[HN Gopher] Who controls the Internet? And should they? (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
Who controls the Internet? And should they? (2021)
Author : pabs3
Score : 134 points
Date : 2022-09-08 10:24 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (berthub.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (berthub.eu)
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| > the weird thing is if you want to turn off this child safe
| internet in the UK, you get a letter and they sent you this
| letter that tells you, look, you opted out of the filtering.
| Apparently you want to look at adult material.
|
| I've opted out of these filters ever since they have been in
| place, Most providers will ask you during sign up if you wanted
| them on or off, I've always turned them off on day one. Since
| these filters have been in place I have been with (Who have the
| filters) Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Sky, 3 (Mobile internet) and I
| have never once recieved a letter from my ISP that tells me that
| I have opted out of the adult content filtering.
| jart wrote:
| I like Bert Hubert's writing because he always comes across as
| someone who's unbiased and genuinely cares. One thing I'm
| surprised he didn't mention is how large corporations operate
| their own private internets in basically the same way as
| countries like China and North Korea. Why wouldn't they? It's how
| the ARPAnet used to work. They only let scientists, engineers,
| and university students use the thing. I'm sure it was a much
| more pleasant environment than the spam hellscape of the modern
| public net. So obviously every corporate and national community
| who shares the same dream is going to try and escape it. Where is
| it written that private internets are perfectly normal when a
| corporation does it, but evil when a country does too? Some are
| certainly guilty of mismanagement, but I wouldn't judge their
| motivations, or say they're "controlling" what they're trying to
| escape.
| samatman wrote:
| Pretty simple from where I sit: if there's Internet, and the
| corporate internet, that's two internets someone gets to use.
| If there's Internet, and Sinonet, I can't get on Sinonet (fine
| by me) and they can't get on Internet, which I think sucks and
| is bad. We should have less of that, not more.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What you describe already exist, governments already have their
| own intranet. This is about controlling the public internet. I
| understand what you are saying but the comparison does not make
| sense, because there's a clear difference between setting up a
| private corporate network and a country/continent wide net.
|
| Comparing something like the great firewall to a corporate
| network is just not productive imo. (Plus, just because a
| private corporation is doing something does not mean that a
| government should do the same anyways.)
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > Where is it written that private internets are perfectly
| normal when a corporation does it, but evil when a country does
| too?
|
| The impact is different*, scale is different, and countries
| doing it have track record of using it to hide their misdeeds.
|
| *It's generally ok if you build a wall around your property.
| Not so much if a country does it.
| jaywalk wrote:
| In reality, corporations hold just as much if not more power
| over the Internet than governments. Even though a corporation
| can't physically lock you up, they can (and have, many times)
| give you a virtual "death penalty" if they don't like you for
| whatever reason.
|
| This is not OK, and "but private companies can do what they
| want" really needs to be rethought to reflect reality. We
| have governments essentially using corporations to get around
| their own legal restrictions.
| seydor wrote:
| > countries doing it have track record of using it to hide
| their misdeeds.
|
| And companies don't? Internet companies are media, so their
| function is not neutral to the existence and function of
| states. Constitutions all around the world have specific
| "free press" provisions because the press is not "just
| another private business" but it has very real consequences
| for the existence of states. So do tech companies today, but
| they are untouchable, they enjoy even more protections than
| free press.
|
| We still live with memories of the liberal internet of the
| '90s (even though we know it's long gone) and we stick to
| this romantic view of the intent of tech companies. The scale
| of those companies is bigger than indivudual states so i dont
| think the comparison is apt either.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| By state misdeeds I mean labor camp, concentration centers
| and war crimes, etc.
|
| Very few private companies in history could have enough
| power to be able to commit crimes against humanity.
| seydor wrote:
| well, all slave traders did. Amazon would be selling
| police services , private armies and nukes if it was
| allowed to.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Freedom of the press doesn't mean freedom for a specific
| type of private business. It means anybody with a printing
| press. In other words anybody is allowed to publish and
| distribute whatever they want.
| hulitu wrote:
| Can you name a place where this is possible ?
| etchalon wrote:
| Today, in the US.
| staringback wrote:
| The Tor network.
| fallingknife wrote:
| 1700's USA. Internet up to 2015 ish.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| > _Where is it written that private internets are perfectly
| normal when a corporation does it, but evil when a country does
| too?_
|
| Well for one thing, when you come back from work at your
| corporation, you can go on the regular internet. Country-wide
| blocks don't allow that by design.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| They even proactively obstruct the regular Internet. It's not
| a choice, but an imposition, and even if the regular Internet
| is a clusterfuck, we need to be in control of that choice.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Corporations are voluntary associations of people for some
| specific purpose, while countries enforce monopoly of violence
| over certain area. They are not really comparable. Corporations
| have much higher freedom to set their internal rules because
| you have freedom to non-associate with them, while countries
| should enforce just necessary minimum of rules.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _Where is it written that private internets are perfectly
| normal when a corporation does it, but evil when a country does
| too?_
|
| Because everyone goes home from work but only very fortunate
| people go home from China.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| There's some discussion of that, but more on the user-facing
| side, not the in-house networks (which are also a feature of
| universities, government agencies, etc.).
|
| > "Meanwhile, we have these big technology firms, that control
| the hardware, the software, and they run their own kangaroo
| courts that decide who wins and who loses. And there's no way
| to appeal that or to have any insights from what they are
| doing, because they are encrypting what they are doing and
| hiding it from end users, while simultaneously moving more and
| more stuff to their control points"
|
| > "This means 1) they have these kangaroo courts and 2) they're
| moving more and more control to these kangaroo courts."
|
| That's more about access to their public platforms (things like
| blocking some users, shaddow banning, algorithmic
| recommendation manipulation, etc.).
|
| However, corporations aren't yet governments, although there
| are some indications that 'company towns' are becoming a thing,
| as they were in the early 20th century, where a company would
| own every house in a city and could evict anyone they didn't
| like, essentially becoming a de facto authoritarian government.
| In that case, banning someone from their private:w network
| would mean they had no access to any network.
| [deleted]
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Ctrl-F ICANN ... 0 results?! For as long as this blog post is, it
| doesn't seem very comprehensive.
| kelthuzad wrote:
| That's exactly the very first I thing thought and did as well,
| I love hackernews.
| gumby wrote:
| That's not what the essay or talk is about. It's about state
| censorship amd comtrol.
| guestbest wrote:
| Comtrol seems so good it should not have been a typo. Dot com
| is still the premiere domain suffix despite all trends
| otherwise
| marc_rich wrote:
| Rackedup wrote:
| Governments control everything.... they are slowly trying to
| block crypto too.
|
| The Internet in 20 years will suck even more (they don't really
| like free speech even if they claim they do).
|
| Edit: Since HN doesn't allow me to reply to the child comment
| because "I'm posting too quickly", here is the reply to CharlesW.
|
| Stealing is already illegal.... I like how they don't know how to
| use current laws and flood us with new ones to make their job
| easier... The truth is that they think that Crypto-currencies are
| a threat to USD and are trying to stop them. The least they could
| do is destroy one law every time they add one.
|
| His reply was "CharlesW 40 minutes ago | parent | next [-]
|
| > Governments control everything.... they are slowly trying to
| block crypto too.
|
| I'm always amazed that anyone thought cryptocurrencies would
| somehow be the one form of currency that wouldn't be regulated.
|
| It's clear that crypto can't self-regulate, and continues to
| actively hurt lots of people. As of July, $1.9 billion in crypto
| has been "stolen" -- up 60% from a year ago1, in quotes because
| we know a good percentage of these were inside jobs."
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Governments control everything.... they are slowly trying to
| block crypto too._
|
| I'm always amazed that anyone thought cryptocurrencies would
| somehow be the one form of currency that wouldn't be regulated.
|
| It's clear that crypto can't self-regulate, and continues to
| actively hurt lots of people. As of July, $1.9 billion in
| crypto has been "stolen" -- up 60% from a year ago1, in quotes
| because we know a good percentage of these were inside jobs.
|
| 1 https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/crypto-crime-midyear-
| up...
| HereIGoAgain wrote:
| Nobody should. Beyond the server levels, ability to pay should be
| the only thing restricting service.. full stop!
| [deleted]
| chasd00 wrote:
| The BGP admins control the Internet. When they make an "oopsie"
| entire nations loose access until the same admins fix it.
| wbear wrote:
| enjoyed the article, i wonder if the internet will become more or
| less regressive as time goes on.
| tolkienfanatic wrote:
| The answer is yes.
| blueflow wrote:
| Are Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft "The Internet"?
|
| Why not Cogent, Verizon, AT&T, Level 3 or other 1-Tiers like
| them?
|
| This does not touch that all of them need to bow to the local
| legislation.
| bombcar wrote:
| For "users" yeah, they're basically the internet.
|
| If you don't have your own ASN you're just renting someone
| else's access, so there's an easy answer - they control your
| access and could cut it off if they wanted.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Having your own ASN doesn't mean a whole lot on it's own.
| bombcar wrote:
| Each step higher on the chain gets you closer to terms of
| service that say "if it's legal, you're ok".
| m348e912 wrote:
| If it's legal, you're okay. I like how you stated this.
|
| Conversely as you drop down the consumer chain to lets
| say a free service (eg twitter) the terms of service
| becomes markedly more complex and onerous.
| TrueSlacker0 wrote:
| "This means 1) they have these kangaroo courts and 2) they're
| moving more and more control to these kangaroo courts."
|
| This seems to sum up a lot of issues with the "internet"
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'm in the UK and I don't recognise what's being said there about
| a child safe internet you can opt out of.
| matt-p wrote:
| Exactly, it doesn't exist yet and im extremely sceptical it
| ever would. It makes me lose trust in the rest of the article.
| Shame.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| All internet access on consumer-grade mobile plans is
| restricted by default and you have to explicitly opt-out of the
| filtering.
| Semaphor wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| And, of course, they're not stopping.
|
| In Liz Truss' first PMQs yesterday one of the questions was
| on pushing for a return of the online safety bill for further
| "regulation" of the internet, which Truss said is going to
| come back, for the under 18s of course.
|
| https://youtu.be/1ZCTQwljRqs?t=3428
| squigg wrote:
| Exactly - there is no default blocking of adult material in the
| UK, it's scaremongering based on proposed legislation that will
| probably never make it to the statute books. Some ISPs and
| telcos have implemented their own systems to protect children,
| which is a policy matter for them and them alone. There are
| plenty of ISPs who give you a raw unfiltered Internet. As a
| result of this inaccuracy, it weakens the rest of the talk for
| me - how much else is being made up?
| Semaphor wrote:
| So the wikipedia article [0] is wrong? It says the big 4
| (TalkTalk, Sky, BT and Virgin) all implemented it. Or do you
| say that because some tiny ISPs don't that it's
| scaremongering?
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United
| _Kin...
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| They were told by the goverment "If you don't do it on your
| own, we will make you do it", so the big ISPs did (BT,
| Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk). This was back in 2012.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/news/parents-asked-if-adult-
| we...
|
| > But ministers have always been clear that if industry did
| not go far enough or fast enough, the government would
| consider further action - including potentially regulation.
|
| The filter is turned on by default from the biggest ISPs
| however each one of them asks if you would like to disable it
| during the onboarding process.
|
| Same goes for mobile internet, the only diffence there is if
| you are using PAYG you have to validate your age via a credit
| card or using a form of ID at your providers local store.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >it's scaremongering based on proposed legislation that will
| probably never make it to the statute books.
|
| As someone following this horrendous bill, can you tell me
| what gives you that impression, given that it's passed two
| readings in the Commons and HL doesn't seem to be
| particularly vocal about slowing it down?
| jaywalk wrote:
| No mention of Cloudflare or Amazon, who arguably control more of
| the Internet than any of the entities listed in the article.
| Definitely more than any of the other corporations listed.
| hulitu wrote:
| No mention of other facts which he should know if he worked for
| intelligence services (DE-CIX).
| xwdv wrote:
| One company controls the internet more than any other:
| Cloudflare.
| deepdriver wrote:
| They shield, and therefore effectively man-in-the-middle,
| roughly 20% of all websites on the Internet:
|
| https://backlinko.com/cloudflare-users
| xwdv wrote:
| This is incredible power.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| What an overly polite article. Kaczynski would not approve.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| "The Internet" is just other peoples' computers. Who controls
| yours?
| hulitu wrote:
| Pegasus ?
| blooalien wrote:
| "The Internet" is just _everyone 's_ computers (all those who
| are connected to the Internet at least, including yours and
| mine). It's a "network of networks". This is just a fact that
| most folks have either forgotten, or were never taught in the
| first place, and your ISP doesn't really _want_ you to know or
| remember what the Internet _really_ is, because then you 'd
| know how badly you're being "shafted" by most of the ISPs out
| there these days.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-08 23:01 UTC)