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This is Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram. And he’s totally correct. The Internet was much better before the 2000s and the social media era. And when the peo

This is Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram. And he’s totally correct. The Internet was much better before the 2000s and the social media era. And when the people who remember it aren’t around, those remaining won’t have any idea that they’re missing something. He’s also totally correct in calling out the obvious lunge towards authoritarianism from European democracies - this must be stopped immediately: > Once-free countries are introducing dystopian measures such as digital IDs (UK), online age checks (Australia), and mass scanning of private messages (EU). > Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials on the Internet. The UK is imprisoning thousands for their tweets. France is criminally investigating tech leaders who defend freedom and privacy.

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
We're also running out of people who know and care that you used to be able to buy straight from a publisher, own, play offline with privacy, and resell games on an open platform without Steam as a DRM/rent-seeking middleman.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
  Point 'em to Gog and itch.io if you get a chance
tpm 1y ago
Yet he is also one of the riders of apocalypse. Techbros who only applied rules that suited them and abused everything else. It's one thing if we had some mythical true freedom fighters, or guys from Signal, against The State, but if it's people like him, Zuckerberg etc. then it gets much harder to defend anything they do. It is important to understand that 'the lunge towards authoritarianism' is directly caused by this. > Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials on the Internet. This is not correct as far as I know. If Germany is persecuting someone for something written on the internet, that something is much worse than criticism. Words should still have meaning.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
NedF 1y ago
> The Internet was much better before the 2000s An embarrassing fiction, it was junk. More people are on VPNs now than were on the internet pre-2000 It's true there were ideas and principals in a wild west the younger generation will never know was the default. You could go out and have a battle with Injun's or see a lynching but it was 99.9% dust and hard work herding cows. The internet now is a megacity, everything is amazing, there are roving gang wars to little hobbyists and anything else you can imagine. > He’s also totally correct in calling out the obvious lunge towards authoritarianism Yes Pavel and this is 100% correct. China banned VPNs effectively, this will come to the West next. If the US falls there is no where to VPN to.
- jagermo 1y ago
  >> He’s also totally correct in calling out the obvious lunge towards authoritarianism >Yes Pavel and this is 100% correct. a lunge he happily helped support with telegram and vkontakte as long as the money rolled it. Poor rich guy.
- rockskon 1y ago
  There's relentless distractions. Being relentlessly harrassed by so many things trying to steal your attention and time. The Internet truly was better when people had more control over their own experience in it. Now the modern equivalent of pop-up ads are on every blog begging you to sign up for their newsletter and you're severely restricted in how you can even interact with the handful of popular websites leftover. Some things are better now, sure. But some are definitely worse with the control over information exposure that we've lost.
twixfel 1y ago
Germany has always had strange (bad) laws about insulting people. It's literally nothing to do with the internet. You are betraying your ignorance by saying they "must be stopped"—they've been around since the country was founded.
dangus 1y ago
I think it’s questionable to trust the guy who founded Telegram this much. The opinion given about Germany leaves out a lot of the nuance. I think that Germany is taking a unique approach that actually seems to make sense: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-online-hate-speech-prosecution-60-minutes/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-online-hate-speech-pros... I would argue that the American approach to a more absolute form of freedom of speech, plus the manipulative potential of the internet, plus psychological differences that exist when humans socialize online compared to in person has made a really negative cocktail of societal harm. The USA is sliding into authoritarianism in part because it explicitly allows grifters to spread outright lies and slander via their corporate platforms and there’s no recourse because of the first amendment. News outlets like Fox News don’t have to even attempts to be news in their concept, they can go to court and claim that their programming is an opinion entertainment show and spread information they know to be lies. They’ve only really been caught in this scam legally once in paying out the Dominion civil defamation suit settlement and they only had to do that because they were defaming a specific company. The US elected a literal internet troll as president. And that’s not a good thing. I think there is something admirable in the approach Germany is taking, and as long as it is implemented well it is absolutely possible to balance free expression with protecting society from vitriol.

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago

We're also running out of people who know and care that you used to be able to buy straight from a publisher, own, play offline with privacy, and resell games on an open platform without Steam as a DRM/rent-seeking middleman.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
Point 'em to Gog and itch.io if you get a chance

tpm 1y ago

Yet he is also one of the riders of apocalypse. Techbros who only applied rules that suited them and abused everything else. It's one thing if we had some mythical true freedom fighters, or guys from Signal, against The State, but if it's people like him, Zuckerberg etc. then it gets much harder to defend anything they do. It is important to understand that 'the lunge towards authoritarianism' is directly caused by this. > Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials on the Internet. This is not correct as far as I know. If Germany is persecuting someone for something written on the internet, that something is much worse than criticism. Words should still have meaning.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

NedF 1y ago

> The Internet was much better before the 2000s An embarrassing fiction, it was junk. More people are on VPNs now than were on the internet pre-2000 It's true there were ideas and principals in a wild west the younger generation will never know was the default. You could go out and have a battle with Injun's or see a lynching but it was 99.9% dust and hard work herding cows. The internet now is a megacity, everything is amazing, there are roving gang wars to little hobbyists and anything else you can imagine. > He’s also totally correct in calling out the obvious lunge towards authoritarianism Yes Pavel and this is 100% correct. China banned VPNs effectively, this will come to the West next. If the US falls there is no where to VPN to.

jagermo 1y ago
>> He’s also totally correct in calling out the obvious lunge towards authoritarianism >Yes Pavel and this is 100% correct. a lunge he happily helped support with telegram and vkontakte as long as the money rolled it. Poor rich guy.
rockskon 1y ago
There's relentless distractions. Being relentlessly harrassed by so many things trying to steal your attention and time. The Internet truly was better when people had more control over their own experience in it. Now the modern equivalent of pop-up ads are on every blog begging you to sign up for their newsletter and you're severely restricted in how you can even interact with the handful of popular websites leftover. Some things are better now, sure. But some are definitely worse with the control over information exposure that we've lost.

twixfel 1y ago

Germany has always had strange (bad) laws about insulting people. It's literally nothing to do with the internet. You are betraying your ignorance by saying they "must be stopped"—they've been around since the country was founded.

dangus 1y ago

I think it’s questionable to trust the guy who founded Telegram this much. The opinion given about Germany leaves out a lot of the nuance. I think that Germany is taking a unique approach that actually seems to make sense: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-online-hate-speech-prosecution-60-minutes/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-online-hate-speech-pros... I would argue that the American approach to a more absolute form of freedom of speech, plus the manipulative potential of the internet, plus psychological differences that exist when humans socialize online compared to in person has made a really negative cocktail of societal harm. The USA is sliding into authoritarianism in part because it explicitly allows grifters to spread outright lies and slander via their corporate platforms and there’s no recourse because of the first amendment. News outlets like Fox News don’t have to even attempts to be news in their concept, they can go to court and claim that their programming is an opinion entertainment show and spread information they know to be lies. They’ve only really been caught in this scam legally once in paying out the Dominion civil defamation suit settlement and they only had to do that because they were defaming a specific company. The US elected a literal internet troll as president. And that’s not a good thing. I think there is something admirable in the approach Germany is taking, and as long as it is implemented well it is absolutely possible to balance free expression with protecting society from vitriol.