The future of the internet

[Sicklick]

Starting in 2016, the internet has not been the same. First Obama sold ICANN to the UN. Then in 2017 following the rally in Charlottesville, the precedent was set that registrars can now refuse to host a website if they disagree with it's content. It took the Daily Stormer 6 months to find a host after Amy Siskind bitched to go daddy on Twitter over a dead landwhale. Nowadays, if you're not somebody like Anglin or Weev who have an endless supply of technical skill and know-how, lots of money and live in some 3rd world country where they can't do nothing about it, you're in bad company because hosting a wrongthink website on the clearnet nowadays is risky. First you're gonna have to find a host (usually it would be a small non-English speaking registrar or the manager of a certain country-specific top-level domain, like the .SU TLD, that are mostly immune to bad PR), then you're gonna need to constantly defend your site from attack and pay countless money in server fees since CloudFlare will drop you in seconds, then you have the risk that anybody with a little bit of money can do a DNS lookup and see who the website is registered to, so then your identity will become public and then you'll need to worry about being constantly harassed and your family being constantly harassed, sued into nonexistence or even assaulted.

But even then, ICANN has always been a neutral entity, and any domain censorship has only occurred at the hands of individual registrars. Until now, that is.

UN Counter-Terrorism is taking down websites without all the previous red tape. No more need for “anti-bad” activists to infiltrate, leak, or write articles to pressure ISPs. The UN now directs registrars to pull your domain / DNS for wrongthink. This is convenient for them, because it’s out of the registrar’s hands and you can’t appeal to the UN.

As for social media, we've been completely scrubbed from that too. Following Unite the Right, Google rolled out it's largest ever crackdown on so-called "extremist content" that same week, with Jared Taylor's video "Race Differences In Intelligence" getting put in a limited state first. And it's not just alt-righters who are affected by this new algorithm (which the ADL was involved with IIRC), but even non-political content is getting automatically flagged and demonetized too. Prior, content had to manually flagged for removal.

And you could say to use Tor, but Tor is not safe either. Look at all the hidden marketplace shutdowns that have happened recently and the fact that it relies on a centralized database of server nodes. Plus it can be DDOS'd just like the normal internet, and it happens all the time on there. Btw, DDOS is just sending so many requests that the server gets overloaded. So pretty much anything you can connect to you can DDOS (or try to), except for CJDNS because it takes more resources to send data than to relay data. But other than that, no network technology is immune to DDOS.

 

[NigKid]

since CloudFlare will drop you in seconds

cloudflare has been pretty good in that regard. to some degree they actually still give a fuck about freedom of speech

 

[Sicklick]

cloudflare has been pretty good in that regard. to some degree they actually still give a fuck about freedom of speech

What about the Daily Stormer and 8kun? And not only that, but even if you do have a good dev team running a website, like Bitchute, it's not immune to other forms of deplatforming either. Take for example harassment campaigns from groups like Hope Not Hate, which they almost bent into the pressure to and then you have the fact that their payment processors were cut off by PayPal and all the others, so now they have to accept donations through Bitcoin. And speaking of which, Bitcoin in itself isn't anonymous, because you now have Twitter accounts that track Nazi Bitcoin transactions, so you would need to use an anonymizer like Monero, since Ethereum is trash.

In 2018, you had the adpocalypse when Tumblr freaked out and deleted fucking everything after advertisers threatened to pull out due to CP on the platform. Then 4chan split into two different sites by Hiroyuki due to some of it's boards (think /pol/) not being too "advertiser-friendly." In fact, one of the reasons YouTube introduced their new algorithm was because advertisers didn't want to be making money off of racist content on the site. 99% of advertisers won't even do business with politically incorrect content anyways, so this has left some websites, namely BestGore and American Rensaissance, to flood their websites with all kinds of porno ads and ads that give you viruses, not only because they make the most money, but also because they simply can't find any better ones, and even then it still doesn't cover the costs of keeping the website up. So the internet has become television now.

 

[Billy Beer]

The internet will soon go the way of the radio and the TV; it will be a background device used to carry out a function and the 'Next Big Thing' technology wise will replace it. It should have happened by now, but something has caused technological advances to grind to a halt, respective of timelines.

According to the sci-fi films it will be a VR or headset kind of device. I'm not joking when i say sci-fi films, they always accurately predict the future of tech because we imagine the future for media, then make it happen because 'future film/tv show' was cool.

Some may say VR will never be a big thing because of how detatched it makes us. Ever seen a room full of people sat behind perspex covid screens, all sat on their phones while ignoring one another? Slapping a headset on doesnt seem too far fetched.

 

[MrTroll]

Then in 2017 following the rally in Charlottesville, the precedent was set that registrars can now refuse to host a website if they disagree with it's content.

They could always do that, and have.

Here is what has changed: all you retards moved from independently-run blogs, chatrooms, and forums (like this site) to social media out of laziness, inertia, lack of technical ability, cheapness, or just plain convenience, and you're unhappy that if you want to play in their sandboxes you have to play by their rules.

People who complain about this stuff are losers and incompetents who deserve to be driven off the internet.

 

[Null]

What about the Daily Stormer and 8kun?

Anglin said something really stupid about Cloudflare and 8chan had Tarrant, which was pretty hard to explain away because 8/pol/ was just hardcore neonazi shit. ffagggettttss ran it and he would ban anyone who even questioned an explicitly pro-fascist perspective.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

I’m more shocked as to how fast more alternative websites and obscure websites based on niches have been largely and noticeably driven away due to the huge influence of corporate and bought and paid for media.

 

[PeggieBigCock]

Free thought and uncensored discussion is unfortunately going to be attacked until we have had enough and shirk the leagues of dregs that uphold our shitty modern conformity. Welcome to the new world order.

 

[seri0us]

and ads that give you viruses

dude, stop clicking on them and then running the download of "[latest show here].exe"

 

[AmpleApricots]

Some may say VR will never be a big thing because of how detatched it makes us. Ever seen a room full of people sat behind perspex covid screens, all sat on their phones while ignoring one another? Slapping a headset on doesnt seem too far fetched.

I've seen so many iterations of VR complete with people saying "yeah the last iteration was shit because we didn't have the technology, but NOW.." that I lost count. It's not gonna happen as long as the interface is impractical. We're bipeds with (ideally) two arms, two hands, and 10 fingers. Look at computer input devices from the 70s and 80s, and earlier "mechanized and electronic writing devices". ( e.g. typewriters) Look at computer input devices now on amazon. Not a lot has really changed since they're ideal for what we are and we're the limit, not the technology. As long as there isn't some crazy interface you plug into your brain where you have to just think it to make it happen that won't really change and even that probably will not be very ergonomic because it will just not be very good for our primate processing, we just don't evolve like that. Many people already can't handle the information stream now properly.

When we talk about SciFi, I think it'll be AI, the big game changer. People live in filter bubbles now, think of filter bubbles of one where people basically just interact with their artifical personal assistant(s) that'll always be agreeable and compliant and eventually also engaging. (while whispering sweet nothings into your ear as decreed by the corporate overlords that run it) It'll also be amazing at censoring and controlling every interaction everywhere. ("Oopsie whoopise, my apologizes but what you wrote we think would not be a productive contribution to this forum and you seem to have become a victim to misinformation. Here are some facts about [topic]. We can also talk about it if you like.") That'll be the real thing that'll nuke the internet for good. I hope they'll gravely misjudge it and the AI tool actually ends up turning against them but that's just a weird dream of an old man.

 

[stares at error messages]

You are right the Internet is dying. But society is too, so "Please wait patiently for the failure of the system." and Get out now while you still can.

 

[Billy Beer]

I've seen so many iterations of VR complete with people saying "yeah the last iteration was shit because we didn't have the technology, but NOW.." that I lost count. It's not gonna happen as long as the interface is impractical. We're bipeds with (ideally) two arms, two hands, and 10 fingers. Look at computer input devices from the 70s and 80s, and earlier "mechanized and electronic writing devices". ( e.g. typewriters) Look at computer input devices now on amazon. Not a lot has really changed since they're ideal for what we are and we're the limit, not the technology. As long as there isn't some crazy interface you plug into your brain where you have to just think it to make it happen that won't really change and even that probably will not be very ergonomic because it will just not be very good for our primate processing, we just don't evolve like that. Many people already can't handle the information stream now properly.

What you've described is a point i see raised often about VR, but it doesn't fit in to the future of technology. VR isn't going to be some overly complicated tool, or used as an overly complicated tool in an office of proffesional environment, at least not until it's more like Google Glasses.
Look at a smart phone, even though there's no physical helmet, people lose all of their sense of awareness, including hearing and sight outside of the phone. They lose their sense of perception and physical location in the world. The difference between a smart phone and a VR headset, is the headset, and when that's reduced down to a visor, it will take over the world.
As for input commands, how many buttons does a smart phone have? volume, power and screen. Yet we can carry out a multitude of tasks with them.
When it comes to gaming, the tech will always improve, and I believe we're at a place where the tech is usable and pretty decent. With the next generation of headsets coming next year with the PSVR2, which will kick the rest of the competition up the arse, it will only get better. VR in gaming is just a fancy screen that adds more immersion. There's no need for a new control system really, even though many will be and have been tried.

While I agree with most of your points, I don't agree that we're at a place where VR can be written off, ignored or pass-off as the tech not been ready. It has never been more ready, and will be continued to be refined over the decades. But like with all tech, it only takes 1 idea, 1 concept, 1 device change to blow the lid off of what is possible. Hell, we had mobile phones for nigh on 30 years before the first smart phone, and we had palm pilots and wrist computers running along side phones. Yet the Iphone, that one design change, didn't just change phones, or personal computing, it changed everything; from website layout, to how we connect and interact to how we accomplish tasks, share information etc etc.

Vr is just waiting for the 'Iphone' moment

 

[Never Scored]

When film was a new medium, film makers had the creative freedom to put pretty much whatever they wanted in their films provided it did not run afoul of local laws. Religious zealots took exception to the content of many films and demanded widespread state-censorship. The industry was weary of state-censorship and so the Hays Code was later adopted as a means of self-censorship, avoiding state-censorship. Many films that predated the enforcement of the code such as The Sign of the Cross had scenes cut from the original negatives in order to comply with the code.

The Internet is undergoing a similar process. Tech companies are practicing self-censorship because they are afraid of state-censorship. In 100 years the moral outrages of today over content on the internet will seem just as quaint as the ones that led to the establishment of the Hays Code.

I think the process goes something like this:

1) New medium with huge amount of freedom
For pre-code Hollyword theatre-types is was a huge amount of artistic freedom. For the early libertarian leaning internet nerds it was access to free and open discussion and fliez.

2) Desire for monitization leads to corporations marketing it to the masses
For Hollywood this is where you get the wide-distribution of paint by number Westerns in the 20s and 30s. For the internet it's a 2007ish timeframe when things like smartphones and easy to use social media platforms started to take off.

3) Mass adoption leads to clash between people who originally loved medium due to freedom it presented and a percentage of masses who find that level of freedom offensive
A percentage people found the way weird creative theatre types that were the first film makers used their freedom offensive, arguing it lead to disrespect of authrity figures and sexual promiscuity. A percentage of people find the free speech absolutism of early libertarian Internet nerds offensive and say it leads to hate crime.

4) Medium is censored by those who originally monitized it in the interest of making money
The ones who originally monitized the medium are rich now and have a huge amount of power over it.

Like early sound-era Hollywood, you will never get wild-west Internet back. It's a corporate machine now. However, I do think the bar for what's offensive will move again just like it did for Hollywood, and some things that are maybe bannable now won't be in 20 years, and in 20 years things that are OK to say now will probably be bannable.

All that being said, if you're someone who likes unfettered free speech, you will get completely nuked off the clearnet sometime in the next decade. There will always be something the masses find morally offensive and a corporate Internet will continue to bow to them. All that being said, I don't think you and six other guys saying nigger over a private Jabber server in your basement will ever be censored, just like no one censors what you say in texts or phone calls. The resources required to police what people say in private just don't exist on the planet earth. Yes, I realize some companies put in word filters for private messages and you can be reported and banned for an offensive private message. That's not the same thing as combing through every private message over every medium between consenting individuals for offensive content.

 

[Kosher Dill]

The resources required to police what people say in private just don't exist on the planet earth.

China wants to have a word with you.
Back in the worst days of Mao, people would literally sit around in silence in their own homes, for fear of someone informing on them. And of course that didn't require a single computer or even electricity or food and water.

 

[Never Scored]

China wants to have a word with you.
Back in the worst days of Mao, people would literally sit around in silence in their own homes, for fear of someone informing on them. And of course that didn't require a single computer or even electricity or food and water.

1) That cannot possibly work on a planetary scale. There are specific cultural and demographic factors at play that allows that kind of thing to work in the countries it works in.

2) You only hear about dissidents they catch.

 

[Kosher Dill]

There are specific cultural and demographic factors at play that allows that kind of thing to work.

Not really. I chose the most dramatic example, but you can find examples of this sort of thing working (at the city scale) in cultures such as pre-Revolutionary Paris, ancient Rome, and many others. All you have to do is create enough of a perception of risk surrounding speaking out - privately or publicly - that people prefer to shut up. It doesn't even require the mass mobilizations of Maoist China or East Germany (where approximately 1% of the population were Stasi informers). The Parisian police of the Ancien Regime successfully cultivated a reputation for omnipresence despite being approximately the same relative size as a modern-day American police force.

You only hear about dissidents they catch.

Yes, but you also never hear about the people who never became dissidents because they just decided to shut up and endure in silence.
Realistically there will always be ways for people to be dissidents if they really want to, but the authorities have a lot of power to make those ways inconvenient. And as we've seen from being here, even little inconveniences add up.

 

[Never Scored]

Realistically there will always be ways for people to be dissidents if they really want to, but the authorities have a lot of power to make those ways inconvenient.

Well, I mean, this is kind of what I argued would happen with the Internet the first place, is it not?

 

[Cyberia Enjoyer]

Free thought and uncensored discussion is unfortunately going to be attacked until we have had enough and shirk the leagues of dregs that uphold our shitty modern conformity. Welcome to the new world order.

>Make normies believe that small internet forums are hate-festering grounds and need to be shut down
>Forces people onto deepweb sites so they can express their views
>Actually get radicalised and thus it becomes an uncontrolled hate-festering grounds.

There's a reason why prohibition has almost never been effective, ESPECIALLY ON THE INTERNET.

 

[Coolio55]

Mini Necro but I'm personally expecting the day that normal computers require licences and only ipad/iphone style devices will be approved for your average person outside a licenced business.
I'm also expecting the day that SD Cards and Hard Drives are licenced in a similar manner.

 

[P.0.0.P]

Meanwhile, all the stupidity the world economic forum has been mentioning was that pretty soon, we could be mired in a great global blackout, which would not only involve nuclear power, gas, operations, production, etc. But also electric power cutting the internet worldwide for a great season of time. We know perfectly this is part of a massive evil plan where they will just create a "new" era of internet,. I know it will sound crazy but I feel that we will live in a type of dystopia where under massive control they will control not only the internet and the information found in it, but also our bodies and lives that will already be connected to them. Keep in mind, they are trying to make an era where internet will just be an "extension" of our bodies, with all these scammy metaverse and neuralink plans. Sci-fi movies are technically becoming predictive programming content to prepare us for what comes next. Anyway... Lets see what happens in 2022...