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Comment by nexthash | Hacker News Reader

What makes you think the future will be so dystopian? In Western countries such as the United States citizens have a high level of political participation and awareness of various issues. If the government attempts to unilaterally throttle the Internet there will be such a large uproar that our political leaders will be overturned on the next election. Plus, the newly voted-in Democratic leadership has a policy of advocating for the freedom of the web. So your fears of a dystopian, throttled Internet seem unfounded to me.

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I'm not sure what makes you believe this. The voter turnout for the 2020 election was merely 62%, and that was a record high. American voters being more aware of various issues is another myth. Look at how quickly a politician that straight up denied facts made it to the highest office in the land.

Political leaders in the US are not really all that beholden to their voters, and very frequently strive to push self-serving agendas ($) over the needs of the public.

As dystopian as it sounds, we're already well on our way toward the Balkanization of the internet. Russia and China have their own firewalls bearing down on global network access. Many other authoritarian countries are following suit. It's going to be hard to stop that train regardless of if/how Facebook or Google are regulated.

We shouldn't confuse a throttled Internet with a fractured, balkanized one.

People do nothing as long as they have their cheetos and xbox near by.

Hey, those are my weekend plans you're talking about!

I've yet to see a strong political movement on something that actually matters. Everything is half-assed and the major movements all fail. Look at Bernie, the Wall Street bailout, China buying out our mortgages, the war on: Iraq, Afghanistan. And these are just recent memory. The will of the American people has been long controlled. Now they only care what the oligarchs tell them to like unions, universal healthcare, living wages, parental leave, a free internet are either un-capitalistic or communistic.

I am an American, and I don't feel like my will is being controlled... It is important to understand that everybody has a unique life situation and makes their own choices. Elon Musk hasn't been able to implant Neuralinks in our heads yet. I think the rebuke of Donald Trump in swing states like Georgia really shows that any attempt by an established group to clutch onto power is always going to be a gamble. It took the collective will of the people and real grassroots effort to overcome the obstacles elites put up there.

What I mean is that things are really out of our control. The government decided to move manufacturing out and there was nothing we were able to do about it. Colleges decided to raise their prices to obscene levels and there was really nothing we could do about it. The banks did whatever they wanted, we bailed them out and we really didn't have any say in the matter. The healthcare industry keeps charging us the highest prices in the world and we do nothing about it. The list goes on and on.

Trump's only real selling point was "I'm not the establishment". People rejected him for all kinds of reasons, but "disrupt the entrenched power" wasn't one of them.

Plus, the newly voted-in Democratic leadership has a policy of advocating for the freedom of the web.

Biden is pro-MPAA/RIAA.

https://www.cnet.com/news/joe-bidens-pro-riaa-pro-fbi-tech-v...

http://techrights.org/2020/11/09/biden-riaa-and-mpaa/

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