Vice: Internet Freedom Is Actively Dissolving In America (vice.com)

An anonymous reader points out Vice's rather dark view of the state of Internet freedom, the author of which posits that "one fact about the internet is quickly becoming clear this year: Americans' freedom to access the open internet is rapidly dissolving." As evidence, the writer points out negative trends in broadband adoption, legal moves to weaken encryption, industry consolidation that means fewer competitors in some areas, increasing use of data caps, and increasing reliance by many (especially poorer) Americans on mobile phones as their only internet-connected devices. (On the other hand, it's worth pointing out that there are now free encryption-centric apps for voice and text communication that give ordinary people privacy options, and both unlocked phones and inexpensive data plans are far closer to the American norm than they were a few years ago.)

Comments

Freedom of speech is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop pretending. The government is monitoring ALL electronic communication. The US is a fascistic police state with a very very dishonest and corrupt government. It's funny that just 20 years ago the people of the USA made fun of the USSR for doing things that don't even come close to what is happening in the US today. Land of the free my ass. Merry Christmas! I hope everyone found some nice tracking equipment in their socks!

Re:Freedom of speech is dead

[StillAnonymous]

All systems of government will deteriorate into totalitarian regimes if they are not kept in check by the good people of the country.

Most of the evil that is being committed is being done on a somewhat subtle basis, where the public either doesn't even know about it, or only a few good aspects are presented, while the many far more negative ones are not. It seems people only recognize evil if it's an over-the-top James Bond style villain that's going to directly kill a bunch of people. Conversely, they'll believe someone is evil if the media or government tells them to, even if that person is not. They don't understand insidious plans that mean to do them long-term harm, and any attempt by a non-mainstream outlet to inform them of this is met with derision and attempts to dismiss the claim without actually thinking about it by pulling the "conspiracy theory" card.

In the end, the general public won't try to fix the problem until it is far too late to do so without a complete collapse of the system. In the meantime, the government will whittle away your rights and freedoms while telling you it's for your own good, and you'll be happy to hand them all over on a silver platter.

2 Evil Forces against the good

[Nyder]

On one hand you have the Copyright Cartel, I mean, the Entertainment Industry buying laws to give them more rights, so they can abuse more ways to make money off content that will NEVER go into the public domain. And on the other hand you have the Government, who gladly accepts money to make laws that benefits their Movie & Music Mafia pals. On top of that, they want to overreach by collecting all the data America makes to make us safer, yet not catching home terrorist acts. Then claiming they need backdoors and no encryption to make us safer.

Our government has failed the people.

Re:2 Evil Forces against the good

[fustakrakich]

Our government has failed the people.

Absolute fucking bullshit! The people have failed the government by letting it rot and not speaking up.

Muckraking

[retroworks]

Some of the best journalism comes from Muckraking. Still, it's pretty easy to see that the main advantage of the internet is that it provides education / information to billions of people who never had access to it before, and the growth in that penetration is a bigger story than the limits to educating and informing people. The main disadvantage is when the internet provides miseducation / false information to billions of people. The nuance is that misinformation has been readily accessible to the billions of people for eons. The optimist thinks that misinformation will find it more difficult to compete with truth, and that attempts to curtail it will tend to blowback on churches, governments and corporations which try to wedge against it.

Loss of content

[DCFusor]

I'm not so sure Vice is all-negative, after all, they did a pretty cool and positive feature on my fusion work. You can search youtube on my username for it if you care.
What does concern me is that it used to take me almost all day to read everything new that day on the 'net - and now it takes only an hour, if that, and I don't really read faster than I used to.
.
While it seems even the tinfoil hat crowd aren't talking about explicit censorship, either the world is kind of going dead, or something like hidden chilling effects are happening. I really don't like that one bit - no matter which it is - the creeping lack of new worthwhile content doesn't bode well at all. Yes, I read more widely on more topics and specialties than most so maybe it's more obvious to me, but gee, it's a huge change over the last few years. Seems as though society is just giving up, whatever the reason.

Re:Loss of content

[Aighearach]

What does concern me is that it used to take me almost all day to read everything new that day on the 'net - and now it takes only an hour, if that, and I don't really read faster than I used to.

It is funny, I open tabs of pages of data that I want to consume, but defer because it is not topical to what I'm researching, and then later I can go back and read those tabs. But they grow too fast, and I only have the same 25 hours a day as everybody else. So I finally end up with firefox getting bloated, so I give up and just toss the unread tabs... by then it is usually a few thousand. I do read probably 25% of what I set aside to read.

If your internet data sources are shrinking, you're almost certainly stuck in a silo of your own making.

It is the same problem the people crying about censorship have. They lack motivation to participate in meaningful speech, and they blame invisible gatekeepers.

The difference between the internet now and 15 years ago is that now there is just more data, and most of it sucks. The noise is increasingly difficult to filter. But that should present itself as a different problem; excess crap, excess data. If you're short on data you've got severe bottlenecks. I use noscript and ad blockers, and can'trefuse to consume much of the available data, and there is still significant excess. There is no way to trim that down without restricting speech, so building silos might be a good answer. But perhaps they become less useful if they're seen as something evil that is being imposed by invisible beings.

The worst censorship is not from governments.

[Anonymous Coward]

You and the GP blame "governments", but it's much more than that.

The worst censorship we witness online isn't done by governments, or those acting on behalf of governments.

The most insidious censorship is that done by the people running the discussion forums, or their minions. Look at places like reddit, or Hacker News, or Stack Overflow. If you don't hold exactly the right viewpoints and opinions, then you will most likely be silenced and banned.

Slashdot isn't as bad as those aforementioned sites, but it's still susceptible to very abusive and incorrect moderation, too.

The real threat here is Millennials. They're an entire generation of people who've deluded themselves into believing that they stand for freedom and openness, yet in practice they're actually among the most virulent perpetrators of censorship and the suppression of free expression.

If you express an opinion that they dislike, they don't engage in discussion. They just shut you down, typically using a system that's without any sort of an appeal process, or due process of any sort.

At least governments tend to be subject to at least some judicial oversight, no matter how minor or ineffective it may be. There is absolutely no resource against online moderators who engage in oppression.

Re:The worst censorship is not from governments.

[StillAnonymous]

Government is very susceptible to demands that the government expand its powers. They're always looking for ways to hold onto their existing power while grabbing more.

That's why the "progressives" that you mention, in combination with corrupt government, are so harmful to a free society. They're the ones demanding that restrictions be put on free speech so that they can have their safe spaces, and the government is more than willing to take that. They're the ones demanding that people be harassed and fired from their jobs, their livelihoods destroyed, simply because they spoke an alternative viewpoint, or even because they didn't speak out enough in support of their viewpoints (see protests against administrators at these so-called liberal colleges).

While these people are still a small minority, the government is giving them disproportionate regard, simply because it allows them to grab more power. But in the end, it's up to the people to say "no" when the government steps too far out of line, having the responsible individuals removed from power when they have abused that power. That should have happened a long time ago for a lot of power in power. People have let it go on for far too long, and now it's nearly impossible to remove these people from power using the means within the system because the system itself has been perverted to protect these people.

Re:The worst censorship is not from governments.

[UnknownSoldier]

> You and the GP blame "governments", but it's much more than that.

Indeed. Blaming the Government is only half the problem.

The other half of the problem is:

* The face in the mirror

because ALL governments are made up of people. Gandhi summarized the solution:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Not when they are all rooted it isn't

[shaitand]

"(On the other hand, it's worth pointing out that there are now free encryption-centric apps for voice and text communication that give ordinary people privacy options, and both unlocked phones and inexpensive data plans are far closer to the American norm than they were a few years ago.)"

Mobile phones are rooted by both the carrier and/or your employer and provide a direct backdoor to the government. There is absolutely no security/privacy on a mobile phone. There isn't much point in encrypting your voice/text when they have the key.

The Government and Corporations Have Allies Now

[Kunedog]

Yep, this vid is best explanation I've seen of what's going on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Of course government and corporations want to control and censor the internet, but lately they've found support and allies among righteous authoritarians who pass themselves off as activists for the oppressed (when all they're really after is power).

If you ever encounter someone who thinks that only government censorship matters, show them how Reddit once actively opposed things like SOPA and PIPA. Then point out how CISA recently passed without a blip from them, and how they now actively shut down discussion of things like TPP.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Over-Generalized

[mx b]

The real threat here is Millennials. They're an entire generation of people who've deluded themselves into believing that they stand for freedom and openness, yet in practice they're actually among the most virulent perpetrators of censorship and the suppression of free expression.

If you express an opinion that they dislike, they don't engage in discussion. They just shut you down, typically using a system that's without any sort of an appeal process, or due process of any sort.

Whoa, bit of an over-generalization there, don't you think? If you want to engage in generational blame, I could also easily blame the baby boomers that currently dominate congressional leadership, and feel the need to regulate things they don't understand (and laugh off the fact they don't understand technology, which always irritates me). The internet started free, and deteriorated into spying and other things under the boomers' watch, you know. Many Millennials only recent gained the ability to run for Senate, for example, and most are not even eligible to run for President. The generation hasn't even had an opportunity to contribute to governance much yet, and you already blame them?

Really, the issue is we've gone through a massive cultural shift in the 20ish years since the internet became mainstream. We can talk to people around the world, and learn about cultures and viewpoints we didn't before. We don't need commercial media as much, because my twitter stream shows me real time events in the middle east, for example, and aggregated together, probably much less biased. Just facts. The Internet allows us to seek our own knowledge and not be fully reliant on corporate media. I think what you will see is that a cross-section of people that have used the internet since its early days -- all generations but probably leaning more toward Millennials -- respect this freedom and independence, and want to protect it.

Meanwhile there seems to be a counter-culture that takes the corporate viewpoint a little too seriously -- some young people too but in my anecdotal experience, tends to be older people, I think because they grew up only having corporate media as single source of news -- and these people use the internet as a way to stay attached to people like them. Like-minded viewpoints. I have had the misfortune of stumbling across some of these on a number of social websites; they are groups for hate and fear-mongering. Where a person used to be the weirdo in town, now they can talk to other weirdos and pump themselves up and pretend they are majorities. It is these people that shut down all dissent and disagreeing viewpoints. They want to live in their own bubble; they are "proud conservatives that watch Fox News" for example, and seem to be proud of the fact that they stay in their bubble. I am not a fan of the current Republican candidates, but I still watch their debates because I want to know more about the viewpoints. There are those that refuse to hear anything outside of their viewpoint, and it really weirds me out.

So what we have is a cultural war -- do we see the internet as stay free, open, independent, allowing anyone to become a contributor and not just a bystander? Or do we see the internet as a way of segregating ourselves from other conflicting viewpoints? Really, this came about because of the rapid shift of computers and the internet and really the globalization of the economy. Our culture changed so quickly that I don't think everyone has caught up yet, and there's disagreement about how we should feel about the rapid shift..

If you agree with me, and the internet should stay free and independent, then it is our responsibility to speak up. Government in this country is still the people and laws -- if current representatives don't hear your pleas, start running for office yourself. Doesn't strictly have to be the US congress either; run for state congress, or even county-level or city-council. Mayors and county executives wield a large amount of power but we tend to ignore them. If you aren't willing to try something, then I don't believe you get to have much room to complain about government.