[fredley]

The internet is still basically an American institution. If it's bad for the 'American Internet' it's bad for everyone. Also US policy on matters like these is usually propagated around the World. If it happens in America, it'll probably happen in [country] soon after.

[jstanley]

> The internet is still basically an American institution.

Can you elaborate on this?

[thanksgiving]

Look at your computer. How much of the software and services you use is based in the US? Don't rank by variety. Rank by minutes engaged each day.

For example, news.ycombinator.com is decidedly us based your electric company is not but you spend more time on hacker news than paying your electricity bill.

[jstanley]

The Hacker News server is based in the US, but I spend more time reading and responding to articles and comments than I do looking at the HN HTML.

The articles and commenters are from all around the world.

Part of the beauty of the internet is that it does not care about or even see geographical or political borders. Saying the internet is "basically an American institution" makes no sense.

[zdkl]

What you say is true but it's irrelevant if the physical hosting or routing touches US jurisdiction.

[dis-sys]

You do realize that there are 730 million active Chinese Internet users who basically don't use any US services? They spent more time on Internet/mobile than US users[1], they paid trillion of _real $_ last year using Chinese online payment systems[2]. If you like, we can also compare how many hours they spent on WeChat social media, or watching TV series/videos online.

[1] http://www.vertoanalytics.com/why-china-beats-the-u-s-in-mob... [2] http://technode.com/2017/04/07/alipay-leads-chinas-third-par...