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Internet Is Having a Midlife Crisis (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The rise of cyber-bullying and monopolistic business practices has damaged trust in the internet, pioneering entrepreneur Baroness Lane-Fox has told the BBC. The Lastminute.com founder also called for a "shared set of principles" to make the web happier and safer. She said the internet had done much good over the last 30 years. But she said too many people had missed out on the benefits and it was time to "take a step back". "The web has become embedded in our lives over the last three decades but I think it's reached an inflexion point, or a sort of midlife crisis," she told Radio 4's Today programme. Baroness Lane-Fox co-founded travel booking site Lastminute.com in 1998 before going on to sell the firm for 577m pound seven years later. She described the early days of the internet as being "full of energy and excitement," and akin to the "wild West". "There was this feeling that suddenly, with this access to this new technology, you could start a business from anywhere," she said. However, she said that while technology had become a hugely important sector of the UK economy, it had not fulfilled its early potential.
... I cannot think of a better way than imposing more regulation.
And if she thought that the 'net was a "nice" place in its early days, well, I suspect that she missed huge swaths of usenet...
With this said, she is right. The character of the 'net has changed. But her own response seems to be very midlife in and of itself: let's try to recapture a childhood that cannot be returned to.
Check your premises.
It is now the surveillance and propaganda arm of the government, and the surveillance and psyops arm of corporate America
You've lost
Well, she's 44. And, when I hear someone start talking about how things "just aren't the way they used to be" in that context, I think maybe it's she and not the internet who is having the mid-life crisis.
The Lastminute.com founder also called for a "shared set of principles" to make the web happier and safer.
Umm. Ok. Now compare to:
She described the early days of the internet as being "full of energy and excitement," and akin to the "wild West".
You can't have a vibrant, safe, wild-west. IMO, it's your "shared set of principles" that killed the Internet (or at least made it a lot, less interesting).
Is that a name or a title?
The Lastminute.com founder
Is mentioning some unknown website supposed to clarify things somehow?
#DeleteChrome
"Cyber-bullying" affecting "young people's self-esteem" is not a problem. The problem is that young people from Western countries are now unable to cope with "bad" words which might hurt their precious little feelings. It's not "the Internet is having a midlife crisis", it's "Western civilization is crumbling".
The rise of cyber-bullying and monopolistic business practices has damaged trust in the internet
Internet culture died around 1993..
Since then, it has been stamped into the dirt by idiots who have begged for and bought with their own money: more surveillance, less freedom, more censorship, less end user control over their own devices, and a wholesale transfer of that control to megacorps. They've constantly favored Facebook and other data-broker intrusions into "private" communication, putting a few for-profit companies into gatekeeper roles over ever increasing swaths of the internet. They've punished open standards and open protocols, replacing them with closed, central control ones. They've removed the ability of people to defend themselves against that "cyber-bulling" by requiring more and more be tied to real world identities, which enables the bullies and denies the victims a key form of self defense.
No... the internet died long before this "Baroness Lane-Fox" probably ever heard of it. She's part of the problem, not part of the solution.
pioneering entrepreneur Baroness Lane-Fox
Who?
The Lastminute.com founder
What?
You have not established who the fuck this person is, what they fuck they've done, or why the fuck I should care.
I'm going to assume it's some egotistical rich busybody that has achieved nothing of significance by their own hand and is looking for some more ego stroking.
And right now companies tries to gobble up the users and the traffic making everyone a "customer" when everyone is actually the "product" in big data.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Her own description of the issue sounds more like the Internet has finished growing up, not that it has entered some kind of mid life crisis. It has gone from some kind of playground to a place where real work is being done, kind of like how my computing experience has changed from high school to my current role as a senior software engineer in my 30's. I may still have the desire to play around with new technologies, but most of my time is spent integrating various software packages for the financial industry so I can afford a home in the pricey suburbs.
The midlife crisis is when there is a new younger competitor to the Internet comes along and the Internet needs to feel cool again. Maybe you could say the desktop browsing experience is in a midlife crisis as it competes with the mobile experience. Reactive design is the corvette in this analogy.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The internet has become too corporatized, monetized, and regulated! The internet is nothing more than a tool for corporations to reach their customer bases. It's lost the glamour of innovation and fun. The internet used to be far more open and the barriers to entry far less. Now that big telecom got its ugly mitts on it, you have to pay a minimum of 50.00 a month for a connection. Certainly it is at a higher speed and with today's technologies you need more speed but prices are still high enough to block out access for the poor. The poor need to visit a library with big brother Librarian and Government watching their every move. It is time to fork the internet into a community maintained network to take it out of the hands of regulation and corporate interests.
Things that have contributed to eroding my trust of the Internet to some degree:
Proliferation of fake news (by which I mean ideological propaganda specifically designed to look like news but with incitement as its goal rather than information)
Government (pick whichever one you want) sponsored spying
Dodgy business practices by large, well-known, IT-focused companies
Data breaches and other hacks
Viruses
Spam
Advertisers trying to disguise their ads as if they were a natural part of the parent page
Advertising by looking at metadata
Things that have definitely not contributed to eroding my trust of the internet:
Cyber bullying
You mean you think there was turf around that wasn't subject to organized criminal rent seeking? There are lots of billionaires in the world and they don't like competition. Like Katy Perry said in her PRISM concert dvd- "There's not enough room for us all kiddo".
In order to start a new business via access to internet technology requires a server. Try getting the ability to operate one of those with your internet connection without being subject to the arbitrary anticompetitive (*cough* non-commercial servers allowed *cough*) whims of billion dollar corporations, not to mention mobs of fascist anti fascists.
Things could still turn around toward enuf liberty with enuf social justice, but the ship of society is one of the slowest barges around. Fuck, my city is littered with centuries old torture device worshippers polluting my views. Tech is a big deal. The Holocost was real. The next one will be too. Sooner than we'd like if we aren't careful enuf.
While yes it would be a good thing to prevent bullying
Removing anonymity does not reduce the amount of abuse online.
What a great opportunity for us to give up our freedoms on the internet so that a group of people who are not us but are very well meaning can civilize it and of course she had to throw in the obligatory "Save the Cheellrun!" nervous nancy hand wringing about Cyberbullying, oh noes! Unless I misread the article, the people she thinks should take on this "burden" is all the big players who are already bad actors and oh yeah, herself. Did she invite you? No? Don't worry, you let these people set up their bureaucracies in your 'not broken' system and hey, what could go wrong. I for one welcome our new Internet overlords.
Faith: Belief in Truth. Superstition: Belief in Falsehood.
Yes the Internet grew up and we don't have all the old fun stuff. But we do, if you look for it.
There is so much out there and so much good stuff, if you look for it.
There is so much information and stuff to do, if you look for it.
When you stop looking for it and let others do it for you then you find what they want, not what you want.
I prefer this internet then the one I started with, way back when.
I blame everything bad on the internet on advertising. Everywhere that vile filth goes, it ruins.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
FTFY: You were unnecessarily limiting the scope of your observation.
Requiem for the American Dream
Ever notice that the parents of bullies are generally bullies?
As long as the outer box (interactions between states) demonstrates that might is right, the inner boxes will observe and acquire the pattern for themselves.
Requiem for the American Dream
Eh, in the real world I've found there are also non-advertising-caused things that are bad. Like cockroaches and getting punched in the face.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"...she said that while technology had become a hugely important sector of the UK economy, it had not fulfilled its early potential."
I guess that measly 577m pound return you got growing and selling an internet service in less than a decade was somehow a pathetic attempt at demonstrating "potential", right?
The only reason that "energy and excitement" has waned a bit is because your favorite domain name is being squatted on, and a million more patents exist to short-circuit innovation. Other than that, you can still start a business from anywhere (social media whore pays big these days), the internet is financially worth trillions, and is priceless when it comes to the value of the information it holds and delivers.
That's assuming the "wild west energy" is something worth recapturing. Sure, a lot of people struck it rich in the dot com boom, but the lion's share of fortunes made were on the naivete and herd behavior of investors.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Rejected; they're also caused [indirectly] by advertising :P
Requiem for the American Dream
This thing called human nature means that yes, it absolutely does. Doesn't mean we should do it, but pretending it wouldn't reduce abuse is naive to the point of absurdity. Of course many people will spout abuse when anonymous that they would not when their identity is clear.
No, it wouldn't stop abuse, and no we shouldn't try to get rid of anonymity but let's not be disingenuous.
This thing called human nature means that yes, it absolutely does.
This thing called empirical evidence says no, it doesn't. At least, it hasn't done so in subcommunities that have tried it.
The reason that there is a greater amount of abuse online than in person has nothing to do with anonymity. It's because you're interacting with a machine rather than with anything resembling a person. Our monkey brains have real trouble internalizing that the text-on-screen we're interacting with is actually, really, truly, a human being.
Since when is disagreeing with someone the same thing as hating free speech?
Free speech gave the original poster the right to say whatever they wanted, and they exercised that right. It does not guarantee them some kind of "safe space" where they can be free of criticism or counterargument of whatever they choose to say.
The reason free speech was guaranteed by the Founders was in order to allow reasoned debate and criticism, particularly of the government, without fear of retribution by that government. But if people as individuals aren't allowed to disagree with each other then you don't have a debate, you just have a bunch of sheep compelled to follow whoever speaks first.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Your reply attacks the AC with false accusations of "hate speech".
Based on the AC's comments, it's hard to make any conclusion other than he is supporting hate speech. He discusses domain name registration cancellations, and the only high profile examples of this recently were the cancellation of Neo-nazi websites. Without examples of what else he is talking about, it is reasonable to assume he is complaining about the liberal attempts to limit hate speech.
Anyone claiming liberals are against free speech is very hard to take seriously. When leftist organizations such as the ACLU defend Unite the Right organizers in court, it is hard to make a case where the left only defends speech it agrees with.
The general complaint made against the left's handling of free speech is that liberals don't treat opinions built upon incorrect beliefs as equal to more defensible opinions and facts. When liberals say "your opinions are not as valid as my facts" that is not an attack on free speech, it is an attack on invalid arguments. Unless the AC takes the time to point out actual examples of free speech attacks which are condoned by liberals at large, it is only reasonable to believe he is indeed a shill who doesn't like being called out on his hate speech and/or ridiculous opinions.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"i can no longer think of easy ways to make money and there for must use convoluted terms to confuse people for long enough to let me get ahead"
The Internet is still the wild west if you know what you are doing, like it always has been, the only difference is the price of admission is a much loftier knowledge base. But then again what do you expect from someone who made it from a booking website and doesn't seem to grasp any of the layers below a web-page.
to quote her directly: "There was this feeling that suddenly, with this access to this new technology, you could start a business from anywhere,"
there still is, etsy, tindie, amazon, ebay etc, you can start a business and sell your wares across the globe and make money for it. the only difference is you will no longer be able to sell that business for 577m pounds as all those large business ideas have already been taken and no ammount of complaining is going to be able to close pandoras box
If you can write that sentence you were probably never bullied to any significant degree. e.g. you're teachers didn't join in. I've known people who had that happen. Repeatedly. I suppose you can say, well, if it keeps happening something must just be wrong with them, but, well, no shit Sherlock. There's a lot of broken people out there. Do you suggest we start rounding them up and gassing them? Because if you're only other response to them is to say "suck it up" then you might as well. It'd be the merciful thing to do.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
... is to call oneself a "baroness" in the XIX century?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
This thing called empirical evidence says no, it doesn't. At least, it hasn't done so in subcommunities that have tried it.
Bullshit. I think you are making a spectacular claim, so it's going to require spectacular proof and hand waving about "evidence" isn't that.
I'm not saying that a real name requirement solves abuse, but you seem to be saying that there are either zero or a negligable number of people who "troll" and abuse people because they are anonymous.
This is a spectacular claim.
I dealt with that; hell, in 5th grade my math teacher (also the football coach) spent the entire year following me around, calling me "quitter" every damned day, because I tried out for football and couldn't play as none of the equipment fit my big fat head.
And you know what? I agree with OP - because I went through all that bullshit 20 years ago, and not only survived it, used that behavior to shape the far more reasonable person I grew into.
That's the choice a bullied person makes - do I let the bullies win, and drag me down, or do I rise above?
So yea, suck it up, because literally no onein the adult world gives half a shit about your feelings, and never will. Learn to accept painful truths, rather than be consumed by them.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'm thinking of Facebook's change to the real names policy -- the amount of abuse was not affected by it, according to Facebook. I can't find the citation, though, so feel free to disregard it.
However, if you look at the (numerous) studies about anonymity and its effect on online abuse, it's hard to find any that clearly support the notion that the anonymity of abusers makes abuse more likely. There is a strong correlation between anonymity of victims and abuse, though. A plausible hypothesis for why this may be relates to what I said before: abuse is more likely when people are dehumanized.
In any case, this is clearly an unsettled area. By the way, my claim is no more or less "spectacular" (I think you meant to say "exceptional", as in "exceptional claims require exceptional evidence") than yours. In reality, neither of our claims are exceptional. They are both entirely plausible and there isn't overwhelming evidence one way or the other.
Of course I could be wrong -- if you have such overwhelming evidence, then I'd be happy to see it. And, scientifically speaking, you're the one making a claim of causation, so technically the burden of proof is on you, not me.
The Internet was once a fun place, it had it's share of kooks, but today's Internet is data collection, business, and crime.
Any of these groups will kill all of us before releasing their death grip on us. The late 1990's early 2000's internet is dead, and will never be revived.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Since the moment it becomes illegal to say certain things. Not only is your opponent wrong when he says it, he should be prosecuted for saying it. That's when.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
There are a few people in this thread asking the important question: "Is her name baroness?" But nobody answering it. I guess I'll have to be that person...
It it looks like it's a title, her name is Martha. Though apparently it's not a title by birth, but rather awarded to her by virtue of the fact that she's rich.
This was disappointing in every respect.
No, the Internet is still in its childhood. Maybe the teen years would be a better comparison. It's still a place where people do crazy stuff, and are stupid enough to think they'll get away with it. I don't think the Internet has reached any kind of adult level of maturity.
With that said, like any teenager, it's sorting itself out. Teens have to crash their car a time or two before they realize that it's a dangerous tool. The Googles and Facebooks of the world are starting to realize that they too are dangerous tools.
There was a company back then offering to provide free PCs if you allowed advertisements. Their commercials mentioned the internet was developed just like television, free based on advertising, so why not have a free PC. After hearing their commercial once too often I sent an email to their support staff and sales and complained the internet was not built from advertising like TV it started as a DARPA project so stop with the false advertising.
Sales didn't answer but tech support sent a reply saying "yea we know but most other people don't so that's our marketing pitch". The ads stopped a few months later and far as I know they went out of business.
I used to get beat up in school all of the time and my parents had me removed from a teacher's class, does that count? (Said teacher had a nervous breakdown and quit later that year). Not for name calling, but for constantly taking my lunch away and not letting me drink from the water fountain. Maybe name calling too, but I don't remember that.
Cockroaches were genetically modified by bug pesticide companies in order to sell more extermination products.
Getting punched in the face is caused by people being targeted by advertising to make them think they're more badass than they really are.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
The first one is an opinion piece that asks questions. People are allowed to have opinions about possible Constitutional changes and speculate on the effects.
The second one is about prosecuting fraud. The reporting isn't very good, but nobody who really doesn't believe in AGW would be prosecuted. Companies that knew perfectly well it was happening and lied about it for business gain would be prosecuted.
Fortunately for you, it's legal to say stupid things, and while I wish you'd go away, I'm certainly not going to want you shut down by legal means.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Neither of those are crimes in the US. If you think otherwise, please cite some convictions. In the US, a hate crime is something that's already a crime for other reasons, committed to intimidate groups; in other words, it's committing a crime for purposes of terrorism.
"There are two genders" is a fairly reasonable oversimplification that is often used to try to deny rights to people the speaker disapproves of. "Islam is a religion of hatred" is incorrect, and is often used to justify violating the First Amendment. It can also be used as incitement to violence, which the courts consider to be an action in addition to speech. My reaction to idiots saying that sort of thing is more speech.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
People who came out of a traumatic event well often say it's choice, and that those who can't take it chose unwisely. This sounds to me much like telling someone with clinical depression to choose happiness.
Some people are more resilient than others. Some people have better family support than others. Some people are born or raised better able to handle verbal abuse. Have a little compassion here.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I do have a little compassion.
Just not enough to agree with curtailing civil liberties to protect feelings.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Sure. And that asking betrays the author's desire for "hate speech" being banned.
Ah, yes, yes, sure. As Snopes said:
Small comfort, though — because what is and what is not "scientifically inaccurate" will be up to the prosecutors (and then juries).
Most generous of you. There is, however, a sizeable minority, which sees it differently — and these Constitution-undermining proposals reach as high as pages of New York Times. And the far-Left is particularly against it — openly and unabashedly advocating violence against holders of certain opinions. Just as the subject of this thread says...
Don't take my word for it — the "classical" Liberals are appalled by these alt-Left's trends as well, even if their argument against it boils down to the self-serving "it will backfire" warnings...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What is killing Internet? Money. Money always ruins everything. When money comes in, all the fun is gone. Internet has become too monetised and thus less fun.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Naaaa, Trump just called bullshit on the news outlets that had peddled fake news. Do enough yellow journalism and peddle unchecked gossip and you lose credibility as "fake news". Gad, I'd wager if you took a nice cross cultural poll; Alex Jones would have more credibility than CNN these days. That is the kind of joke you hate to laugh at because it just might be true.
NRRPT/RCT
Fox is only far right wing if you are so far left your field of focus is so flattened to lump Voltaire, Adolf Hitler, William F Buckley, and John Kennedy together.
Fox is definitely right leaning and it serves to differentiate it from the radical left pandering of MSNBC, CNN, ABC, and CBS. NPR has always been liberal but only rarely goes radical. The big Mainstream has taken a stance of ignoring reality in order to report as fact whomever screams the loudest.
NRRPT/RCT
no, the lawyers would not be the ones making the interpreatation.
rather, under such a law the lawyer bringing the suit would have to prove somehow what is misleading and what is accurate, which would mean bringing in evidence, just like any other suit. evidence that would consist of scientific papers and expert testimony from actual scientists. any attempts to present inaccurate science in court would then also be wide open to rebuttal by presenting of peer reviews and counter arguing science.
so again: you prove that understand nothing
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.