The more you think about this the more ticked off you can get. Voters, and their representatives, made a deliberate effort to be as hands-off as possible to th

The more you think about this the more ticked off you can get. Voters, and their representatives, made a deliberate effort to be as hands-off as possible to the early internet. It remained tax free. Public facilities were used. Section 230 was passed to remove the specter of liability and so on. We all did the most we could to stay away and let the net develop, knowing that if we came in too heavy-handed, not only would we destroy this new creation, we'd forever taint it in the world's eyes as just being some kind of US thing. We had high hopes. We were open-minded and experimental. And here's where we freaking ended up: just another Standard Oil or United States Steel Corporation, only this time there wasn't any kind of behind-the-scenes mucking around in politics. It's directly in our face. (And when you point that out, the monopolies themselves will beg for regulation, knowing full well that by the time their money finishes paying off the legislators, the fix will be in. They'll set the wall so high they'll never have true competitors) Not a happy political place to be, no matter what your particular political views.