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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

Starting to wonder how much the global takeoff of the Internet and specifically the WWW was due to the "end of history" period from 1989-2001, when there wasn't significant conflict between major powers. I suspect the spillover from this will be increasing Balkanisation of the Internet simply in order to limit the extent to which it's a cyberwarfare or propaganda battlefield.

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> limit the extent to which it's a cyberwarfare or propaganda battlefield.

This was already done years ago by concentrating "the internet" and limiting it to a few companies with ban-hammers ready.

What once used to be many many different personal webpages, blogs, forums, chat sites (and protocols), is now basically limited to facebook (facebook, whatsapp, instagram), twitter and google (plus some outliers, such as telegram). Even with the mainstream news services, a huge percentage of people read that (MSM) news on sites like facebook and twitter (or atleast get linked from there).

Other countries have their own bundles of services (wechat in china, yandex+vk in russia, etc.)

So basically from a million different sources, pages, social groups, we've gone down to single digits per language group... and all of them can be monitored and censored by a few individuals with few agendas.

This feels more like a thing that "just happened" rather than something that was intentionally done.

Blogs and such are still there, they just take an much work as they always have. And the centralized sites don't require nearly as much intentionality.

> rather than something that was intentionally done

Normal users cannot even put a link into an instagram post (pointing to whatever external site).... it seems pretty intentional to me (to keep you on their platform)

Intentionally done .. as an anti-spam measure. It's also there to limit the extent to which Instagram is part of OnlyFans customer acquisition.

As someone who lived through it, I don't think decentrafans really appreciate that we had decentralised services and spam turned them into unusable wastelands.

AI makes this worse, not better: the chance that a random site which looks like an interesting personal blog or small forum is a disguised sales op increases.

> Intentionally done .. as an anti-spam measure

Instagram is one of those sites, where all the content you see is either content from people you actually follow (so, friends & family, and not actual spammers), or is actual spam from instagram itself (instagram ads), where links (to advertised products) are of course allowed.

So yeah... only people who'd get the onlyfans links (or whatever other non-instagram-ad spam) would be the people actually following the onlyfans "creator" (or whatever other spammer), and those probably already know the onlyfans link too.

There's been a push since 1997 at least to have gatekeepers added to the Internet.

All kinds of politicians, international and national, including Hillary Clinton (senator and Secretary of State, 3rd or 4th in line to the Presidency) have been saying for 20 years they want gatekeepers.

There were laws passed that specifically enabled consolidation and centralization.

You figure that congress and the senate "just happened" to pass those laws?

Personal webpages and blogs still very much exist, though. I started one recently and I'm positive it gets more traffic than it would if I started it 20 years ago. I don't think censorship is the issue so much as the fact that many more people hopped on the internet and are more interested in social media than small blogs, even though they coexist.

The takeoff of the Internet was mainly because nobody was paying attention to it and it became a new frontier - literally - and was very wild-west for a time. That time is ending.

uhm... kosovo, congo, rwanda???

Fucking massive genocides happen in the 90s.

But if youre solely talking about cyber war -- ESCHELON, CARNIVOR I mean cyber war was super deep... NSA was requiring backdoor access to all routers as early as 1995... and not only that Cerberos group bought MAE-West in San jose and PAIX in palo alto to spy on everyone... I know a lot about these spying ops.

The OP said major western powers.

who the heck western power do you think i was talking about???

You weren't, so your post didn't make sense - as it was off topic.

no, you just have poor understanding of historical-geo-political events...

no insult intended.

You haven't explained how the countries you mentioned were Western powers.

kosovo, congo, rwanda are not major western powers.

No, I was talking about how western powers exploited and exacerbated the controversy and pain in those countries... and by western powers I am talking about the CIA mainly... [The state department]

Source, multiple family members in the state department in the past....

for reference from head of the state department at the time:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/06/19/flashback...

Get it?

No, because you missed the point of the post you were responding to. They were clearly talking about the effect of conflict between major powers.

Huge genocides are horrific tragedies but did not effect the development of technology like wartime did.

>>when there wasn't significant conflict between major powers.

im talking to this point as there were massive proxy-wars/conflagration of conflict in that time period mentioned...

But to your point ;; "did not affect development of technology"

welp ;; surveillance tech has been massively successfully developed DURING that period

Its fine to talk to that point, I dont even disagree, but it had nothing to do with the point being discussed. Anyway, god speed to you.

Cheers!!! <3

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