Article about the end of the internet from 2008

infamous witness

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I found this interesting article, I posted part of it here for ease of access, ill link at the bottom. What do you guys think?:

"The first wave or step in that direction will direct its efforts to put a price on people to use the conventional internet and force people to use Internet 2,a state-regulated hub, where permission from a government agency or government will be required to create a website.

The original Internet will become a database under surveillance and a marketing tool. Nation magazine reported in 2006 that "Version, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies to track and store information from every move we make in cyberspace in a gigantic data collection system and marketing system. The scope of all this would rival the National Security Agency.

According to the reports or white papers now circulating in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, large advertisers, special interest groups, corporations, etc. would have preferential treatment. Content from these providers would take precedence on our computers and television screens while information deemed indesible, such as P2P communications, would be relegated to a slow lane or simply restricted."

Over the past few years, a propaganda chorus intent on demonizing the Internet to subject it to strict controls has been orchestrated from many organs of power:

1. Time magazine reported last year that federally funded researchers want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loops in the system that can't be tracked all the time. The echo of these projects is aimed at restricting the neutrality of the Internet and even devising a new form of the Internet.

2. There have been public requests, by both Republicans and Democrats, to be able to access the private email accounts of US citizens.

The strategy recently declassified by the White House to "win the War on Terror" points to conspiracy theories on the Internet as a basis for terrorist recruitment and threatens to "weaken" their influence.

The Pentagon recently announced its effort to infiltrate the Internet and make "war on terror" propaganda.

In a speech last October, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoffidentified the network as a "terror training ground" through which, "disaffected people living in the United States are developing radical ideologies and potentially violent skills." Their solution is "intelligence fusion centers" with National Security Agency personnel that will go operational for next year.

The U.S. government wants to forcebloggers and online activists to record and report their activity regularly to Congress. Criminal charges for non-compliance with this measure include a season behind bars (up to a year).

Another measure coming from Sydney goes even further in the destruction of the Internet and proposes that it be considered copyright theft and piracy to link information with other websites.

The European Union,led by former Stalinist and potential future British Prime Minister John Reid, has also vowed to crack down on "terrorists" who use the Internet to spread propaganda.

The EU's controversially passed information retention law last year and scheduled for implementation by the end of 2007 requires telephone operators and Internet service providers to store information about who calls whom and who sends emails to whom for a period of at least six months. Under this law, researchers in any EU country and even rarer in the USA, can access data on phone calls of European Union citizens, their SMS messages, emails and instant messaging services.

The European Union
recently proposed a law to prevent users from downloading any form of video without a license.

The U.S. government
is also funding research on social networking websites and how to obtain and store personal data published on them,according to New Scientist magazine "At the same time, lawmakers are trying to force social networking sites to control the amount and type of information that people, and particularly children, they can post on websites."
The development of a new form of the Internet based on new regulations is also designed to create an online system of "castes" in which the centers of the old Internet would go bankrupt and die forcing people to use the new censored, taxable and regulated network."


 
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solariat

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it all makes sense from their point of view, and at this point, i think its pretty clear to most of us that this is what the internet has become. it's always weird to see it being talked about years before the rest of us come to the realization.
 
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Taleisin

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This shit is still exactly the plan that those in power have. Good article OP.

Also
Another measure coming from Sydney goes even further in the destruction of the Internet and proposes that it be considered copyright theft and piracy to link information with other websites.
Lmao banning hyperlinks on the Internet
 
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Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it was probably intended this way since the beginning. There are just too many things that feel planned.
 
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infamous witness

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I believe they wanted to have achieved more of the goals they set forth by now, but they decided that developing a metaverse would be a more comprehensive solution than "internet 2.0". It's interesting note that the popular early internet words like, online, web, sign-on, and cyber (although that one's making a comeback) have evolved into just internet. If this is a natural progression in language or a type of subtle psychological manipulation is anyone's guess, but there seems to be less variation even with terminology.
This shit is still exactly the plan that those in power have. Good article OP.

Also

Lmao banning hyperlinks on the Internet
Thanks, and it goes to show the level of ignorance of the ones with authority, no hyperlinks=no internet. I think many of their plans are backfiring, I would have never been driven off the main sites, and to places like this and neocities and now beyond if they hadn't pushed too far too fast. I would have never tried to learn html css and make a neocities either, but here I am learning all this stuff at almost 40 and teaching my kids how to as well. I would have never gotten off google, or facebook, they could have easily kept on harvesting my data, but it became very obvious when the paid accounts and bots took over. I'm not happy with the state of the net at all but I am happy I was "woken up" by their agenda.
 
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handoferis

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I doubt they'll ever get rid of the real internet, cause the technology is now too ingrained and underpins a huge proportion of the economy. They've done pretty well at convincing the vast majority of people that the internet is basically zuckbook and twitter, and I reckon that's what all this metaverse junk is as well. Trick people into only using the bits of the internet you want them to use by giving them locked down devices that only work with your behavior-tracking, advertiser's wet dream services.

Apps are pretty much "the web without hyperlinks" - they don't want you leaving the dopamine zone, what good would linking you anything do them?
 
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InsufferableCynic

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I believe they wanted to have achieved more of the goals they set forth by now, but they decided that developing a metaverse would be a more comprehensive solution than "internet 2.0". It's interesting note that the popular early internet words like, online, web, sign-on, and cyber (although that one's making a comeback) have evolved into just internet. If this is a natural progression in language or a type of subtle psychological manipulation is anyone's guess, but there seems to be less variation even with terminology.
The big change I noticed is that we no longer differentiate between different types of technologies and applications. In under a decade, we went from "application", "executable", "program", "website", "web application", "interactive web page", etc to just "app" on our computers, laptops, tablets and phones. When someone, usually a normal tech-illiterate person, downloads an App from their vendors app store, they don't know or care whether it's a local application working with local data, a local application that connects to the internet, or just a thin wrapper around a standard mobile website where no data is stored or accessed locally. I have also noticed a huge push from open platforms all about "collaboration" to closed storefronts where the app ecosystem is controlled for the sake of "online safety". You don't want to get a VIRUS, do you? To this end, Google and Apple are both making it a lot harder to sideload applications onto their devices, and I have no doubt Microsoft will soon try to once again force the Microsoft Store onto everyone through a mandatory Windows update.

I believe this is deliberate. By watering down the definitional barriers between different types of applications, people are less likely to want to differentiate or seek out specific types of programs, which provides multiple benefits to device manufacturers, developers, governments, and data brokers, all at the expense of us.

When people rant about this, they usually go on a tirade about privacy. To be honest, privacy doesn't matter and I wish more of these activists would realise that. Obviously that's a big claim - your privacy does in fact matter - but the reality is that most people don't care and never will care. The main issue is control, as that is what is more likely to affect people in the day to day. When an application isn't actually a local executable and is just a wrapper around a webpage, it can change at any time without your consent, without even having to update it, your data can be deleted or held ransom, you can be locked in and perpetually forced to use a proprietary system that continually presents you with a worse and worse deal that you're stuck with, and you're generally at the mercy of both the device manufacturers and the software developers, and they do not have your best interests at heart.

People like to go on and on endlessly about conspiracy theories involving big surveillance programs, huge government spying, three letter agencies seeing everything you do online, etc. Yes, these are a problem, a pretty big one at that, especially in a supposedly free society, but I honestly don't think that's why they are doing this. They are doing it to make money. And they are making money by controlling us. The surveillance is just a bonus. They really only care if we are all constantly repaying for features that used to be available for free, on subscription models, reading only the articles they want to allow us to read, etc.

The only way to get true freedom with your smartphone is to install f-droid and use only locally hosted applications when available. Unless you're planning on becoming an activist or something, working towards privacy from big tech doesn't really matter all that much, especially with how much effort it takes and how many disadvantages it poses. I don't use Google services or applications, but not because I have some moral argument about Google scanning my gmail and advertising to me, but because I know that at any time Google could slap a price tag on some core gmail feature, or limit storage, or change the UI to make it worse, or do just about anything to fuck it up for me, so I selfhost instead. We already know Google heavily manipulates search results both in terms of raw google search page results as well as Youtubes and other sites recommendation and promotion algorithms. Given that reality, the only valid way to subscribe to content is through RSS, and Google is no longer usable as a search engine. None of that relates to privacy or surveillance at all.

Lmao banning hyperlinks on the Internet
Luckily for everyone, this was shot down. Still, the fact that they proposed it is pretty scary.
 
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handoferis

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People like to go on and on endlessly about conspiracy theories involving big surveillance programs, huge government spying, three letter agencies seeing everything you do online, etc. Yes, these are a problem, a pretty big one at that, especially in a supposedly free society, but I honestly don't think that's why they are doing this. They are doing it to make money. And they are making money by controlling us. The surveillance is just a bonus. They really only care if we are all constantly repaying for features that used to be available for free, on subscription models, reading only the articles they want to allow us to read, etc.

Yeah, the surveillance and spying is just a nice to have. Of course the alphabet agencies love a good centralized system, but the real impetus behind the massive centralization of the internet is that decentralized systems don't make absurdly fat stacks of cash for just a few people.

The only way to get true freedom with your smartphone is to install f-droid and use only locally hosted applications when available.
I'd argue the best way to get freedom with a smartphone is simply not to use it unless you absolutely have to. This is how I roll with mine, it's just a thing I use when I'm forced to use it and take photos with / use as a hotspot. I see my meatspace friends completely consumed by their phones and with terrible mental health and just like, nah cuz. I also self-host, and nine times out of ten if I want to do something with my services I want to do it on a proper computer. I always went everywhere with a laptop (and a dumbphone as a dialup modem) before smartphones, and it still works (and is arguably more convenient) now.
 
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InsufferableCynic

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I'd argue the best way to get freedom with a smartphone is simply not to use it unless you absolutely have to.
I absolutely 100% agree with this sentiment.

I should probably have clarified that I was talking about the best thing you can do while still having and using a smartphone. If you're able, you should jettison it entirely.

As for taking photos, maybe it's worth investing in a $200-300 digital camera to keep with you (in a backpack or soemthing. I already recommend travelling with backpacks anyway) so that you have no chance of being tracked or distracted since you don't have to keep your phone with you, you get a nice optical zoom, and usually far better picture quality overall. It does mean you need separate device, though.
 

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IIRC, people dismissed this article as a bogus conspiracy theory and tried to sweep it under the rug but I swear most of the so called conspiracy theories that were out back then ended up becoming true.
I am regularly pissed off at being right about shit nowadays. It is always something bad.
 

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I am regularly pissed off at being right about shit nowadays. It is always something bad.
Yes, it has gotten to the point where the moment something is discounted as a "right wing conspiracy theory", it usually gives it credibility in my eyes.

What's the difference between a "right wing conspiracy theory" and mainstream news? About 2 months.
 

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I'd like to clarify that the "ban hyperlinks" thing the EU tried to introduce was to stop google just stealing content from articles and plastering it on the search page (removing click-throughs to the URL). It seems like the law was made with good intentions and bastardised in implementation by people who didn't know what they're doing. Now we have google amp which, when you click on a news article in the search results, will direct to a google mirrored page (starting amp.google), not the target URL.

Talk about homogenisation of the internet.

Excellent call on "the Metaverse" being the new "internet replacement". I can't wait for that one to die off, though all the really bad promo that people keep making for it seems to be speeding up the process as people recognise how awful it is.
 
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The original "free" internet was just a bait to get us all into the walled garden. I remember the old online services - Aol, Prodigy, Compuserve, etc - and they were sort of primitive previews of how the powers that be always wanted to internet to be, a sort of strip mall with some controlled socialization. Back in those days getting away from aol and co and onto the web was the goal, and now the whole web is just another aol.
 
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This thread reminds me of the whole outrage people had about the abolition of Internet Neutrality a few years ago before this was totally forgotten. Has anything came out of this (i.e a compagny now using their new-found power)?
 

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This thread reminds me of the whole outrage people had about the abolition of Internet Neutrality a few years ago before this was totally forgotten. Has anything came out of this (i.e a compagny now using their new-found power)?
It keeps coming back in myriad forms. Usually they try to float it during Christmas when people are otherwise distracted, or try to tack it onto other bills. Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers can't charge discriminately for the data they provide.

Thankfully the current status is enforced Net Neutrality in the European Union, the UK and the USA. Source.
 
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It keeps coming back in myriad forms. Usually they try to float it during Christmas when people are otherwise distracted, or try to tack it onto other bills. Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers can't charge discriminately for the data they provide.

Thankfully the current status is enforced Net Neutrality in the European Union, the UK and the USA. Source.
Good to know. Hopefully the current net neutrality will be upheld into the future, although I suspect that things might get ugly down the road.
 
heard about article 320 or so? something sbout alghots and google, web content, idk ?
or 14...
 
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