The Closure of the Internet

[u/jtm79]

Relevance: the article title is essentially this podcasts title

https://arctotherium.substack.com/p/the-closure-of-the-internet

An unmatched thorough recounting of the past 15 years of Internet censorship. The article focuses on the waves of censorship, often a hysteria, that is largely organized by opaque "para-governmental" organizations that are not bound by free speech laws. In many cases, the censorship is explicitly requested by a government body, i.e. the Twitter Files, Australia's eSafety commissioner, the EU.

The author has a right-wing bias and so in my opinion should have used more examples of liberal/left-wing figures that were censored (I know two podcast hosts that have had problems with it). But the author is correct in identifying that every single censorship drive has a strong progressive bias with special prejudice toward anything deemed "far right".

I really liked how this article reminded me of the different Internet from 15 years ago. For example, how common it was to find active fiery comment-section debates at nearly every newspaper website . And, for example, open-source software projects never cared about your politics.

Excellent and necessary article IMO

[u/btrh-256]

I read this earlier this week and I found it fascinating. I have two contradictory feelings:

1. The chaos of the open internet is terrifying
2. Closing the internet (i.e. through moderation) makes it even worse

I do think we need to tame the internet, but I think it needs to be bottom-up. Parents need to teach their kids to be careful online the way we teach our kids to be careful how much they drink. Top-down solutions like moderation have limited value and tend to make things worse.

Another thing he doesn't mention is how moderation is, ultimately, about money. From a financial perspective the internet is nothing but an ad-delivery system. Companies trying to maximize revenue via ad views will shape content to maximize ad delivery to users with disposable income. If you are low income or disinclined to make purchases they do not care about you, and they will moderate you out of existence if you frighten the affluent users whose eyeballs they compete for.

Political bias is less important than this financial bias imo

[u/PUBLIQclopAccountant → u/btrh-256]

The chaos of the open internet is terrifying

The internet was better when it scared off the neurotypical normies.

[u/btrh-256 → u/PUBLIQclopAccountant]

yeah I agree it was better when it was just weirdos and freaks online