[shevy-java]

> In short: there's no hope of getting a world-wide, free, uncensored, unlimited IP4/6 network back. We never had it in the first place.

We can build such a society. I am not sure why you think this is never possible.

People can work for a better world. That sometimes works, too.

[brazzy]

> We can build such a society. I am not sure why you think this is never possible.

Maybe we can, but it is A) a far bigger, older, and more difficult problem than how to structure a computer network, and B) fundamentally not solvable through technological means.

No matter how much technologists love the idea of technology as a liberating force, our worst instincts and dynamics always reassert themselves and soon figure out how to use that same technology to destroy liberty.

[c22]

Technology is a force multiplier. When large, powerful, institutions adopt technology they can use the leverage to suppress liberty. (Though not all do to the same extent.)

However, large institutions are also slow to move, grow, and change. At the leading edge of technological adoption small groups and individuals can use the amplified power to resist supression.

The trick is to remain at the leading edge and to remind early adopters of the power they wield. If enough of us fight for liberty many institutions will follow.

[pkphilip]

The world has actually become worse over time - especially the Internet, when it comes to free speech, freedom, the ability for individuals to make a difference etc.

[okanat]

> We can build such a society. I am not sure why you think this is never possible.

Where does such informed political and economic interest and power exist? With whom do we construct such society? Do they have the power and will to fight for it?

Normies live with normie standards and with incresing social media exposure with more and more emotional animal-like manipulated world views. They are either ignorant or ambivalent.

Will tech people gather on a piece of land and declare independence? Most of my tech worker colleagues are also quite pro-social media and they heavily use it to boost their apparent social status. We cannot even trust our kind.

Similar examples of new technology being used to motivate and mobilize masses have always ended with devastating wars and genocides. Previously the speed of propagation of information gave advantages to statespeople like FDR to put an end to increasing racism/Nazism/violent tendencies (of course not everywhere, when let to its own devices new technology almost perfect for constructing dictatorships). Now everybody has equal access to misinformation.

[glitchc]

Kumbaya is never a motivator. Now, self-interest, on the other hand...

[txrx0000]

Kumbaya is also a form of self-interest. We're still very much self-interested, it's just that we can see a tiny bit further into the future and realize that we need to better our surroundings in order to live the life we want.

[squeefers]

> it's just that we can see a tiny bit further into the future and realize that we need to better our surroundings in order to live the life we want.

except we cant agree exactly HOW the new utopia should be and we end up splintering into two groups at loggerheads, fighting each other and back to square one, talking about how if we just followed someone else idea of a utopia we would have to fight all the time. dream on

[estimator7292]

Spot the American.

Capitalism is not the only way of life, and FYGM is a mental illness outside of the US

[warkdarrior]

What is you preferred socioeconomic system? Any countries successfully implementing it so we can copy them?

[soco]

Lmgtfy: Switzerland, Norway...

[slopinthebag]

So, capitalism?

[Nition]

This comment thread fully equating culture with economic system is probably part of the problem.

[nine_k]

Capitalism does not imply FYGM, nor does it benefit from it.

[tomhow]

It's unacceptable to post snarky comments or nationality-based stereotypes on HN. Please make an effort to observe the guidelines, especially these ones:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[bccdee]

Capitalism is not the only way of life (and fwiw, I'm not a fan)—but it is the primary way of life for nearly the entire world. Sweden, Norway, Brazil, France, Egypt, Iraq, and India are capitalist. Even China is effectively capitalist, although they like to call themselves "socialist with Chinese characteristics."

[easyThrowaway]

...just like the divine right of kings!

[tvink]

Honestly if we could have we would have, we can't even tax the people destroying our world, how are we going to create utopia

[ori_b]

By making an effort. If we fail, at least we tried.

[embedding-shape]

> we can't even tax the people destroying our world

You* maybe cannot, but that certainly isn't everywhere.

[aerhardt]

Even in our fabulously wealthy societies, people are mostly worried about paying their bills, taking care of their families, and putting food on the table, not in getting together in a quixotic enterprise and paying for thousands of kilometers of communal fiber. Also like in most communist utopias what would probably happen is that the control infrastructure would be captured by special interest groups and now you’ve traded one evil for another, but in addition you’re left holding the capex bag and you’re poorer for it.

[pwndByDeath]

A government established by the people for the people is just such a sort of arrangement. Wishful thinking, but maybe someday...

[thatcat]

municipally owned fiber isnt that rare or complicated

[trueno]

The technology is the easy part, the people are the hard part. The reality is that we simply don't have thought leaders in charge anymore, there's no innovations or anything that are coming to correct course, very few if any channels even exist anymore for good ideas to flow upwards that result in good & proper solution implementations that positively preserve/protect/harden what we want the web to be. I think a lot of bright minds who could be solutioning for some of these things understand the dynamics at play even if they've never taken a huge moment to think about it. Subconsciously they are aware that becoming a person to try and steer such a big ship would require a monumental exertion that is maybe not worth it anymore. The great leaders never actively seek out leadership positions, similarly I don't think the people who could be good decision makers and influence these types of ideals coming to fruition in society actively seek out such positions. The possible mental tax of getting there is probably enormous. It is not an economic win for anyone to take up the mantle of trying to steer ships this size, it is a massive sacrifice. People who would be fit for the task probably just want to sign off at the end of the day and... have a good life and exist/be a benefit in their communities. In some ways perhaps that makes them.. unfit for carrying this torch. Perhaps there are simply too few people out there that are adequately qualified to carry this torch, we are in dire need of competent people at the helm of many fronts and we simply don't have that, that's just the real life variables at play right now.

We plebs are just driftwood floating in massive waves of nation state decision making. I don't doubt there are people who literally work at ISPs who are depressed at the state of things, depressed that theyre not allowed to take action on certain things, depressed that they see first-hand what kind of control mechanisms they're forced to implement or disallowed from implementing and more. It's got to be a trove of BS in an age of misinformation which has always been an information systems problem that humanity has implemented checks notes zero solutions for. And at the end of the day they, probably like all of us, just want to live a good and meaningful life.

That's not to say just... give up on ideals. But instead to acknowledge the realities of ideals not being enough on their own. Have some real conversations on what it would actually take to embed these types of fundamentals into a society, get comfortable with the uncomfortable realities. So much work needs to be done before new ideals can even be shared. Outreach alone to spread ideals is a massive uphill battle at this point due to conglomerate control of broadcast media and concentrated ownership of social media apps. A lot of these particular ideals require a decent understanding/background of technology in general which most people don't even have, making these things an incredibly unlikely basis for a society where these things are well-enough understood. So the circus trick here is how do you make it a digestable topic that touches the souls of many and galvanizes them to take the correct stance so that these things become embodied in the set of ideals a society values, so that legislators and whatever other proxies that are tasked with decision making give these things the resourcing or policy making attention they deserve. That's the mega hard part, which is then additionally compounded in difficulty by ... most households in our societies just never having these types of discussions make it to their TV/computer screens. Hackernews types like to call these people "normies" and tack the blame on them, but they can't seem to wrap their mind around that not everyone could or should have a deep compsci background. We should be coexisting with people of a variety of backgrounds and instead we should be looking at their "normie"-ness as a thing to account for, not blame. It would be absurd to have a "normie" expect us to be exceptional at rebuilding car engines or any other broad subset of knowledge that we haven't ourselves committed our own lives/spare time to.

So that leaves the other route to take which is just... renegade fine-we'll-do-it-ourselves. Which can succeed, but has its own set of challenges. Fronting infrastructure for a lot of stuff is expensive, so donors are needed on sometimes vast scales. To another commenters point like... ain't none of us on the renegade front laying undersea cables any time soon which are multi-billion dollar projects to cross the Pacific. Often times we see these underground efforts fail in their infancy simply because the UX just flat out sucks and we're up against entities who can giga-scale all their infrastructure/resources & ultimately capitalize on making whatever app thing fast&pleasant for users. It feels like we're drowning against titans sometimes, it's overwhelming.

[adrianwaj]

An alternative internet would be possible: maybe you could setup a kickstarter campaign and aim to ride on the back of Starlink, or Amazon's upcoming Leo.

One problem you face are high profile leaders apparently being "replaced" with ones that are a lot more "conformist." So yesteryear's Bezos might've said yes, today's Bezos: no. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqlEtPBNgLc (members only)

[krapp]

The alternative internet already exists: http://geminiquickst.art/

[adrianwaj]

I think what would be cool is to have a device with all of Gemini's content available for offline browsing. Every few hours changes can be downloaded to keep it current.

This is similar to Bill Joy and his unlimited music device in about 2000.

Having something local means superfast response times, even if there's a delay in freshness.

The key is moderation. I suppose it could end up like a magazine. Maybe charge micropayments to have content included with that fee changing according to a slop-scale?

It's a good idea to couple with something like the upcoming Linux handheld - Mecha. Need multi-TB SSDs - maybe AI can help navigate? Have different versions according to how much storage the user has available.

Maybe there's demand for something local that new AIs can train from. Something other than Internet Archive.

Are there any products that can minimize online-time by building a backlog of jobs to run when online, but also enabling a pause for offline-time?

Also, websites could queue requests, eliminate the AI thumping, and notify the client when their request is allowed? It's like queuing up for a niteclub and eventually getting passed the droid-hostile bouncer.

[fragmede]

Stop paying attention to every little thing that happens. Pay enough attention that you're not totally ignorant, but don't give it so much air that you get overwhelmed to the point of inaction.

[txrx0000]

The "normies" aren't as dumb as people on here think they are. There are plenty of side channels to activate normies. The reason good leaders don't seem to seek out leadership positions anymore is because they have the Internet now. Don't underestimate the power of online discourse and how quickly its effects can propagate through society. Plenty are watching and steering from the comfort of their own homes, but the titans find this very unsettling, so they want to shut it down. They've been trying for years, but it's becoming increasingly difficult for them because nature is not on their side. Information just wants to spread out and be free.

[squeefers]

who pays for it then?

[Maakuth]

The ISPs are a natural monopoly, or oligopoly at least, because it's expensive to lay cable for each home. Their business is quite profitable even when they don't get to control their customers traffic.

[squeefers]

what question are you answering here?

[toddmorrow]

city wide municipal Internet service, which is admittedly last mile service, was so cheap it didn't even make a dent in the local tax rates. the cost was nominal. naturally the centralized providers fought to make municipal Internet illegal

[squeefers]

nobody works anymore so they cant raise income from taxation, city doesnt have the money to do anything.

[thesuitonym]

Who pays for roads?

[squeefers]

your tax money from working, but you wont be doing that anymore

[pessimizer]

> People can work for a better world. That sometimes works, too.

Not when people make arguments based on dreams, hope, and optimism.

If somebody tells me that we can build a shed, I want them to talk about wood, nails and concrete, or to stop talking.

[fragmede]

If someone tells me we can build a shed, I'm going to ask who's land are we building it on, who's paying for it, what zoning/permitting laws apply, who's going to own it (form an LLC or a -corp with shares). The kind of wood and the type of nails aren't even worth wasting time discussing until we've answered those questions first.

[throwaway5465]

Sometimes action outside concensus is needed.

[Driver8]

But you don't necessarily need wood, nails or concrete to build a shed. Once we start specifying things like that we stop considering alternatives that could be legitimate options.

[HappMacDonald]

But until we start specifying things like that nothing gets built

[throwaway5465]

A shed is in your garden. Happiness is in your head.

[reppap]

The assertion that an uncensored internet is a better world should probably require some motivation.

If everyone was a normal (as far as anyone is normal) law abiding citizen perhaps I would agree, but sadly that is far from the case. I think history has quite clearly shown that there is a minority of people out there that will take advantage and ruin things for everyone else. It's the same reason we have militaries, police forces, government checks and balances, etc. The internet is no exception to this.

I don't think the world is simple enough where anyone could be absolutist about freedom, it's all grey areas and complicated lines drawn.

[pjc50]

Especially when the censored internet already exists, the selection pressure is going to make the uncensored internet the CSAM distribution channel.

[squeefers]

its as if nonces exist independently of tcp/ip