Does anyone else feel like we’re going down the path of internet Balkanization? Not in any immediate sense, but it seems like a slow rolling type of narrative that we will retrospectively see at the end of the 21st century. I don’t have any _real_ evidence to support this feeling of mine, but occasionally there are blips like this that make me wonder.
India's most populous and likely poorest state, had 202 mn people in 2012; nearly 2/3rds of the current US population.
Here are some cities and numbers for scale (Google search)
Mumbai had ~20.4 mn people. Cairo has ~20.9 mn. Dhaka 21 mn Mexico city 21.7
New Zealand had 4.8 mn people in 2018. Canada - 37.59 Mayanmar - 53.71 The UK - 66 mn Vietnam 95.5 mn
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A few years ago, Mexico had a spate of gang violence. News about it was suppressed by the govt.
A woman driving along the road uploaded a video she had taken. It showed shell cases strewn on the roads, burnt out trucks, and the aftermath of that violence.
IT went viral on Facebook, going against the Government narrative and letting a slice of reality get observed.
Until morning came around to the UK. At which point someone opened facebook, and saw the gore. They were able to call people they knew at FB and say "why am I/my kids seeing this?".
And FB responded and took it down, for breaking site rules.
(taken from Custodians of the Internet) -----
FB wasn't necessarily wrong, but it was definitely partial. When the blood and gore rule was enforced during the Boston bombings, senior employees overruled it citing newsworthiness.
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Your guess that the net will be balkanized is quite likely true.
FB spends great efforts to have local presence in each market. They recruit policy people, and negotiators. However, the platform does help broadcast content.
And if someone at FB can decide what is newsworthy or not, then why wouldn't local leaders crave that same power?