[sourthyme]

To me TikTok is not the "internet" because no matter how much the app gives, the user doesn't own their content.

You can still write anything in a blog that you own and have people see it. To me that freedom is the "internet".

[haliskerbas]

I see this comment and others like it. It's important to also know where the mindshare is. Where are most average individuals spending most of their internet hours? It is likely not niche-blog.com. TikTok is quickly becoming "the internet" for all intenents and purposes for some people. It's also how some folks get their news, etc.

[tommiegannert]

You don't even have to go that far to shoot down GP's argument. The blogs can be censored just like TikTok, as long as ISPs are incorporated in local states. Whether censorship happens by telling TikTok the rules, or telling the ISPs the rules seems inconsequential to the democritized availability of information.

Starlink et al. have a unique possibility of being state-agnostic and even leave citizens room for plausible deniability. (The next problem is how Starlink is payed in a way that states can't block, but it seems people are working on that...)

[Jcowell]

Wouldn’t Starlink just be beholden to the US government and it’s laws ?

As I see it no corporation can be state agnostic unless you want a corporation more powerful then states themselves and you don’t want that either because a corporation is not beholden to the people.

[trasz]

Perhaps there could be a charity making payments for those who legally can't.

[Izkata]

There was a post here, I think last year, about how in parts of the world WeChat is the internet: friends, school communication, payments, everything.

[short_sells_poo]

The bigger issue is that you may own your blog content, but if your blog is publishing undesirable opinions, it'll be difficult to find a host even in democracies with freedom of press.

In other words, you may have a legal freedom to express your opinions but nobody is forced to give you the platform to do so. It can become arbitrarily difficult to actually disseminate your opinions at the extreme. E.g. I may vehemently disagree with Trump's opinions, but I have to admit that I feel deeply uncomfortable with private entities controlling whether he gets heard or not.

At the same time, I don't have a good solution if I'm fully honest. Private entities absolutely should have the freedom to determine what they want published on their platforms. Maybe we need (as a society) realize that the social media has become a de-facto utility that needs to be provided as such, regulated as such and taken away from the hands of private entities?

[rospaya]

> You can still write anything in a blog that you own and have people see it. To me that freedom is the "internet".

It's easy when you have a domain, server in your basement, a reasonable ISP. But as soon as you break the ToS with your provider or registrar getting the word out becomes practically impossible without resorting to IPFS or Onion or whatever in which case the content you own becomes a little ghetto that nobody reads.

[spyder]

Because blogs and websites aren't getting blocked in Russia or what? The only way content can be a little more resilient against blocking is P2P hosting. But even that can be made hard to access by blocking the on-ramp ( websites, app for the tools to get access to P2P ) or the protocol.

[kube-system]

Under that definition of internet, not enough people use it for it to be relevant democratizing force.