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Sergey Brin Says Facebook, Apple and Gov't Biggest Threats To Internet Freedom
An anonymous reader writes "Google co-founder Sergey Brin has listed three threats to Internet freedom: Facebook, Apple, and governments that censor their citizens. Brin's comments were made to The Guardian: 'The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of "restrictive" walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.'"
Those just happen to be his competitors! What a crazy coincidence!
i would add an additional item, and move it to the top of the list - companies that aim to track everything you do and aggregate that in one place. you could also add the gov't agencies that collude with them to track citizens. This would put FB and Goog tied at the top of the list. Not sure who is first, but they're both trying.
If Sergey Brin is lamenting Apple's restrictive iOS platform as a threat to internet freedom, then why not get to the root cause of that restrictiveness, which is malware? Spam and malware is a huge reason why companies and developers don't adopt an "anything goes" approach.
Also, I find it highly ironic that he would point to other companies facilitating censorship by various governments, but then doesn't mention Microsoft or Google itself, which largely went along with China's censorship in order to gain market share. Furthermore, it's not as if Google makes me feel more free in terms of the information I have access too. If anything, I am constantly worried about what information they have about me, who they might allow to see that information, and whether I'm leaving a data trail on their servers that the FBI can issue a subpoena for without my knowledge. Google's ubiquity and interconnectedness across all of its services poses a risk to internet freedom through its ramifications on user privacy.
So in short, Mr. Brin, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Seriously, how are Facebook and Apple threatening the freedom of the internet? Sure, I'm restricted if I'm using Facebook or Apple technologies, but there are literally thousands of places I can post and do whatever I want. The internet is a very big place.
Also, the other day I tried to sign up for a second Google+ account but it didn't like the names I was choosing because it didn't consider them "real" names. Seems a bit rich to be accusing others of limiting freedom.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but a coercive monopoly with guns is far worse than a mere merchant with a huge market share.
Infuriate left and right
The summary is a summary of a ZDnet summation of a Guardian article.
If you actually read the Guardian article, the three things Brin lists as threats are:
He gives Apple and Facebook as examples of the third. Which the sensationalist media (including slashdot) twist around to try and incite a frenzy of condemnation.
The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of "restrictive" walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Not to mention that Android is officially endorsed by the Chinese government as its mobile platform of choice (customized as Open Mobile System). You know, the government that has political opposition jailed, censors the Internet, and spies on its citizens in a way that makes the NSA look modest.
You had a reasonable post, and then you crashed it with a big, ugly association fallacy.
China chooses Android because it's OSS, meaning they can change it to their liking, just like they did with Red Flag Linux. Claiming Google is a threat because of that is ridiculous. Is Torvalds evil too? China uses his kernel!
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Apple pushes for standards? No, not really. For example, they're the only browser maker that does not employ _anyone_ to work on CSS specs. Google, Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla all have employees doing so. Apple? Not so much.
Also, Apple is explicitly refusing to submit things like -webkit-text-size-adjust for standardization (they claim it's their "proprietary technology"),.
Oh, and the little bit about waiting until touch events were just about standardized in the W3C (without Apple's involvement, because they chose to not join the working group), then declare they have patents on the standard as written and they refuse to license them. Had they joined the working group, they would have had to disclose this much earlier in the
process, but it's in Apple's interest to have touch events working better in iOS than in web pages, so people create iOS-specific content and not HTML that works on all devices.
The result of all of which is that if you browse on a phone or tablet you constantly run into sites that require WebKit, and more often than not require Mobile Safari to render right.
Apple _does_ however try hard to make it _look_ like it's pushing for standards. I'll grant you that much. And it's not trying to monopolize the internet; just to slow down its development so it won't compete on a level playing field with iOS as an application delivery platform.
This, perhaps:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.network.tor.devel/1099
One of the replies points to the non-technical problem with Tor on iOS, which is that Apple rejected it from the App Store as being a "proxy or circumvention tool." This is not terribly surprising, of course: Apple would not want to anger governments by shipping a platform that allows iOS users to evade national firewalls.
Palm trees and 8
Microsoft is the only company I can think of that actually tried to monopolize the internet.
better think a bit harder.
every company wants the internet to themselves. Google was probably the first to really go for it, then Facebook try to make their own internet locked off from the prying eyes of search engines... who knows, maybe Pinterest and Twitter will ally and raise an army?
the problem is - internet users own the internet. it's the 20th/21st century's ultimate gift to individual freedom. of course, you can't monetize the "free" in freedom, but many will try.
as far as MS goes... you could always install whatever you liked on your machine. Apple is not following that business model. they started with iOS, and they're rapidly porting the walled garden to their desktops as well (as they become less relevant as tablets, phones, etc become the preferred browsing platforms).
let's see how far you get installing Firefox, Opera or Chrome on an iPad. ...and just like with nations, our freedoms are being taken away under the guise of improved security.
the monopoly is accountable to you through your vote. it is an extension of your will, not an imposition of an alien will on you
in fact, if you were to remove the monopoly, there would be no absence of monopoly, the merchant would merely fill the power vacuum, and he isn't accountable to you. he's accountable to the quest for more profits, at any cost, including the raping of your freedom. then he buys the guns and points them at you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_Government_Services,_Inc.
for the modern parable, see blackwater. what would blackwater become with no government already in place? the police, accountable to the corporation, not to you, which your real police department is
so your opinions and your views are illogical and historically wrong. they speak of a propagandized individual (corporate funded propaganda like fox news, the real threat to your freedom, not your government, which you VOTE for)
of course, where your government doesn't represent your will, it is because it is bought out by... corporate financial interests
heal YOUR government by removing the corporate infection, and understand the real threat to your freedom: the merchant you allude to
but make YOUR government your enemy, and see the corporate financial interests as harmless, and you are basically giving away your own hard won freedoms won by your forefathers (see pinkerton's above) to forces which have no interest in your freedoms at all, especially when your freedoms represent a threat to bottom line. then hiring goon sqwuads, with no government around to stop them, makes perfect capitalistic sense
there is your daily dose of anti-propaganda, i hope you aren't kneejerking too much right now
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Webkit isn't Apple's project. WebKit was around for years before Safari came about - since 1998, when KHTML was released. It wasn't called WebKit until Apple forked it.
Yeah, that's right. It's successful because it forked from an Open Source project.
Ironically, Safari has always managed to languish behind the other WebKit based browsers in terms of actual functionality. Word has it that WebKit2 will likely just be a backport of features which have been in Chrome for some time...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I agree with Sergey. Facebook and other such sites represent the opposite of what the Internet was meant to be. Instead of creating an open facebook or twitter protocol for anyone to implement, they've closed it off and put a wall around their own little internet. Imagine the same was done in the early days; instead of SMTP we'd just have Hotmail. Instead of HTTP we'd have AOL. Eeeewww
Libertarians are not the enemy of anyone except Big Brother. Their whole mantra is to leave people to their own devices.
You seem to think Big Business and Big Government are enemies of each other. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They are the same, differing only in tiny squabbles which distract voters. The last thing either wants is for people to actually run their own lives and take the corporations to task.
I never said Big Business and Big Government are enemies of each other.
If you actually think the coercive monopoly is going to use their guns to help people battle merchants, you are living in some weird alternate dream world.
And if you think that won't happen if the government disappears tomorrow, you're an idiot.
That's the weirdest thing about Occupy Wall Street. They identify half the problem, corporations out of control, but then they refuse to see the other half, which is Big Brother actively assisting them. They are one and the same, and the government will never do anything to the 1% just because a few 99% rabble camp out in parks and shout for the government to come rescue them. Only individuals taking charge and upsetting BOTH Big Government and Big Business will solve anything.
Note that none of what you said here actually opposes what I ACTUALLY said. What I was responding to was the stupid idea that a person could prefer Big Business rather than Big Government, when they are basically the same. That was my point, but you completely missed it so you can rant about Occupy Wall Street.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.