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The “freedom” of the early internet was bullshit, because it just meant “freedom to make money” and “freedom from having to deal with the consequences of your p
by CPLX 1y ago
The “freedom” of the early internet was bullshit, because it just meant “freedom to make money” and “freedom from having to deal with the consequences of your products on regular people.”
It most decidedly did not mean “freedom from corporate hegemony” which is how we are where we are now, where children are matched with pedophile groomers[1] and delivered endless advertisements for freelance porn practitioners for profit.
This version of freedom isn’t a free internet at all. That was just a PR pitch. And it wasn’t really a great idea to begin with, since it ends up leading to where we are now.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-06/instagram-urged-groomers-to-connect-with-minors-ftc-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-06/instagram...
- convolvatron 1y agoit depends on which early free internet you're talking about. mine strictly forbid commercial usage at all - and it was lovely.
- andrepd 1y ago> which is how we are where we are now, where children are matched with pedophile groomers[1] and delivered endless advertisements for freelance porn practitioners for profit. Yes, which is why we are not in the early internet anymore and fully into surveillance capitalism, algorithmic social media.
- CPLX 1y agoExactly. And the early internet lead directly here. Which is why going back makes about as much sense as picking up your baby and dropping it on the floor again.
- convolvatron 1y agoAll of those changes were choices. Like setting icann as a for profit entity at the behest of a corrupt libertarian faction. We didn’t have to destroy peer to peer communication. We didn’t have to cede email to google. None of those things were inevitable. Could have become anything really.
- CPLX 1y agoYeah but we didn’t do it, because our political system is built around deference to large corporations and we’ve abandoned antitrust and taking on corporate power. But here’s the thing. This effort to stop these corporations from delivering unlimited porn to children is a step in the right direction. Which is restraining the activity of these companies to hurt people. Which is why calls for the old “free” internet are now, like then, bullshit.
- soulofmischief 1y agoBullshit. This about enacting tboughtcrime and normalizing that two Americans cannot exchange whatever arbitrary information the current administration has decided is disallowed. It starts with porn and ends with any form of dissent. It's another step towards Newspeak. I know they taught you about slippery slopes in elementary school social studies, and I assume you've educated yourself not only of the past but also with speculative material such as 1984. If not, I'm not sure why you feel qualified to make the claims you're making.
- CPLX 1y agoYeah that’s the libertarian techno utopian Silicon Valley point of view. It’s not that I don’t understand it, it’s that I think it’s pretty clear at this point it’s just a PR pitch for a group of sociopathic assholes who think they deserve to run the country. Giving unlimited porn to kids is not “good, actually” and it was illegal before the internet and it’s a frustrating accident of history that nobody understood the implications of Section 230 at the time. The internet is a core infrastructure commercial enterprise and what it produces should be subject to standard product regulations.
- soulofmischief 1y agoI'm not a libertarian, and I don't live in SV. I'm also not a sociopathic asshole. Your argument is filled with ad hominem, then presents a ridiculous straw man, and never actually addresses the argument I made. Would you like to try again?