Discussion
What happened to the fight for the internet? https://dustycloud.org/blog/what-happened-to-the-fight-for-the-internet/
A new blogpost from me. I believe the fight for keeping the internet free is more important than ever but also under more threats than ever.
And the irony is, centralization is partly to blame: people don't feel like the internet is theirs anymore.
But we can't leave it there.
We HAVE to act.
For our sake, for our kids' sake, for ourselves, for the future.
@cwebber excellent post ... totally agree about the stakes and importance -- and about how so much of this crackdown is driven by fear of (and hate for) the net's possibilities for helping trans, queer, and questioning youth. And also totally agree about the importance of decentralized technologies! I've been working on a somewhat-similar post, including looking back at the 2008-ish golden age of organizing on the social networks and focusing on the grassroots organizing and activism that's needed ... on the way there, a few quick thoughts.
Because there's a difference between now and 2012. The internet feels a lot less like an "our thing" than it used to.
That's certainly true, and along with that there's also been a change in the politics and strategy of big tech companies. In the battles over net neutrality and SOPA/PIP, the big consumer-facing tech companies were largely on our side, and social networks were good turf for organizing. Today, they're actively aligning with fascist and authoritarian governments -- and hostile to organizing and activism that tries to resist fascism, authoritariamism and the surveillance-industrial complex. Algorithm changes and moderation practices are two aspects of that; their acceptance of age verification requirements is another.
Decentralized social networks offer a potential alternative. There are currently some big barriers but oh well, if changing the world were easy everybody would do it. And there are some real opportunities here, even with today's technologies and limited adoption. Can the Fediverse Help Stop Bad Internet Bills, explored this a couple of years ago, and we've come a long way since then. My Fediforum presentation on Organizing, Mutual Aid, and Activism from last fall and this spring's unworkshop presentation on Legislative Activism in the ATmosphere and the Fediverse have more on the possibilities.
It feels like people are tired.
Yep. Living under fascism is exhausting, the economy sucks for many people, and long covid is a factor too. And, this is only one of many battles that need fighting -- as important as it is, threats like ICE and CBP, and losing access to gender-affirming health care, are a lot more immediate.
And it feels like the PR for locking things down has more acceptance publicly than before.
Also true. First of all big tech companies really are abusive and there's a justifiable feeling that something needs to be done. With big tech's lobbying power, the short-term prospects of passing strong privacy or anti-trust legislation are bleak, and it's not obious to most people how they'd help with kids safety.
Shoddy rsearchers like Jonathan Haidt overstate the harms of social media on kids and ignore the benefits (especially to margainalized kids and teens), and the Age Vendors Providers Association and anti-LGBTQIA23+ hate groups overstate the value (and understate the harms) of age verification. Plus it's been very hard to counter talking points like the false analogy to showing your ID to buy alcohol -- and at least so far age verification backers have done a good job of dismissing the evidence that it doesn't work.
On top of that, big tech and their allies in anti-LGBTQIA2S+ hate groups has been very good at spreding the myth that these bills will "hold big tech accountable." As I just discussed in KOSA, the KIDS Act, AI, Bad Internet Bills, and a potential giveaway to big tech , Meta, Microsoft, Apple, X, Snap, Pinterest, and OpenAI all support KOSA. They wouldn't be doing that if it were really holding them accountable!
Which brings us back to a potential role of decentralized social networks: getting accurate information out there to equip people to refute these talking points, both with the public and with legislators. Mainstream media is owned by big corporations (and doesn't care about youth or LGBTQIA2S+ people), so we need to work around that. There are enough of us here that if folks have the tools to use our real-world social networks and 1-1 online communications tecnologies to persuade people, it can really make a difference.
Anyhow ... a long response but as you can tell this has been something I've been thinking about a lot!
@cwebber also ...
"Who's coordinating all these? What money is pushing it? Palantir? Heritage Foundation types? Large, centralization-enthused orgs like Meta? All of the above? It's hard to tell. But there's certainly a lot of money flowing underfoot."
All of the above are involved, and more generally the surveillance-industrial complex, although I wouldn't say anybody in particular is actually coordinating it. Breaking it down a little:
governments around the world want more surveillance and control, and age verification and restrictions on youth (that can also threaten LGBTQIA2S+ people, activists, and other marginalized groups) are a good way to accomplish that
the Age Verification Providers Association -- which includes companies owned by Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and various data brokers -- is a powerful tech lobbying force. Meta also spends a lot on lobbying, although their priority is regulatory capture and defeating any strong privacy and AI regulation, so I wouldn't overstate their role on age verification.
anti-LGBTQIA2S+ hate groups like NCOSE and Exodus Cry masquerading as "child safety" groups have a lot of influence
the Heritage Foundation and their allies have a lot of infuence in US politics -- although it's also important not to overstate their role; look at how many Democrats support these bills
@cwebber a couple more thoughts:
"But what I hadn't anticipated is that as things became more centralized, the will to fight for the internet as something in the public interest too would evaporate."
My first reaction to this was that I see it differently. Here in Washington state we haven't had any problem getting people to fight for internet in the public interest -- we stopped age verification bills here (and before that stopped bad privacy bills and passed a fairly good one). And while it's just one data point, TikTok is a hotbed of anti-KOSA activism on TikTok, and it doesn't get much more centralized than that.
Conversely trying to get activism campaigns going here in fedi is often very challenging, at least here in North America. On this latest iteration of KOSA and the KIDS Act, how many people were posting about it and how much traction did the posts get? How much discussion is there of Canada's C-34? Or take warrantless wiretapping, another classic net freedom issue ... how much traction is there on FISA or Canada's C-22?
It's weird because so many people here care a lot about privacy and digital rights -- this really should be a strength! And even though the numbers are relatively small, it's still more than enough to have an impact ... all the more so if people don't just take action but also reach out to others not on fedi to (a) cut through the disinfo and (b) get them to take action. In reality though Fedi's impact to date hasn't been great -- and @Gnuxie makes a great point here about the broader FLOSS context. https://social.applied-langua.ge/objects/7dbb507c-1b97-4271-b28a-93c0e0b72eca
So while I very much agree with your encouragement to speak up and spread the information with people off fedi ... we've certainly got a lot of room for improvement here as well. It's not an either-or thing, and we should in principle be able to make bigger short-term gains here.
@cwebber yep, people do the best they can, but It's still a mess we need to compost.
Fully agree here!
@cwebber Decentralize the internet to HELL AND BACK. We can take back control 🔥
@cwebber Parents are tired and they want to just give they kids the phones and net-toys and then force large corps do the supervision.
Supervision is tiring because parents no longer know how to trust things on the net.
People no longer know how to trust because (and I hate to say it) the tech professionals and enthusiasts gave up on the PKI model. They say expecting users to recognize incorrect domains is bad (people will just "click through") and placing the burden on users is bad. So they place the burden on users anyway, testing them with fake phishing emails and issuing vague, non-deterministic guidelines for staying safe and just keep hammering users with "you failed" notices in hopes they can eventually train their cyber ninjas with repeated blows to the head.
What's left? The "safe" choices you get in the Apple or Google app store.
We lost this battle (and really, the whole net) because we abdicated responsibility for promoting a bare-minimum net culture that starts with PKI use. Right? We are supposed to use Let's Encrypt to promote encryption only – users unaware – with no connotation of identity. So the culture has devolved into "safe" app store marketing and the rest of us who lather about the exploits of the day, red-teaming and other sources of cyber intrigues.
If we are to act, we have to get our priorities straight and also admit that we were wrong to promote the Internet with a devil-may-care "live the adventure" vibe. To save PKI, we need to rehabilitate the standing of CAs and start giving users clear, deterministic instructions about who and how they can trust. We probably also need to develop customs and common sense about what is too much reliance on remote services, and also to promote the use of inherently more secure endpoints that are better by dint of their improved architecture and not by centralized gatekeeping of applications.
@cwebber I think it's a combination of exhaustion and ignorance.
The people that don't know or remember that the internet is more than five companies are perfectly happy to live in their little bubbles. The people that are aware are not as numerous as the ignorant, and not as well-funded as the opposition. The bad bills just keep coming and they don't stop coming.
Hell I'm not even a real activist and just keeping abreast of all the anti-internet bullshit coming down the pipe feels *exhausting*, let alone trying to explain to others why it's all bad. It feels inevitable to the point where I just want to throw my paws up and let people live with the surveillance state they voted for.
@cwebber was just talking yesterday about how computer scientists stopped SDI even earlier than that, and where people are these days.
@cwebber beautifully written, thank you!
I'm a silly furry creature on the Internet. I'm pan. I have a trans partner. The bulk of my friends and family are queer and/or neurodivergent.
I am fucking TERRIFIED of the idea that I might have to choose between my actual life and a "work safe" persona to do basic things like "maintain a bank account" and "own property" and "have access to medical care".
And that's exactly the direction a closed, age-verified, ID-required internet is taking us. Make no mistake about it, it's not about protecting children or eliminating fraud (the first clue should be that the proponents of these bills are mostly child rapists and/or virulent fraudsters).
It's about documenting, monitoring, and eventually unpeopling "undesirables".
And the definition of "undesirables" can change with one stroke of a pen.
If this blogpost resonates with you, please spread it around, and/or write your own thing! And spread it to and speak up in places that AREN'T just the fediverse.
Please.
We need to fight.
Thank you. 💜
@cwebber
Thanks, well thinked and well written. By the operative side, my opinion is that in the European institutions there is a big army of lobbist lawyers that are payed from and work for big tech, while there are almost nobody doing the same in favour of free internet and freedoms. We need
One: to track, publish and explain what they do.
Two: we need a payed corp of anti-lobbist to reverse this process. I don't know about other realities, bit I think the problems are the same.
@cwebber It does. I've also written about it, and to my MP. Only silence from them. It's so frustrating.
@cwebber Thank you for writing this. There's simply so much shit going on at once that you have to be very firmly entrenched in your beliefs that openness of the internet is one of the underpinnings of a society that uses it all the time, in order to priorize it in the current rancid political space.
In my limited experience, people are simply burnt out. In the early 2010s you could feel a vibe that people cared, that you were not alone, and most importantly there was the (mostly mistaken, IMO) belief that you could actually make your voice heard; you actually can but it takes more dedication than ever.
@slowfallinward I think, for one thing, we have to build and use more p2p tech.
@cwebber @slowfallinward and teach others around us about the internet beyond those five big corporations.
@cwebber @slowfallinward I think my next crud app will eventually be P2P. I just need to understand how to use goblins to do it
@otfrom @cwebber @slowfallinward
May I humbly suggest you make it as a 3NWeb app. There is server that sees No plain text, is given No extra metadata, leaving Nothing on it to abuse. Coupled with web-style federation, gives faster transports than pure p2p. Transports for data storage and sync. Transports for async messaging.
We'll be at #hope26
We have progress from last year:
https://youtu.be/JRP0dW_zy_c?t=1955
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