Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Crackdown on Gab Following Pittsburgh Massacre Proves Need for Alternative Internet Architecture

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, November 2, 2018

Crackdown on Gab Following Pittsburgh Massacre Proves Need for Alternative Internet Architecture

Click here to access article by Robert Bridge from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Our masters are using the Pittsburgh massacre to shut down an ...

ad-free social media service that was/is devoted to “preserving individual liberty, the freedom of speech, and the free flow of information on the internet” – the exact things, incidentally, that the invisible comptrollers of the Internet fear the most – is facing an Internet sanctions regime when it became know that Bowers had posted an anti-Semitic rant over their platform.

I'm wondering if we will see other such social media services and websites shut down because of such incidents, manufactured or not.

The author ends his article with a conclusion that I strongly agree with:

An entirely separate internet architecture needs to be created – pay services, hosting platforms, social media services – that are not bounds by the whims of the ‘free market,’ which as we have learned is not so free after all. In fact, it’s absolutely tyrannical. At the same time, IT companies – made up of men and women who subscribe to their own favorite ideologies, which more often than not are Liberal oriented – are no less susceptible to pursuing political agendas than the government, and to believe for a second they will not take advantage of a tragedy to oust a bothersome competitor from the marketplace would be shortsighted and plain stupid.

Since the internet is currently comprised of two separate and distinct people, from two separate universes, time to act like China and construct an entirely separate internet architecture. Personally, I see no other alternatives.