Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

I think it says something about the world indirectly, in that the US and Russia are big enough to influence other parts of the world through ripple effects. However, there are many nations that aren't going through existential crises of faith in their government to effectively lead them without institutionalized corruption and subversion. So I think the actual effects are more local than global.

In many ways the political body is just a reflection of the citizenry. The US is part of a global cultural shift, and that has consequences. It's not nearly as dangerous as, say, the Protestant Reformation, but there are some parallels. Belief and trust in the authority of the state is waning, new ideas about the ethics of treating each other are becoming more entrenched, and technology is furthering the spread of these ideas.

The US political machine is slowly eating itself, and a very bad economic downtown could threaten its foundations. If the US is going to be hurt, it'll probably be by within more than without. But you also can't talk about politics anymore without geopolitics. As the US changes internally, that makes it vulnerable externally. The current administration has been systematically giving up international influence in favor of nationalism, a trend other Western nations are also going with, which will result in an international shift of power. China may not be fermenting revolution here, but they're obviously bolstering their role on the world stage. They will be ready to pick up any money and power we leave on the table, which weakens the US and the west in general.

So sure, these kinds of "oh no our government is subverting itself" posts are problematic, but I don't think nearly as problematic as just how the minds of the citizens are changing, and how that is then affecting its stability.

The long game is that participation in electronic communication is reduced to rubble and ash.

We all withdraw, and seek alternatives to personal remote interaction via telecommunication. We look at the text tumbleweeds blowing across the landscape, knowing they are covered in radioactive dust and asbestos from wars fought long ago in what now resembles a no mans land of WMD cola wars and Michael Dukakis pogroms. Uselessness and futility expressed in magnetic regions and energized transistors. Moldering and soon desiccated well beyond any expiration date.

Short term, our eyes and ears are raped by tabloid infographics, as a shortage of sensory chastity belts drives prices through the roof. We lock our doors and listen as boots tromp outside and morons with opinions bayonet and hand grenade everything in sight, until eventually the noxious fumes force even their horses to wear gas masks. We slap wet towels against the door jams as blister agents seep in, and eventually aerial carpet bombing exterminates millions of us. Shell shocked survivors ramble word salad nonsense and gibberish about glam rock and square dancing, as if nerd signaling niche interests will validate the street credibility of their corporate agribusiness ad-supported cybernetic implants hobbled with OEM political opinion software that cannot be uninstalled.

But eventually, the war ends when something so terrible emerges, that further sock puppeting becomes unthinkable and a cold war posture leaves only limited proxy misinformation still frothing at the edges of digital electronic systems. The occasional Nigerian robocall reminds us of the bad old days aren't as far away as we'd like to think. The blackened sky and nuclear winter still shrouds the internet as we knew it. All TCP/IP traffic ruined, we still get by with bucket brigades that hand off physical disks that resist tampering through cryptographic integrity mechanisms. Nothing is instantaneous anymore, and some prefer it that way.

There is a very close analogy from the past which may explain why net neutrality is a good idea: railways and Standard Oil. Rockfeller making special deals with the railways prioritizing his traffic directly resulted in the worst monopoly in U.S. history, putting millions of people in misery. If that isn't an example of why critical communication channels should be equally available to everyone i don't know what is.

I kind of see a pattern here between net neutrality with ISPs and pollution with car makers.

I'd like to think in both cases that by walking back (sensible) regulation at the federal level was bad for business.

I wonder what that means for online privacy laws. Should the federal government not even touch this?

So hacking peoples' identity without their knowledge is the bad thing here. What they did with those identities ideally is secondary.