Debatable - I think the Internet is straining mighty hard to do its thing. When major cloud vendors and government can conspire to shut down an alternative pla

Debatable - I think the Internet is straining mighty hard to do its thing. When major cloud vendors and government can conspire to shut down an alternative platform (I've already forgotten the example - Parler) right before an election, it's not a good testament. Parler is online today, it seems, but that's small beer considering how it all went down. We still have the government spox calling for censorship, collaborating with private companies to implement censorship, and corporations buckling under the strain of PR, employee, shareholder, prospective regulatory, and litigation pressures to comply. The problematic element here is increasing centralization of the Internet and collaboration with government. Either of those by themselves would be normal, the two combined speaks badly for the health of the Internet. It will be interesting to see how Rumble, HowTube, GETTR, and other alternatives to the majors fare if they can gain traction with general audiences rather than servicing the politically disenfranchised. One might argue that they only survive now based on their obscurity. Arguably there is pressure to keep them obscure by labeling anything aligned with the principles of free speech as racist, hateful, dangerous, etc. Until society gets calloused to those accusations and a climate of constant fear generally, alternative communication channels are held under an effective ceiling of success.