[everyone]

I'm not specifically talking about tfa, but I defo feel less enthused about net neutrality and such these days.. For a few reasons.

1. Internet is bad now

In the 80's a new and truly utopian vision of personal computers, the internet, the web, was actually realised. But since then it's been taken over by monster corporations, the net has simply gone through the same process as systems before it (telegraph, telephone, TV) as described in "The Master Switch" by Tim Wu. In reality, for most users in 2024 it's no longer a utopian freeing force, its the opposite, a completely locked down system governed by utterly ruthless and reckless megacorps.

2. Internet is harmful

There's loads of data appearing about the negative health effects of social media, screentime, etc.

3. Geopolitics

The era of the peace dividend seems to be drawing to a close, and a new era of great power struggles beginning. Western democracies vs Autocracies (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea) It seems the autocratic countries are taking advantage of the weakness of the open net of the west, and using it to spread chaos and discord and destroy them from the inside. Stuff like the "Internet research Agency".

Having the internet restricted by relatively trustworthy regulators like the EU, seems preferable to me to letting megacorps dominate and abuse it, causing harm for profit, or to let autocracies use it to sow chaos. I actually think it'd be a good idea nowadays to ban social media tbh.

[idle_zealot]

It's not one or the other. No fundamental law states that the internet must be controlled by either powerful corporations or powerful governments. If governments did their job and enforced anti-trust and other consumer protection laws then neither would be the case.

[everyone]

I am thinking that wanting to fix the net might be living in the past. We'll never return to the old utopia. Like no effort ever fixed the previous systems of telegraph, telephone, radio, and tv, we just made new disruptive systems that ignored the old busted systems and created their own new one. Maybe the hackers of today should be focused on something like that instead of fighting a lost cause.

[Moldoteck]

all of this will not be solved by this law. In fact it'll make internet worse. Having a backdoor opens possibilities for hackers/third parties to try to circumvent it and gain access to the data (while with e2ee it's much much harder). Big players/corpos can alter the system in a way so that not only govs will have access to this data and to share it with 3'rd parties to enhance the ads business. Also - govs will get huge power with this law and in case some country/group of countries will get ppl like orban/putin in power - consequences may be drastic since nothing will stop them to abuse their power