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Dust in the Light

stratechery.com

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Re: Dust in the Light

#3
> And no matter what upheaval lies ahead, I am certain that the light that illuminates that dust so brightly can never be put away. There are no more gatekeepers, oftentimes for worse, but also for better.

I am not so sanguine. People in power all over the world are seeing the threat to their power from the Internet and working to curtail it. China is probably the most ahead, but I am sure everyone else is hard at work.

The centralization of the Internet makes it a much easier task. If you get Google, Facebook, and Twitter on board, you basically control the flow of information to most of the West.

In the West it probably won’t be overt coercion but more likely via monetary and legal incentives. Immunity or liability from lawsuits for user posted content will be the big carrot and stick that will be used to get these companies to do the governments’ bidding.

I fear that the George Floyd video equivalent 10 years from now will get immediately deleted by ML algorithms as too disturbing and the uploaders automatically banned

Re: Dust in the Light

#4
As usual, overlong and is another apologia -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologia

for large tech monopolies.

These essays are fueled by throwing some facts and nuance around so that we appear to be a thoughtful person but then roughly sums it up with "isn't it great we have cellphones and facebook?"

Re: Dust in the Light

#6

> And no matter what upheaval lies ahead, I am certain that the light that illuminates that dust so brightly can never be put away. There are no more gatekeepers, oftentimes for worse, but also for better. I am not so sanguine. People in power all over the world are seeing the threat to their power from the Internet and working to curtail it. China is probably the most ahead, but I am sure everyone else is hard at wo…

Yes and HN users are the first to want more government regulation over tech.

The current administration is already trying to “shut down Twitter”.

Edit Citation:

https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/trump-twitter-f...

Re: Dust in the Light

#7

> And no matter what upheaval lies ahead, I am certain that the light that illuminates that dust so brightly can never be put away. There are no more gatekeepers, oftentimes for worse, but also for better. I am not so sanguine. People in power all over the world are seeing the threat to their power from the Internet and working to curtail it. China is probably the most ahead, but I am sure everyone else is hard at wo…

I’m in Minneapolis. There are already suspicions that posts post-curfew to Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook are being blocked or are seeing significant post delays. It’s unconfirmed, but local news is started to dig into it a bit. I have acquaintances who believe they have been censored.

Re: Dust in the Light

#8

> And no matter what upheaval lies ahead, I am certain that the light that illuminates that dust so brightly can never be put away. There are no more gatekeepers, oftentimes for worse, but also for better. I am not so sanguine. People in power all over the world are seeing the threat to their power from the Internet and working to curtail it. China is probably the most ahead, but I am sure everyone else is hard at wo…

I don't think China is ahead of the west, they just take a slightly different approach. People have a really short memory, they already forgot about Snowden, prism, Room 641A: that shit never stopped.

Please don't get me wrong I'm not trying to equate China and the west, China is a lot worse but strictly looking at the reaction of those in power to the internet... People in power in the west are definitely reacting strongly.

China is more 1984 and the west is more brave new world.

Re: Dust in the Light

#9

As usual, overlong and is another apologia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologia for large tech monopolies. These essays are fueled by throwing some facts and nuance around so that we appear to be a thoughtful person but then roughly sums it up with "isn't it great we have cellphones and facebook?"

> sums it up with "isn't it great we have cellphones and facebook?"

Well, isn't it? I mean yes, that's not the only conclusion to be drawn here. But without their ubiquity, this would never have become a story in the first place.

Re: Dust in the Light

#10
post #2

[deleted]

Agreed, it’s impossible to have adult conversations about anything other than tech on HN.

Yeah. I just deleted it. I shouldn’t have. But it was a bit snarky. Yet and still when I responded to another comment about HN’s hypocrisy about criticizing big tech’s monopolist ability to - not saying they have - censor information that is critical about the government, they still want the same government to “regulate tech”. Of course that got flagged.

This is the same government that threatened to “shut down Twitter”.

Too many people here show more concern about side loading apps on their phone than the treatment that minorities get by the police and justice system.

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