Recent increase in youtube targeting and restricting of gun video's.

[Justin]

Great, now we just need to grant the government the legal power to tell people/companies what content they can & can't post on the world wide web thus regulating the subject matter of every item posted (or not posted) to the world wide web. What could go wrong with that?

This already happened with the passage of the DMCA.

Sorry, Jer, but the values spelled out in A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace have been dead for over a decade. It's time to adapt to the new reality.

[ChickNorris]

Decaf

; )

[Jer]

Sorry man, but that ship sailed a long time ago. The days of the internet being a wild west free for all where anyone can start a site and have a decent chance of finding an audience are over. What's worse is that these companies were able to gain competitive advantages over more traditional forms of media not only by the nature of how the internet works, but by having protections for themselves and their industry built into the DMCA.

They were able to get legal protection by claiming that they aren't publishers and don't have the ability to gatekeep information in the same way a tv station or traditional print publisher could. But the fact that Facebook, Google, Youtube, Twitter, etc. are now very clearly acting as informational gatekeepers by shutting out people that don't agree with their corporate or political agendas shows that the protections they earned under DMCA were granted to organizations acting in bad faith.

These corporations built massive empires on a distributed network that was based around the free exchange of information. They now have the ability, methods, and interest, and motives (political and financial) in gatekeeping what information is seen while ensuring that smaller competitors will never, ever, ever, ever see the light of day.

Your attempting to defend a notion of the internet as it existed 20 years ago. That internet no longer exists, and the people who have built their empires in it are slowly ensuring that form of the internet will never exist again.

That you don't think these psychopaths shouldn't be held to account because it somehow conflicts with a dead conception of what the internet is supposed to be is absolute insanity. You are defending the very people who wish to slit your throat.

I don't know, to me it sounds like you admit my idea is a pretty good one in your very response. This idea that "that ship has sailed and we'll never get the toothpaste back in the tube" is the very defeatist attitude that continues giving all of our rights away... just at a slightly slower pace.

[Irving]

Might sound stupid, but 30 years ago, the concept of the internet didn't exist and it was created out of 100% whole cloth. It seems completely ridiculous, but there is no reason that another "internet" couldn't be created, seeing as how the real estate in cyberspace is infinite. Far fetched? Maybe. E-Rome wasn't built in a day.

[Justin]

I don't know, to me it sounds like you admit my idea is a pretty good one in your very response. This idea that "that ship has sailed and we'll never get the toothpaste back in the tube" is the very defeatist attitude that continues giving all of our rights away... just at a slightly slower pace.

Yeah, and the idea of wide open wild spaces in Colorado is great, too, but sure as shit, it isn't going to stop the I-25 corridor from becoming one solid hellscape of strip malls and Applebees.

[Justin]

Might sound stupid, but 30 years ago, the concept of the internet didn't exist and it was created out of 100% whole cloth. It seems completely ridiculous, but there is no reason that another "internet" couldn't be created, seeing as how the real estate in cyberspace is infinite. Far fetched? Maybe. E-Rome wasn't built in a day.

All systems inevitably centralize. Doesn't matter what they are.

[Irving]

All systems inevitably centralize. Doesn't matter what they are.

Agreed, just pointing out the possibility of starting over and getting the E-Declaration of Independence right the next time. Kind of like the US I guess. I suppose the dark web might just become more main stream over time.

[Justin]

Agreed, just pointing out the possibility of starting over and getting the E-Declaration of Independence right the next time. Kind of like the US I guess. I suppose the dark web might just become more main stream over time.

The Dark Web is already under surveillance.

The three best hopes you've got are the following:
1.) Blockchain, maybe.
2.) The thing Tim Berners Lee is working on.
3.) Mars.

[ChickNorris]

Yay Byzantine Generals!

[ChickNorris]

Ledger... my vote