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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

The world worked perfectly before 1982, there is no need for the internet.

(…I actually kind of think this. "Kind of" being the key word.)

God no.

Speaking as someone that communicates primarily through text (high likelihood of Autism) the internet was the first chance a lot of us had to ... speak.. and be heard

That’s not a problem that generalizes to the broader population. We don’t really need internet.

Screw the broader population I can speak now dammit!!!!!

In other words "disabled people can suck it, because I don't care about their lives or experiences"?

We often fall short, but as a society we do try to make sure we're accommodating disabled people when we make big changes in our systems.

Just FTR - I read them as being facetious

Poe's Law applies.

There are far, far too many people who genuinely think disabled people should just disappear or die for it to be "safe" to be facetious about that without a clear sarcasm indicator.

I disagree.

People have a need to be heard and understood. That’s half of what we are doing here posting.

Many (“not disabled”) people don’t fit in with their local peer group / society. The internet gave them a way to connect with other like-minded individuals.

Do I need to give examples? Let’s say: struggling with a rare disease.

But on the other end you have genocide triggered by Facebook. You can't speak if you're dead.

Perhaps some of that violence would have happened anyway. I don't know how it all nets out.

Why couldn't you write letters instead of texting?

I didn't have your mailing address :P

Ah yes, the perfect world we had when governments could get away with anything because the press was not enough to showcase their attrocities. A beautiful, perfect world, with rubella and a global population living in extreme poverty close to 50% (compared to today's 10%).

I see this mentality almost exclusively in americans and/or anglo people in general, it's incredible... if you're not that, I guess you're just too young or completely isolated from reality and I wish you the best in the ongoing western collapse.

(... I actually wish you're joking and I didn't catch it, though).

last sentence in your first paragraph has nothing to do with the current state of the internet and certainly not AI. first sentence? turns out governments can still get away with pretty much anything and propaganda is easier than ever.

> propaganda is easier than ever.

It is so much harder now. There are people who are willfully ignorant now, almost proud to be; snooty about it. But it's impossible for governments and institutions to lie like they used to be able to. People are trading primary source documents online within the day.

It's why the popularity of long-ruling institutional parties is dropping everywhere, and why the measures to stop people from communicating and to monitor what they're saying are becoming more and more draconian and desperate.

beyond irony that you pose as some tech optimist while also mentioning “western collapse” and then speak about a uniquely American pessimism, a nation that is presently under the thumb of a government that does not respect the rule of law and actively manipulates capital/big business.

and you cannot simply hand-wave away the massive acceleration of the surveillance state and characterize it as a tool of the “institutional parties”

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