Who controls the Internet? And should they? (2021)

What you describe already exist, governments already have their own intranet. This is about controlling the public internet. I understand what you are saying but the comparison does not make sense, because there's a clear difference between setting up a private corporate network and a country/continent wide net.

Comparing something like the great firewall to a corporate network is just not productive imo. (Plus, just because a private corporation is doing something does not mean that a government should do the same anyways.)

> the weird thing is if you want to turn off this child safe internet in the UK, you get a letter and they sent you this letter that tells you, look, you opted out of the filtering. Apparently you want to look at adult material.

I've opted out of these filters ever since they have been in place, Most providers will ask you during sign up if you wanted them on or off, I've always turned them off on day one. Since these filters have been in place I have been with (Who have the filters) Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Sky, 3 (Mobile internet) and I have never once recieved a letter from my ISP that tells me that I have opted out of the adult content filtering.

There's some discussion of that, but more on the user-facing side, not the in-house networks (which are also a feature of universities, government agencies, etc.).

> "Meanwhile, we have these big technology firms, that control the hardware, the software, and they run their own kangaroo courts that decide who wins and who loses. And there’s no way to appeal that or to have any insights from what they are doing, because they are encrypting what they are doing and hiding it from end users, while simultaneously moving more and more stuff to their control points"

> "This means 1) they have these kangaroo courts and 2) they’re moving more and more control to these kangaroo courts."

That's more about access to their public platforms (things like blocking some users, shaddow banning, algorithmic recommendation manipulation, etc.).

However, corporations aren't yet governments, although there are some indications that 'company towns' are becoming a thing, as they were in the early 20th century, where a company would own every house in a city and could evict anyone they didn't like, essentially becoming a de facto authoritarian government. In that case, banning someone from their private:w network would mean they had no access to any network.

Governments control everything.... they are slowly trying to block crypto too.

The Internet in 20 years will suck even more (they don't really like free speech even if they claim they do).

Edit: Since HN doesn't allow me to reply to the child comment because "I'm posting too quickly", here is the reply to CharlesW.

Stealing is already illegal.... I like how they don't know how to use current laws and flood us with new ones to make their job easier... The truth is that they think that Crypto-currencies are a threat to USD and are trying to stop them. The least they could do is destroy one law every time they add one.

His reply was "CharlesW 40 minutes ago | parent | next [–]

> Governments control everything.... they are slowly trying to block crypto too.

I'm always amazed that anyone thought cryptocurrencies would somehow be the one form of currency that wouldn't be regulated.

It's clear that crypto can't self-regulate, and continues to actively hurt lots of people. As of July, $1.9 billion in crypto has been "stolen" — up 60% from a year ago¹, in quotes because we know a good percentage of these were inside jobs."