A opinionated, non-technological, political, negative and very social justice-ish compilation of:
- Is it safe? The internet is where we could live, love, learn and communicate freely. To be ourselves, we need to be able to trust the systems that protect us.
- How open is it? The internet is transformative because it is open: everyone can participate and innovate. But openness is not guaranteed – it’s always under attack.
- Who is welcome? It’s not just about how many people have access to the internet, but whether that access is safe and meaningful for all of us.
- Who can succeed? Getting online isn’t enough on its own. Everyone needs skills to read, write and participate in the digital world.
- Who controls it? A few large players dominate much of the online world, but the internet is healthier when it is controlled by many.
>Is it safe? The internet is where we could live, love, learn and communicate freely. To be ourselves, we need to be able to trust the systems that protect us.
If the system protects you then you can't be yourself, because invariably these systems that protect people also censor people. Nowadays we hear about it quite often how the people that advocated for hate speech rules online are getting screwed by those same rules.
>The internet is transformative because it is open: everyone can participate and innovate.
Except those we (you) disagree with.
>Who is welcome? It’s not just about how many people have access to the internet, but whether that access is safe and meaningful for all of us.
If you find that it's not welcome, then why not add a place that is welcome for people like yourself?
The most amazing and important thing and the internet is that it lets regular people share things with the world with little interference. Their opinions, thoughts, experiences etc.
I struggle to figure out what they mean by this list. I would normally dismiss it as meaningless pablum, but experience tells me people do take it seriously, and when I try to I'm left frustrated. I can't find a more charitable assessment than very poor communication skills.
For example:
>The internet is where we could live, love, learn and communicate freely. To be ourselves, we need to be able to trust the systems that protect us.
I disagree entirely. Not with the the ideal of course - it's about as positive sounding as possible - but with the word "could." We don't even have this offline, it requires a level of cultural conformity that doesn't exist outside a cult's commune. It's not going to be any easier on the internet, which nullifies the distance between mutually-incompatable cultures.
At this part in the line of thinking, someone tells me to stop being unreasonable, that they represent all the reasonable people's interpretation of "loving and communicating freely," and I'm being too strict in my definition, and I should really scale it back a click. It doesn't mean a cult, it just means a large social group that gets along really well. OK been there, done that. In different groups I've been both an insider, a fringe member, and an outsider. I don't think "live, love, learn and communicating freely" describes a single one of them. It might be easier to get along than randos, but you're either at the core steering the group to keep everything from falling apart with lots of bite marks in your tongue, riding the wave by keeping up with the broadly-acceptable norms you don't mind adopting in the context, or rolling your eyes at how "welcoming" the culture is while obviously incompatible with your own personality.
Then at this next point in the line of thinking, people usually just imply I'm socially defective and incompatible with all the good shit that's going on. But all I see is a bunch of fretting over the good shit not happening correctly.
This "safe" language is the normal Orwellian thin-end-of-the-wedge nonsense; Rude/Unpleasant/Hateful Speech, contrary to all the hand-wavy claims, simply isn't the same as violence.
Who is welcome? Anybody with a computer and an ISP. Note that everybody from white supremacists to the most Left of Left-leaning SJW have a voice.
Also hypocritical. Mozilla should take responsibility for its part in centralization of the online world, being one of those players with control and pushing even more of centralization into its browser.
Could you elaborate on what you mean? Firefox has become ~5% browser i don't understand what "pushing even more centralisation on Firefox" means. It looks to me that currently more firefox users = decentralisation more than centralisation. Do you mean the past when it was major browser?
The web is fundamentally client-server, a naturally centralising model. The problem is less how diverse the clients are, the problem is how few servers we use. You could have a hundred browsers with 1% market share each, it wouldn't prevent us from being Alphabet's puppets.
Technically, most of the online applications we use today don't have to be centralised. Email, social networks, blogs, even videos, could all be hosted on "grandma ready" peer to peer systems. Why they aren't has more to do with how we shaped the market forces. (Market forces didn't come out of thin air. A big centraliser was the political decision to let our bandwidth be asymmetric.)
Firefox even allows you to host your own history/tab syncing, Mozilla had very little choice besides adding these centralised features in order to even attempt to compete with chrome.
It's really weird. Firefox has such a tiny marketshare now where WebKit based browsers dictate what happens.
Also whenever there's any positive news about the browser people always like to bring up pocket, that ARG misstep or how their CEO is a victim (Use brave!!!)
There's some absurd irony here in that the report about the health of the Internet is an omnishambles of the absolute worst practices on the modern internet.
I could not grok the web version. I got headers and those took me to tiles and those took me to blog posts? I was lost. In the end, I downloaded the PDF to read this.
And that's a lie. To start with I had to tell NoScript to allow their third party domain scripts because the content did not work without javascript.
They make some interesting points, but the standard scientific paper format vastly outperforms Web 4.0 routers and widgets for conveying it.
The Doomsday Clock is a joke now. It made sense during the cold war when the threat was clearly identified: a nuclear war between the USA and USSR. It is now a game of finding new unrelated threats to make sure the clock doesn't tick backwards.
We could make the same useless "clock" for the internet, advancing it every time a website is blocked or a new backdoor is discovered. Making sure new threat categories are added when things get better. "Oh, it looks like https is becoming the norm, that's good, make sure to add fake news in the mix to make it look like things are getting worse..."
By comparison, the Dropbox status page provides useful technical information.
A similar page for all of the internet would include things like the states of root DNS servers, tier 1 networks, etc... That could be useful.
I think it would be possible to make a clock that does not rely on judgments as inputs (although has judgements as rules)
You mention a couple
- Status of root DNSServers
But we could come up with more (I suspect around 50 metrics would be comprehensive)
- Ratio of servers reachable by http vs https
- Ratio of servers hosted in countries with mature legal frameworks (needs work)
- Ratio of devices able to reach "representative servers" (ie can your device in beijing reach bbc news and WeChat and Russian newspaper)
- Ratio of devices in areas with "24 hour" electricity supply
- ratio of servers that do not have basic security holes plugged
- ratio of devices that have uptodate security patches
- current volume of DDOS attacks
- Number of successful ransomware attacks per day
- number of networks only reachable through N pipes (ie resilience to network failure)
I would be interested in any thoughts / extras / improvements
"Ratio of servers hosted in countries with mature legal frameworks (needs work)" is one that's pretty hard to measure and has huge capacity to misinform.
The US, UK, Russia, 5 Eyes countries, China, the EU; everyone has a stance on whether they're safe or not.
I think it better to just measure "location diversity", and give a heatmap of server locations (indicating replication and mirrors) so the user can decide for themselves.
> The US, UK, Russia, 5 Eyes countries, China, the EU; everyone has a stance on whether they're safe or not.
It might just be me, but I think it's reasonably clear that some of these places have mature legal frameworks where the rule of law exists (US, UK, EU) and some generally do not (Russia, China, Venezuela). But perhaps I'm mistaken and simply do not understand what a mature legal system is.
>mature legal frameworks where the rule of law exists (US-
whaaaaaa
How is 'recording everything, decrypting everything, targeting persons of interest without warrant or record, extensive networks of informants and agents in all branches of politics, art, and business while bombing people based on their cell phone ping location globally without oversight or any attempt at legal justification'
The United States is 0 privacy, 0 honesty about the actual laws in place, 'fusion centers' completely removing any sane separation of national and regional power or separation of police from military, and 50 TLA's arguing over how best to harass political activists or run criminal gangs themselves. And an entire other spy agency of a different country on the other side of the world allowed to do basically whatever they want in our borders and harvest every ounce of the data of our lives.
That's not a 'mature framework', that is reverting 'civilization' to before the magna carta, much less the geneva conventions.
And since in no case where it was revealed how the government is breaking its own laws and using technology to make an illegal monstrosity out of the internet has the government ever meaningfully been held to account of actually changed, behold what rules you.
Stop pretending something is worth your trust just because there are flags and rotundas and people in suits on the news 24 hours a day and a cultish military junta hasn't completely taken completely over yet, visibly. edit: ...in the united states.
I knew this kind of objection was coming. It was very predictable. Your objection to the massive infringement of basic human rights is morally and ethically completely and absolutely correct in every single possible way.
It's also, for the moment and strictly for the purposes of this particular conversation at hand, irrelevant.
Though I understand if some might choose to believe otherwise for political reasons. The discussion at hand is about overarching legal systems, their general reliability, and how much bearing laws have on what actually happens.
Similarly, one could probably point at some by-the-book handling of a parking ticket in China as proof that it is a nation with rule of law. It would be similarly possessed of opportunity to come into greater alignment with relevance.
I knew someone was going to say I was off topic, what a coincicence.
If human rights are not relevant to the article and thread, then the article and thread are for robots and someone should clearly post that.
If the article does not discuss rights, which to me appear to have completely disappeared and any semblence of them we only have is due to a lot of this generation of TLA officeres not being total monsters
Now we just have to hope Kushner doesn't use his global admin rights to do anything mean. /s
That is the state of the internet, this silent well-born manchild who has chummed with madmen since he was a child has clearance and hooks into everything the nsa scoops up, which is nearly the entire internet, and the entire pollyanna internet.
I agree, mostly because I believe the mixing of environmental catastrophe muddies the waters of both threats when there is value in knowing which is more... urgent at a point in time. Splitting the clock into a human-human clock and a human-globe clock would be more useful I believe.
The threat you mentioned is still there in the shape of an automated nuclear response system. It is just a matter of time until it malfunctions and kills us all.
DRM is more about free listening than free speech.
The existence of DRM does not limit your speech. It does limit what speech you can consume but the author (presumably) wants to be limited in their speech.
The OONI Project tries to map blockades, per as and cc.
> OONI Explorer serves as a resource for researchers, journalists, lawyers, activists, advocates and anyone interested in exploring network anomalies, such as censorship, surveillance and traffic manipulation, and how the internet works in general.
I’m amazed that it’s 2019, and we still haven’t figured out a good way to share interesting content.
The portals worked for a while, then came google and Facebook, and now we have nothing. I mean, if HN stopped how would you find anything interesting on the internet?
Another thing that has failed: journalists. They get sent press releases and do the filtering. Something like 80% of 'news' is PR. But they don't want you leaving their news website. That would be bad for revenue, allegedly.
Imagine a 'newsworthy' story about a budgerigar that can dance to jazz music. The source could be on a website that has all kinds of fascinating stuff about budgerigars. But this you would never know, perhaps you might get a link to the original tweet but that would be it, no link to the website that gave rise to the one thing that went 'viral'.
In the same way you find interesting things in real life. You talk to your friends what they like and collect RSS feeds starting from that nucleus of websites.
I've sugested to Mozilla that unclear labels, vague stock photos, and acres of whitespace are a poor choice of media for conveying a complex, and yes, truly important, story.
I fundamentally disagree with Mozillas notion of "openness". The internet always was open to LGBTQI+ people. The internet does not discriminate. Get an account named X. Done.
Problems only arise when professional activists try to change existing communities. E.g. the new linux kernel code of conduct and it's, let's say "questionable", author.
A lot of the problems came about when sites began mandating "Real Names". People began to assume that online is somehow analogous to real life (it isn't). Combined with the nonsense claim that "hateful/rude/unpleasant speech and violence are the same", we're hurtling down a dangerous path.
Anyone threatening other users here would soon get banned. You surely know that as well as anyone.
Would you please stop upping the inflammation like this in HN comments? You've been doing it a lot, and we've been cutting you a lot of slack because you've been a good contributor over the years, but this is not cool, and I can feel my roll of slack running out. If your taste for ideological warfare is growing, please gratify it elsewhere, not here.
This comment violates numerous site guidelines, including:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
"Eschew flamebait."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
There are women who post to HN but who hide the fact that they're women, because of the attitudes displayed in this thread.
There are a bunch of women who don't post to HN at all.
I'll dial it back a bit, but you need to regain control from the misogynists who are making this place hostile to others. Parent post is literally telling women not to identify as women, yet you didn't say anything to them. Respectfully, you need better aim.
If you're concerned about that, you need to stop pumping aggression into this place, by which you're contributing to making it more hostile and less safe. A war zone can never be safe and welcoming. First stop making HN more of a war zone (which you've done a lot over the years, routinely calling people cunts and all the rest of it—which as I said, we've cut you a ton of slack for when we would have banned others), and we'll be interested in your ideas about how to make HN less hostile to others.
Do you really believe explicit, credible death and/or rape threats for being a woman with opinions on Marvel movies or games or being LGBQ are examples of a non-discriminatory environment?
Internet is a tool to communicate freely and regardless of the message.
Internet isn't "people". If someone harass you with your phone, you don't blame the phone, you blame the harasser. The phone is fine.
The same way journalist and activist are protected.
Should you blame the mailman if he deliver some harassing anonymous letter ? The physical mail offer the same sort of protection if it's done properly.
If someone harassed me with anonymous letters, I would open a police report. The point is that no equivalent recourse exists online.
Edit: The point being that the mailman is a red herring. If the internet is really an extension of public space as (presumably) claimed, let's treat it like one.
I m no expert in that field. Probably better than you think since the police has access to a lot of tools to find you and been an harasser doesn't mean you have the technical skill to be anonymous enougth.
We are now in an endless debate. Internet isn't the problem. Bad behaviours, uneducation, missinformation, fake news, etc are the problem.
Blaming internet won't solve those. And they will be ready for the next tool.
How would it change anything if the harasser did it in the real world? Online there are logs of it, in the real world it'll be you word against theirs.
I am not suggesting that harassment ceases to exist in the real world, I'm saying that it's simply not so cut-and-dry as the parent's comment suggests. An individual's behavior can drastically alter between the physical and virtual world, where social norms and filters can easily be tossed aside.
A true non-discriminatory environment is also an environment of no mercy. All opinions are permitted, even ones you will find incredibly vile and threatening.
So think carefully when you ask for this kind of environment. I think what some people are actually asking for when they say "non-discriminatory" is an environment where people who do not accept minority members or opinions are not welcomed.
Ejecting people for making rape and death threats to other members of the community is not the same as ejecting members of the community for being PoC, LGBTQ, Nazis or Republicans.
Yeah but it is a "anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human" thing. It says nothing of worthiness and everything about possibilities because worthiness is ultimately a matter of opinion.
It is like asking for bullets which only hurt guilty people whom it would be necessary to shoot.
The distinction being action taken towards other members on the one hand (the making of threats) and convictions (being PoC, LGBTQ, Nazi) on the other hand?
What about convictions that compel action (Jihadis, Jehovas, militant atheists, Nazis) it might serve to eject people of those convictions because it should be expected they take those actions.
As somebody who wants to hide every aspect of who I am regardless, I don't find this a particularly compelling argument. I'll admit it's easy for me to say, but I'm less concerned about receiving stateless baseless threats than to have my entire life cataloged and foreseen by surveillance machines.
I suspect this is a big part of the divide between the old guard "nobody knows you're a dog" and the new "broadcast your identity". I turn to the Internet to not be participating in the monkeysphere. Any trace I leave behind is due to laziness rather than intent.
I do have to wonder how much this is just inevitable "normie" human behavior, and how much it has been stoked by companies pushing realname policies and profile selfies.
It's really ironic to see HN posters staking out bold claims about the value of totally "uncensored" platforms...in a thread with dozens of dead, hidden comments, on a message board subject to heavy-handed, arbitrary and unaccountable moderation.
Moderation isn't really censorship IMO, if a comment was deleted that would be censorship. Or, if you were prevented from reading downvoted comments then I would qualify that as censorship as well.
It's subjective in some ways which makes the discussion complicated.
That's a slippery statement to respond to because "remove" can mean a lot of different things. chasd00 used the clearer word "deleted", which is actually precisely what we don't do.
I can think of four removeyish things that happen to comments and threads: (1) downweighting of rank; (2) collapsing by default; (3) killing (marking [dead]); (4) deleting altogether. Moderators and software do the first three. We never do #4, except when the author asks us to, or—exceedingly rarely—when our attorneys tell us we have to (less than half a dozen times in ten years, and we push to avoid it, except one time when an HN user was exposed).
In cases 1, 2, and 3, nothing is deleted. Anybody can still read everything if they want to. They can read #1 by scrolling; #2 by expanding a subthread; #3 by setting "showdead" to "yes" in their profile.
Are those removal? censorship? Sure, if you like—people use those words to express a feeling. But deletion, in the sense of "you used to be able to read something but now you can't", is a question not of feeling but of fact, and the fact is we don't do that.
In case it wasn't clear: I don't have a problem with the moderation on HN. But elsewhere in this same thread we have HN users denouncing Mozilla's good-faith efforts to reduce harassment and fake news on the internet as "censorship", so you'll forgive me for not parsing the narrow distinctions between different varieties of "no longer visible to 99% of users".
I don't think these are narrow distinctions. To see why, try this simple thought experiment: imagine what would happen if we removed the "showdead" option and simply made all dead comments permanently unreadable. There would be a huge uproar in the community—a scandal to end all scandals.
edit: self censoring myself even I'm afraid to say that here
someone is trying to erase the entire history of the events of Tianmnen Square involving Tank Man.
The United States, defending freedom and multicultuarlism supposedly, is recording basically all internet traffic and sharing it with the most racist country in the world while they create hordes of refugees due to their never-allowed-to-be-spoken plans for aggressive expansion in violation of the very United Nations that created them.
Processors will be made in this country and shipped all over the world. Routers, microwaves, all phones, plagued with endemic backdoors. Auditing capacity is overwhelmed and results seldom in any changes, see iratemonk seagate events.
Social media has basically given TPTB the easy capability to harass and interfere with all of the next generation of anything, while placing their agents in 'key positions' all over the place.
It's a bad situation, the real internet is not the public one anymore. Power exists, and the physical structure of power is, as always, hard at work trying to regulate the ideological structures.
Make us forget Tiananmen, and who knows what else we'll forget.
Wasn't there something that happened in Las Vegas a few monthyears ago? hmmmmmmmmm
The internet is being used, successfully, to attack the human mind on a global scale and the people with the most money are doing it while a bunch of really bright people think they are just solving math problems and making good money.
The situation is bad, I don't need algorighms and network maps to tell me that. The internet has lost China and Russia, and is running away from The United States of America.
It only "does the same thing" if you consider the Mozilla foundation to be the moral equivalent of the authoritarian regime ruling China. I submit that most reasonable observers would not.
I yearn for a day when Mozilla approached tractable problems with practical solutions, like improving their web browser, or integrating new fancy technology like RSS, or making people feel welcome the old fashioned way on the bug tracker and the IRC.
It's no wonder that Brendan Eich's new browser is Chromium based. ;- )
- Is it safe? The internet is where we could live, love, learn and communicate freely. To be ourselves, we need to be able to trust the systems that protect us.
- How open is it? The internet is transformative because it is open: everyone can participate and innovate. But openness is not guaranteed – it’s always under attack.
- Who is welcome? It’s not just about how many people have access to the internet, but whether that access is safe and meaningful for all of us.
- Who can succeed? Getting online isn’t enough on its own. Everyone needs skills to read, write and participate in the digital world.
- Who controls it? A few large players dominate much of the online world, but the internet is healthier when it is controlled by many.