[mediaguilt]

Many have forgotten why we used the internet in the first place. The original promise of the internet was to become independent from media/science/gov monopolies. In the end FAANG (like most popular websites) is a great product, but just the same as before. It's centralized, hackable, has economies of scale, etc.

[dehrmann]

> The original promise of the internet was to become independent from media/science/gov monopolies

Depending on your definition or "internet," it was to connect military computers to each other.

[solosoyokaze]

Agree. First it was for military, then academia, then commerce (dot com), then more commerce/social/mobile.

Bitcoin and other P2P apps starting with Napster were the subversive and populist tech that was built on a military industrial network.

I would say the culture and ethos of programming was subversive, the home computer market somewhat so as well. But the internet solidly originated within the establishment and was part of the cold war.