Hacker News Reader

Comment by iliketosleep | Hacker News Reader

We don't need new regulations. We need the web to be taken out of the hands of gov. and big corps.

It's interesting how the web started off feeling so very utopian. A naive and benevolent world that was built upon trust - and therefore easily taken over when big corps and gov. moved in. We are now galloping towards some kind of dystopia, where one day we'll be nostalgically watching Black Mirror repeats!

Then you have the Darknet, built on distrust and perceived as somewhat malevolent. It may seems dystopian at first, but as the community becomes broader it may actually evolve into the utopia we hoped the web would be - simply because large entities cannot wrest control of it.

View on HN

> We don't need new regulations. We need the web to be taken out of the hands of gov. and big corps.

Anything socially powerful is going to get governments and large corporations all over it, under our current system.

You can build a second ‘net/web, but if it got as big as the current one the same thing would happen.

I’m not exactly a big fan of regulating the Internet either, but I’m fine with regulating the governments and corporations with their claws in it.

Getting regulations right will require significant democratic effort from technogists (beyond just voting), but increasingly it seems like the only way to do it.

The good news is that the mainstream view is gradually coming around to ours (data collection/advertising can present real challenges for freedom, user control over software and devices, ownership and incentives, users should expect E2EE messaging, etc.).

Now is probably the best time in recent history for useful democratic regulation of the Internet (or rather, what you can do to people with it).

> We need the web to be taken out of the hands of gov. and big corps.

Interesting use of the passive voice there. Who exactly is going to take the web out of the hands of gov. and big corps? Technologists?

Technologists have been not only exceptionally ineffective at preventing this dystopia, they've been instrumental in creating it.

If a critical mass of individuals migrate to a network which replicates the key functionality of the web but is designed with privacy and decentralization at the core, I believe it would be safe to say that it's not in the hands of gov, big corps, or any individual.

Like Holo.host?

Likely those who use GPL and other copy-left licenses.

We are the government (at least in the United States)

In theory, maybe. In practice, not so much.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com