Unfortunately, due to the piss-poor human condition, Canada - and every country on Earth that allows free speech - will go whatever direction the bots run by the nations that do NOT allow free speech want them to go. Anything else is a temporary reprieve.
Boy, I sure didn’t see that coming. It’s going to be very interesting seeing where such a path ends. Uncomfortable, likely, but interesting.
Totally. I was thinking about China the other day, how crazy they seemed for building the Great Firewall fifteen years ago. I felt sad for their citizens being cutoff from the internet. Now I’m sitting here looking in and I’m all like - fuck, this has been a major contributor to their sovereignty. Both in that this allowed their own strong digital economy to develop instead of getting hooked on American Big Tech, and in that it keeps the propaganda that’s threatening us at bay. I’m not saying that censorship is amazing all around but just like you said, had they gone with free speech online, they’d be subject to whatever Big Social makes money from that day. It’s crazy how the tables have turned from this perspective. I’m not optimistic that there’s a solution that both keeps speech free and protects us from this problem.
Newspapers aren’t allowed to print whatever they want, news networks can’t straight up lie on TV, why are we obsessed with the idea that tech platforms need to be able to wash their hands of everything on their platform.
Maybe we don’t need the web to be full of user submitted content. I remember the early Internet, it was way better than what we have today.
The Great Firewall of China serves the discussion about American social media media platforms only by providing an example of how things could be even worse.
Unfortunately, due to the piss-poor human condition, Canada - and every country on Earth that allows free speech - will go whatever direction the bots run by the nations that do NOT allow free speech want them to go. Anything else is a temporary reprieve.
Boy, I sure didn’t see that coming. It’s going to be very interesting seeing where such a path ends. Uncomfortable, likely, but interesting.
Totally. I was thinking about China the other day, how crazy they seemed for building the Great Firewall fifteen years ago. I felt sad for their citizens being cutoff from the internet. Now I’m sitting here looking in and I’m all like - fuck, this has been a major contributor to their sovereignty. Both in that this allowed their own strong digital economy to develop instead of getting hooked on American Big Tech, and in that it keeps the propaganda that’s threatening us at bay. I’m not saying that censorship is amazing all around but just like you said, had they gone with free speech online, they’d be subject to whatever Big Social makes money from that day. It’s crazy how the tables have turned from this perspective. I’m not optimistic that there’s a solution that both keeps speech free and protects us from this problem.
Newspapers aren’t allowed to print whatever they want, news networks can’t straight up lie on TV, why are we obsessed with the idea that tech platforms need to be able to wash their hands of everything on their platform.
Maybe we don’t need the web to be full of user submitted content. I remember the early Internet, it was way better than what we have today.
The Great Firewall of China serves the discussion about American social media media platforms only by providing an example of how things could be even worse.