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When you have the Internet's birthplace making these types of moves, the writing is on the wall. The truly wild open and global Internet has been sick and hobbl

When you have the Internet's birthplace making these types of moves, the writing is on the wall. The truly wild open and global Internet has been sick and hobbling for a long time, and these are truly its last days. It's held up strong, but it looks like it's not going to survive the current wave of post-pandemic anti-globalism and corporate centralization. One of the most positive things to come out of the open global Internet is the worldwide open source movement and Linux. I'm sure Linux will be protected in the coming closedown, but only because it's been extremely useful to companies. In the long run it won't matter. POSIX can't last forever. At some point given the massive parallelism in GPUs and that continuing to increase within CPUs, some new paradigm is certain to take hold and it won't be open source. Decades shall pass, and the Internet will become like the telephone, radio and television: a big boring thing controlled and meted out by massive corporate entities, culturally moving at the speed of molasses, providing slow and reliable returns on investment, and fading more or less into the background. Maybe after half a century or so there will be a new disruptor, a new 90's Internet with its optimism and desire for freedom; and maybe it will take some lessons learned from this iteration and survive longer.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
What do you think will be the nail in the coffin for the internet? Do you think there will be anywhere to go after?
- RiverCrochet 2y ago
  The more liability that ISPs are under for content, the more the Internet is dead. It'll probably be some cybersecurity regulation effectively requiring whitelisting of domains. No one will care because AI slop will have made it unusable for most at that point. I could see ISPs being eventually put in a position where--given concerns of cybersecurity, liability, profitability, and absence net neutrality--access to domains gets treated more or less like cable channels. You'll have a basic package of a hundred or so approved non-foreign "safety-certified" domains that tend to be part of your phone or Internet bill, and then access to other domains is available if ISP-consortium approved and you pay. There won't be very many because there will be a complex regulatory environment both for domain owners, providers of the service behind the domain, and the ISP allowing access. To register and provide services under a new domain you will have to spend a lot of upfront capital or work under an established regime. > Do you think there will be anywhere to go after? No clue. My crystal ball is dark. I guess UUCP would still work if you can get a dial tone somehow lol. I'm sure we'll still have phone numbers.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago

What do you think will be the nail in the coffin for the internet? Do you think there will be anywhere to go after?

RiverCrochet 2y ago
The more liability that ISPs are under for content, the more the Internet is dead. It'll probably be some cybersecurity regulation effectively requiring whitelisting of domains. No one will care because AI slop will have made it unusable for most at that point. I could see ISPs being eventually put in a position where--given concerns of cybersecurity, liability, profitability, and absence net neutrality--access to domains gets treated more or less like cable channels. You'll have a basic package of a hundred or so approved non-foreign "safety-certified" domains that tend to be part of your phone or Internet bill, and then access to other domains is available if ISP-consortium approved and you pay. There won't be very many because there will be a complex regulatory environment both for domain owners, providers of the service behind the domain, and the ISP allowing access. To register and provide services under a new domain you will have to spend a lot of upfront capital or work under an established regime. > Do you think there will be anywhere to go after? No clue. My crystal ball is dark. I guess UUCP would still work if you can get a dial tone somehow lol. I'm sure we'll still have phone numbers.