake News" or trolls, and at least half of his point w/r/t privacy was how to prevent and deal with data breaches. I was rather relieved to read through this article and not hear anything about the 2016 election.
rabidrat 7y ago
In the early/mid 90s, there was a big political fight over whether commerce should be allowed over the internet. On 'our' side (geeks, academics, netizens), we believed that commercialization of the internet would lead to its downfall. All of the technical things you mentioned would likely have happened without commercialization, and most if not all of the problems you mention are either created or exacerbated by this commercialization. I think the OP's analysis that the first 25 years were great, and the second 25 years it started to go off the rails, completely coincides with what we argued back then. Unfortunately the cat is out of the barn and there's no way to right the internet without going back in time.

DataWorker 7y ago

“So the net as a tool has gotten better to address it's weakness in relation to privacy(crypto), spam (captcha/ML), fakes news (ML)” I think that’s a debatable point. I don’t feel safer and I preferred simple tools like ftp, telnet, Usenet over Facebook, Dropbox, google cloud or whatever app is the focus of the current tech hype cycle. “I'll take all the spam, fake news, trolls, ad stalking and attempt to capture my data than live through a war.” That seems like an odd nonsequitur. Surely you don’t think there’s a dichotomy between war and Facebook? We have both now, and will have both in the future. Zuckerburg ain’t Jesus, apps are just widgets.

cntlzw 7y ago

Thanks. I wanted to write something similar, but you said it way better than I ever could. It is always about how we use technology, not the technology per se. For the good, for the bad, for making money. Whatever.

Shivetya 7y ago

Right. The technical issues are what went wrong, how to protect the net itself from those who would damage and abuse it. Those we seek to improve. The people side will come with time. If anything perhaps it opens people eyes to just how many people who do not fit within the idealized society many expect or want to be part of. People will learn limits, learn about others, and eventually it will even out. What it did right is free people from most every government out there and now those governments are fighting back. When you can now see for your self what conditions are elsewhere you are much harder to manipulate which means loss of control. It also shows that no matter how good you thought your government is/was there is room for improvement and their is a dark side. They will seek to divide us, make us fear others all with the promise that if we just let them take control of information again all will be right. Some do it at the point of a gun while others use a TV ad. Simply put, mommy and daddy were wrong, that were no monsters, not real ones, but there are, they are us.

gph 7y ago

Also somewhat ironic that the author mentions the internet was created/funded by the military as part of a program to keep up with the Russians technologically during the Cold War, then goes on to complain about Stuxnet and nation states using the internet for cyber warfare like they were never even involved in the first place.

K0SM0S 7y ago

Right, this is exactly what I try to explain in a long comment[1] (different thread, comparable topic). I essentially argue that we should not confuse the medium (internet, a "network of networks"; like air or water or space) with the usage and information passing by said medium (the "high level" stuff like "speech" or "websites"; like oral speech or stores and parks in the physical world). I'm surprised that a researcher who contributed to building the medium, the infrastructure itself, would fail to recognize we're talking at very different levels, totally different scopes when we conflate 'internet' with any private company or citizen operating over the medium. It's romantic and doesn't help solving any kind of issue, whether low-level or high-level. I will echo user `riazrizvi` in this thread: > Simply the internet has always reflected the segment of society that used it. Now that everyone uses it it reflects society at large. So I don’t think this is an internet problem, but rather an opportunity to see the worlds social problems being translated into a more transparent codified form. I reject the author’s two solutions as being low effort addendums. Let us acknowledge we are not seeing new problems, but rather we are seeing old problems with a new lens. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21383074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21383074

auiya 7y ago

> All that crap going on over the net is annoying but nothing Sorry, but no. Ask all the US banks that were DDoS'd between 2012-2013 by (presumably) Iranian nation state actors if "all that crap going over the net was annoying but nothing". Ask Sony if the property and PR damage done to their networks was nothing. Ask Saudi Aramco if the thousands of computer disks they lost were nothing. Ask the Bangladesh banks that lost $81 million to online theft if that loss was nothing. Ask all the businesses who had to pay out incident responders to fix their networks when they got hit by Wanna Cry if those costs were nothing. Large scale crimes happening over the Internet can be more than annoying, they can incur physical damage and costs.

triangleman 7y ago

It should be noted that the author of the article did not mention "Fake News" or trolls, and at least half of his point w/r/t privacy was how to prevent and deal with data breaches. I was rather relieved to read through this article and not hear anything about the 2016 election.

rabidrat 7y ago

In the early/mid 90s, there was a big political fight over whether commerce should be allowed over the internet. On 'our' side (geeks, academics, netizens), we believed that commercialization of the internet would lead to its downfall. All of the technical things you mentioned would likely have happened without commercialization, and most if not all of the problems you mention are either created or exacerbated by this commercialization. I think the OP's analysis that the first 25 years were great, and the second 25 years it started to go off the rails, completely coincides with what we argued back then. Unfortunately the cat is out of the barn and there's no way to right the internet without going back in time.