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Playing the devil's advocate here: is this really "exceptional power"? Before the Internet, fringe, extremist political movements had essentially the same opti

Playing the devil's advocate here: is this really "exceptional power"? Before the Internet, fringe, extremist political movements had essentially the same options as every other minor interest group: local groups, physical, mailed newsletters, maybe magazines, booths at whatever kind of group meetings, and maybe news media coverage. All of those options still exist. So the modern state of things hasn't removed anything. Since the age of the Internet, cloud providers have the same power as any other hosting provider: Geocities, Angelfire, AOL, whatever; they all have acceptable use policies that will get you taken down if you don't obey them. Outside of those, colocation and network providers seem a bit more willing to tolerate things, but they can still cut you off, just like they (sometimes) did in the good old days. And you can still go full-on backbone peer, if you can afford it, which these political groups certainly can. The bottom line is, you have your old options and you can still host yourself. You have options in between, but if they decide you aren't playing nice, they can hurt you. The only thing "exceptional" here is the nature and vocality of the groups in question.

rossdavidh 6y ago
Well, before the internet, the analogous groups were the TV networks. Those networks were, for sure, likely to ban any of these groups, or if they did put a microphone in front of them, they edited the interview to make sure they looked bad. But nobody tried to claim, that the three major TV networks did not have exceptional power. Of course they did.
alexfromapex 6y ago
> All of those options still exist. Not really, not during the pandemic in locked down areas. Also, tech plays a much bigger role today than it did in the heyday of Geocities et al. Combine it with the willingness of other tech forms of censorship like Facebook banning groups and organizing events and Visa banning financial transactions and you have total censorship.
015a 6y ago
I agree; but there are a few worrying trends that we need to keep an eye on with respect to this: * IPv4 space. IPv4 addresses are increasingly expensive. In a perfect world we'd just get rid of them, but instead, we live in a world where Amazon owns roughly $3B worth of them. They're critical to serving web content; what happens when centralized corporate mega-powers are the only ones who can afford them, or own them? * Email reputation. Its basically a boys club; if you don't send your emails through a reputable provider, with their acceptable use policies which generally reach far beyond "are you sending spam", you're likely to be spam-listed by the recipients mailbox, of which there are roughly four providers (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL). * "Post-email" customer communication channels. Companies increasingly talk to customers over iMessage, FBM, Telegram, etc. These are all closed loops; piss off Apple and you lose that channel. A truly open, federated 1:1 chat solution is necessary. Unaware of any options here; Signal feels like we're getting there, but its not federated. Gaining market adoption is a whole other problem, but stomping on your privacy and freedom tends to be a big motivator. * Domain registration. I don't think this is a huge threat vector for market freedom, given how many registrars there are and how lax IANA's rules are. Lets keep it that way. * ARM. There's no way to just go purchase an ARM chip and host a server in your closet; no one is selling them. Amazon and Apple have their proprietary ones they aren't sharing. If the industry moves more toward ARM, to where hosting on x86 becomes intolerable due to software support (I expect it will, but on a timespan of decades), this is a big threat vector for increasing centralization into the mega-corp clouds. Definitely need an "Intel for ARM" (AMD? Nvidia? Uh, Intel?)
- erichocean 6y ago
  > IPv4 addresses are increasingly expensive They cost about $20 to buy. How is that expensive?
  - nixgeek 6y ago
    Most /24 seem to be marketed a little higher than that, so you’re really looking at ~$7500 USD for a minimum size prefix which you could advertise. I do generally agree with your assertion this isn’t unaffordable, since the people who are most likely to care about owning their IP space instead of borrowing one from a provider like AWS most likely have other more significant costs like LIR fees, renting space/power/cooling for equipment, buying servers and network devices, etc etc.
- zinekeller 6y ago
  > roughly four providers (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL). At least for North America, three. Yahoo! and AOL are already operating under a single company (formerly Oath, now the much more boring Verizon Media Services), and they have "rationalize" (aka merge) their systems. Sidenote: The Japanese Yahoo! is not related to the American Yahoo! (except it was before early 2000's came along).
- zinekeller 6y ago
  > There's no way to just go purchase an ARM chip and host a server in your closet; no one is selling them. There are indeed readily-available ARM servers from the likes of DellEMC and HPE, and ready-to-integrate motherboards from the likes from Supermicro and Gigabyte, and AMD still sells ARM chips. This is very much opposite of your assertion.
- nixgeek 6y ago
  Wiwynn will sell you ARM systems with Ampere Altra CPUs today. Systems integrators like Phoenics are booking orders, and various reviews for Mt Jade and Mt Snow suggest they’re not awful platforms.

rossdavidh 6y ago

Well, before the internet, the analogous groups were the TV networks. Those networks were, for sure, likely to ban any of these groups, or if they did put a microphone in front of them, they edited the interview to make sure they looked bad. But nobody tried to claim, that the three major TV networks did not have exceptional power. Of course they did.

alexfromapex 6y ago

> All of those options still exist. Not really, not during the pandemic in locked down areas. Also, tech plays a much bigger role today than it did in the heyday of Geocities et al. Combine it with the willingness of other tech forms of censorship like Facebook banning groups and organizing events and Visa banning financial transactions and you have total censorship.

015a 6y ago

I agree; but there are a few worrying trends that we need to keep an eye on with respect to this: * IPv4 space. IPv4 addresses are increasingly expensive. In a perfect world we'd just get rid of them, but instead, we live in a world where Amazon owns roughly $3B worth of them. They're critical to serving web content; what happens when centralized corporate mega-powers are the only ones who can afford them, or own them? * Email reputation. Its basically a boys club; if you don't send your emails through a reputable provider, with their acceptable use policies which generally reach far beyond "are you sending spam", you're likely to be spam-listed by the recipients mailbox, of which there are roughly four providers (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL). * "Post-email" customer communication channels. Companies increasingly talk to customers over iMessage, FBM, Telegram, etc. These are all closed loops; piss off Apple and you lose that channel. A truly open, federated 1:1 chat solution is necessary. Unaware of any options here; Signal feels like we're getting there, but its not federated. Gaining market adoption is a whole other problem, but stomping on your privacy and freedom tends to be a big motivator. * Domain registration. I don't think this is a huge threat vector for market freedom, given how many registrars there are and how lax IANA's rules are. Lets keep it that way. * ARM. There's no way to just go purchase an ARM chip and host a server in your closet; no one is selling them. Amazon and Apple have their proprietary ones they aren't sharing. If the industry moves more toward ARM, to where hosting on x86 becomes intolerable due to software support (I expect it will, but on a timespan of decades), this is a big threat vector for increasing centralization into the mega-corp clouds. Definitely need an "Intel for ARM" (AMD? Nvidia? Uh, Intel?)

erichocean 6y ago
> IPv4 addresses are increasingly expensive They cost about $20 to buy. How is that expensive?
- nixgeek 6y ago
  Most /24 seem to be marketed a little higher than that, so you’re really looking at ~$7500 USD for a minimum size prefix which you could advertise. I do generally agree with your assertion this isn’t unaffordable, since the people who are most likely to care about owning their IP space instead of borrowing one from a provider like AWS most likely have other more significant costs like LIR fees, renting space/power/cooling for equipment, buying servers and network devices, etc etc.
zinekeller 6y ago
> roughly four providers (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL). At least for North America, three. Yahoo! and AOL are already operating under a single company (formerly Oath, now the much more boring Verizon Media Services), and they have "rationalize" (aka merge) their systems. Sidenote: The Japanese Yahoo! is not related to the American Yahoo! (except it was before early 2000's came along).
zinekeller 6y ago
> There's no way to just go purchase an ARM chip and host a server in your closet; no one is selling them. There are indeed readily-available ARM servers from the likes of DellEMC and HPE, and ready-to-integrate motherboards from the likes from Supermicro and Gigabyte, and AMD still sells ARM chips. This is very much opposite of your assertion.
nixgeek 6y ago
Wiwynn will sell you ARM systems with Ampere Altra CPUs today. Systems integrators like Phoenics are booking orders, and various reviews for Mt Jade and Mt Snow suggest they’re not awful platforms.