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Comment by dominotw | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone concerned that we are starting to replicate real world boundaries on the internet.

Internet was supposed to free us from the limitations of the real world. World of internet was supposed to be the one where you can fluidly switch between your preceptions of self, become a new person whenever you felt like, leave your past behind. This was supposed to be a new world where people see themselves differently.

Now we have created countries on internet. Transferred our real world identity onto internet. Masses were rushed into the internet before they were ready, before they got the concept of what internet means psychologically. Now we vast bureaucracies ruling the internet, so depressing. Depressing to see ppl on HN saying "Good" to every GDPR news. Sad to see internet age squashed by beurocracies right when it was getting started.

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The story of mankind, I'm afraid. A few people find a neat little spot where they can hang out, and for a while things are great, everything is pretty cool. Then, sooner or later, the group gets Too Big. Not so cool stuff starts happening, and where formerly you had a small anarchic group that worked with mutual understanding and (unspoken) agreements, now you have a need for Laws and Enforcement and Bureaucracy.

Every beautiful place on Earth will sooner or later be exploited for mass tourism and marketing. If you ever find such a place, keep it a secret, to keep it intact.

It’s a known pattern of subcultures. See Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution:

https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

We haven't "created countries on the Internet". The Internet exists in the real world, and it exists in countries. Those countries have laws, and they always applied. Governments can take time to adopt to new technologies, but this was always going to happen.

And GDPR is an awesome thing, it's an example of governments doing the right thing.

> We haven't "created countries on the Internet".

We have though. Your world on the internet looks different based on citizenship( ipAdress) and ppl have to get a visa (VPN) to go that country on the internet.

People hated it when China did this but somehow EU doing this is somehow commendable. Now people are europeans, americans, indians ect on the internet. I just want to be a human being.

> Your world on the internet looks different based on citizenship( ipAdress)

But this started long before government intervention ("personalization", "regional content"), and it is not the fault of the EU that tech companies pursued behaviors that were against the spirit of the laws. There are two ways for tech to respond to the multigovernment problem: conform to all of the laws throughout the world, or "create countries on the internet". As is evident now, most companies chose the latter

I didn't hate it when China did it just because they implemented national regulation. The deciding matter is what is regulated and how.

> Now people are europeans, americans, indians ect on the internet. I just want to be a human being.

Then let's put people in power that uphold international law and treaties, and empower international bodies.

I feel like you need to explain how China's great firewall (I assume this is what you referenced) is the same as the GDPR?

One prevents people in China from accessing stuff the government doesn't like, the other prevents companies from treating your data like shit.

> Your world on the internet looks different based on citizenship

Yes, my world on the Internet looks a hell of a lot better than the Internet as seen from the US.

If you follow the money, they are similar. Both make it harder for the incumbent, US based monopolies to compete with home-grown services.

Also, they both massively break the “end-to-end” principle, since your geographic location (and therefore ISP) has a big impact on what data gets served.

(The differences between the two are arguably more important, but they are obvious, and have been discussed to death, so I won’t bother pointing them out)

How is it harder for a US based company to comply with GDPR than a EU based company?

There is no breakage of the end-to-end principle either. EU can only legislate in their own region, so they can't enforce GDPR outside of EU. A company thqt is GDPR compliant for every user doesn't have to check the IP at all. Any differences stem only from the companies will to keep abusing users data in the rest of the world.

> Yes, my world on the Internet looks a hell of a lot better than the Internet as seen from the US.

Internet in rest of world is fine. Atleast our govt doesn't record our porn watching activities via unknown third parties.

Huh? Maybe I've misunderstood you, but porn laws in EU are quite a bit more liberal compared to US. And authorities are also subject to GDPR.

He's probably referring to the UK, specifically.

Only via the NSA :)

generating a page based on geoLocation didn't start with GDPR. I've been fighting (often US) sites making "choices" for me based on geoLocation for a decade.

> ppl have to get a visa (VPN) to go that country on the internet

That has always been the case for people on "third-world" countries. Hulu, YouTube (the publisher of this content has not made it available in your country), and even stuff more tangible as Amazon.

Now you're just catching up with what the internet has been like for basically everyone outside the US and Western Europe since ever.

It comes down to one thing: Money.

The older internet was not a network of for-profit users trying to rent-seek on every digital interface & every page view. Standards were created by academics, internet committees, and concerned & involved users, trying to figure out what would work best as a resilient distributed system.

Now what goes on online is defined by the rent-seekers, the data pimps, and the predators. Their actions have real-world, legal consequences which ruin it for everybody, and their size & clout overwhelms the decisions of average people.

There's a really good piece [1] by David Chapman on how subcultures grow, from creators to fanatics to mops to sociopaths, which ultimately results in their death. Your comment made me realize that the Web is currently well in the "sociopath" phase. I wonder whether any of his suggested remedies can be applied to save the Web from death.

[1] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

I don't follow your idea of the internet. The internet is a faster, cheaper, immaterial postal system. Of course there are legal frameworks and national borders in it.

I feel freer now companies are limited with what they can do with my data.

I hope that preventing companies exploiting data will lead to more interesting business models than "provide distracting trinket and harvest data".

I don't want to take part in a grand age of the Internet which basically amounts to people harvesting information about me so they can do anything from trying to sell me shit to attempting to corrupt the democratic process.

Aren't you basically adimitting that you are

1. distracted by 'trinkets'

2. Expose your personal information in exchange for trinkets

3. Prone to buying 'shit' on the internet

4. naive to fall for fake news

5. Govt needs to step in and take charge to create "more interesting business models"

It's true for everyone to a greater or lesser extent. That's why ads and data abuse are the dominant business model on the Internet.

This comment breaks the HN guideline which asks:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

That's a form of crossing into incivility, and it leads to much worse (as seen below). Could you please not post like that here?

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

No, you fucking moron.

Please don't violate the site rules like this, regardless of how wrong and/or provocative another comment is. It just makes the thread even worse, and obviously we have to ban accounts that do it repeatedly.

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

Sorry Dan, it was a comment born of a lack of time, frustration and lack of judgement. I'll try to respond better in the future.

Appreciated!

Its been that way since day one.

The FBI can clobber your .com domain if you infringe US law, even if both you and your server are located in places it would be perfectly legal.

> World of internet was supposed to be the one where you can fluidly switch between your preceptions of self, become a new person whenever you felt like, leave your past behind. This was supposed to be a new world where people see themselves differently.

Since when? The Internet was designed to be a robust way for Americans to communicate in the event of a nuclear attack.

Apparently that's a myth, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET#Debate_on_design_goals

I've also read about it in the book "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet". In the prologue it mentions:

“Rumors had persisted for years that the ARPANET had been built to protect national security in the face of a nuclear attack. It was a myth that had gone unchallenged long enough to become widely accepted as fact.”

“Lately, the mainstream press had picked up the grim myth of a nuclear survival scenario and had presented it as an established truth. When Time magazine committed the error, Taylor wrote a letter to the editor, but the magazine didn’t print it. The effort to set the record straight was like chasing the wind; [Bob] Taylor was beginning to feel like a crank.”

Some other sources seem to confirm this, e.g. http://www.alphr.com/features/369490/top-ten-internet-histor...

I see that you are one of the privileged, who didn't have to constantly deal with "this is not available in your country" messages.

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