'It Is a Challenging Time for the Internet: We Must Not Let It Be Undermined' (internetsociety.org)

Andrew Sullivan, CEO and President of Internet Society, a decades old nonprofit organization which works on internet-related standards, education, access, and policy, writes: It is a challenging time for the Internet Society, because it is a challenging time for the Internet. For most of the Internet Society's history, the expansion and development of the Internet could be regarded as an obvious good. There were always those who simply opposed technological development. There were always those who wanted their own interests protected from the Internet. But Internet users historically benefited so much, so obviously, that skepticism about the value of the Internet itself was rare.

Things have changed. Every technology can be used for negative ends. The Internet still, plainly, brings gains in efficiency, convenience, and communications. Yet in the recent past, some of the negative uses have become apparent, which leads some people to ask whether the Internet is just too dangerous. This environment has produced a golden opportunity for those who always preferred a sanitized, tightly-controlled utility to the generative, empowering Internet. These forces claim that only national governments, treaties, laws, regulations, and monopolies can protect us from the problems we face. They do not want the extraordinary collaboration of the Internet. They think there is some mere political choice to be made between the Internet we have known on the one hand, and a tidy, regulated network on the other. If these forces are successful, we will all lose.

The Internet connects people because of its basic design. Each network that joins the Internet does its own thing, but together they are all richer and more reliable. A network of networks cannot be centrally controlled because it has no centre. This is not some accidental design choice we could alter: without this essential feature, we do not have the Internet at all. For that very reason, we -- all humanity -- must not let this technology be undermined. We must face, realistically, the challenges that the Internet produces for us all; but we must face them collaboratively and together. The Internet is for everyone, because only everyone can make the global network of networks.

Comments

Re:The false drives out the true

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet is the source of all knowledge, true and false. We'd once thought that by giving people access to both in the marketplace of ideas, with no gatekeepers, the "true" would drive out the false.

We're now realizing, however, that this may not be the case. The false can drive out the true, because it can be crafted to play to people's wants and needs and prejudices.

This is a problem. Does it have a solution?

Ask Glenn Greenwald:

CNN, Credibly Accused of Lying to its Audience About a Key Claim in its Blockbuster Cohen Story, Refuses to Comment

CNN’s blockbuster July 26 story – that Michael Cohen intended to tell Special Counsel Robert Mueller that he was present when Donald Trump was told in advance about his son’s Trump Tower meeting with various Russians – includes a key statement about its sourcing that credible reporting now suggests was designed to have misled its audience. Yet CNN simply refuses to address the serious ethical and journalistic questions raised about its conduct.

The substance of the CNN story itself regarding Cohen – which made headline news all over all the world and which CNN hyped as a “bombshell” – has now been retracted by other news outlets that originally purported to “confirm” CNN’s story. That’s because the anonymous source for this confirmation, Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis, now admits that, in essence, his “confirmation” was false. As a result, both the Washington Post and the NY Post outed Davis as their anonymous source and then effectively retracted their stories “confirming” parts of CNN’s report.

Only one of two things can be true here, and either is extremely significant: (1) CNN deliberately lied to its audience about Davis refusing to comment on the story when, in fact, Davis was one of the anonymous sources on which the CNN report depended, and CNN claimed Davis refused to comment in order to hide Davis’ identity as one of their anonymous sources; or (2) Davis is lying now to BuzzFeed when he confessed to having been one of CNN’s sources for the story.

...
Reporting v. “Media Criticism”

Media outlets have invented a deceitful term to discredit and trivialize any reporting on their own wrongful conduct. Such reporting, they say, is nothing more than “media criticism,” in contrast to the “real reporting” they do. A New Yorker profile published yesterday that was designed to malign my own work on this story over the last two years – which has involved ample reporting on the conduct of media outlets in circulating false information – invoked this term of insult to dismiss such reporting as worthless.

This term is self-serving nonsense from media outlets, seeking to render their own behavior off-limits from journalistic scrutiny. Media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC are highly powerful corporate actors. Their behavior can generate immense consequences for society. When they engage in journalistically deceitful or unethical practices, or when they report consequential claims that end up being false as a result of their recklessness or bias, that produces highly harmful outcomes.

CNN - home of deliberately fake news.

How many of you who deride "Faux News" are going to even try holding CNN to any standard?

Guess what?

Until you do - until you're also willing to hammer CNN for actually running demonstrably fake news with questionable at-best sourcing - you are part of the problem.

Re:The false drives out the true

[DNS-and-BIND]

You engage in whataboutism, use ad hominems of "ridiculous" and "lost all credibility" but never provide any reasoning for your accusations or cite examples. The Left has been energetically advancing the identity politics movement that's been plaguing our society for decades now.

Essentially, it relies on the theories of post-modernist thinkers who believe that individual identity is less significant than group identity. There is a weird inverted pyramid structure, whereby those who are felt to be the most oppressed get the most victimhood points - this is referred to as the 'hierarchy of privilege'.

You might think that objectively this is nonsense, but it's ok, because the aforementioned post-modernist thinkers have reliably informed us that objective facts do not exist. Everything is necessarily viewed through the prism of an individual's personal privilege or oppression, and so-called facts are merely the assertion of power by a specific group and should therefore be disregarded.

I'm not making this up. This is the actual theoretical basis for this stuff that's corrupting our society. Obviously once you tell everyone they're just part of a group whose interests are opposed to other groups in a kind of zero sum Darwinian dystopia, you get the explosion of division and hatred (and the decay of decency and compassion) that we've seen across the west over the past few decades. But that's just the cost of doing business. Forget a thousand years of slow, painful intellectual development that brought us the greatest civilization the world has ever known - you are mistaken and the reality is that all the West has ever given the world is racism, slavery and oppression.