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by shadowgovt 568 days ago
It's a difference of degree, not kind, which is how it became normalized.
1 comments

The internet started with decentralized protocols like NNTP, so you could just choose a different news server if the one you were using started tracking + selling your download logs.

Centralizing the serving of third party (or even first party) content is already way outside the original norms of the internet.

Heck, back in the day, HTTP caching would be enough to block tracking. (No javascript, and only the ISP sees which users pulled the document from cache.)

The internet/arpanet started largely with centralized protocols like various file transfer protocols, telnet, finger, various networked filesystem protocols, network printer protocols, network graphics protocols, echo, QOTD, etc.