The web used to have many fewer daily users in terms of people visiting more than a web email client and its landing page (AOL).
With it sites were much more niche. The result was different psychology about how to approach the internet. Nobody needed to be on the internet. Nobody needed to be on any particular part of the internet. If you didn't like what you saw on the internet, you got off of it. Maybe you didn't get back on for a month. Internet was in fact a novelty.
Now instead of people getting off the internet when they see content they don't like, they demand the content gets off the internet. They think they have a right to live here and dictate what the shared environment will be. They in fact think they have to live here and that if the content doesn't go way they will be forced to interact with content they find offensive. One, that's not the worst condition to be in, and two, you can leave.
That's one of the reasons why the old internet censored basically nothing and there wasn't even a talk about it. It was assumed any and all content was welcome because people can just not look at it.
It also helped that the internet didn't shape politics as much as it does today. There was nothing to be gained by crying foul, but now there is everything to gain. Shutting down information on a particular site didn't have a lot of value because it was responsible for 0.1% viewership by the country. Now we have sites than 80% of people see. If you can get content removed off of those and develop a false consensus you can shape the public's perception far more than by creating a new sites. And so those interested in shaping perception do it destructively rather than constructively.
In short, none of these problems happened when most people weren't using the web. Maybe we should go back to it?
If Bill Gate's threats... suggestions of caution concerning a full blow bio-weapon coming sometime after corona virus can be taken seriously, then maybe it would be good to get caught up with the real world while we can.
The web used to have many fewer daily users in terms of people visiting more than a web email client and its landing page (AOL).
With it sites were much more niche. The result was different psychology about how to approach the internet. Nobody needed to be on the internet. Nobody needed to be on any particular part of the internet. If you didn't like what you saw on the internet, you got off of it. Maybe you didn't get back on for a month. Internet was in fact a novelty.
Now instead of people getting off the internet when they see content they don't like, they demand the content gets off the internet. They think they have a right to live here and dictate what the shared environment will be. They in fact think they have to live here and that if the content doesn't go way they will be forced to interact with content they find offensive. One, that's not the worst condition to be in, and two, you can leave.
That's one of the reasons why the old internet censored basically nothing and there wasn't even a talk about it. It was assumed any and all content was welcome because people can just not look at it.
It also helped that the internet didn't shape politics as much as it does today. There was nothing to be gained by crying foul, but now there is everything to gain. Shutting down information on a particular site didn't have a lot of value because it was responsible for 0.1% viewership by the country. Now we have sites than 80% of people see. If you can get content removed off of those and develop a false consensus you can shape the public's perception far more than by creating a new sites. And so those interested in shaping perception do it destructively rather than constructively.
In short, none of these problems happened when most people weren't using the web. Maybe we should go back to it?
If Bill Gate's ~~threats~~... suggestions of caution concerning a full blow bio-weapon coming sometime after corona virus can be taken seriously, then maybe it would be good to get caught up with the real world while we can.
(post is archived)