For long people have had the notion that the internet is like this uncontrollable wilderness, a lawless wild west and anarchist paradise, where there may be minuscule towns with their own laws, but no over-reaching authority or government that could impose its will on everybody and, for example, punish and censor people for expressing the "wrong" opinions. No single entity can remove something from the internet forever, from every corner of it, from every server.
This is true... to an extent. To an increasingly limited extent. To an extent that's becoming narrower and narrower by the day.
Yes, sure, no single entity can drive something or someone off the internet... but what happens when the majority of the corporations responsible for running the internet and its multitude of services start colluding to get something or someone censored?
The fact is, if you want to publish something on the internet, you need a server that's connected to the internet. Even if you have your own server, you still need an internet connection. A connection that's provided by some big megacorporation. (And even if you get one from a much smaller company, that small company will itself be paying to a much larger corporation for internet access. It's very hard, and expensive, to have an internet server connected to the internet in such a manner that it doesn't go through the servers of some megacorporation. Essentially you would need a so-called Tier 1 Network connection, which is economically and logistically unfeasible for the average person, and essentially feasible only to large tech corporations. It's the "top tier" of internet protocol networks that does not depend on any other corporation nor its servers, nor has to pay anybody for the service.)
So what happens when the company you are renting a server from, or the internet service provider company that provides you with access to the internet, decides that they no longer want you as their client, because they don't like what you are publishing?
Currently, especially in the United States (where the vast majority of internet corporations reside), there is no recourse. They can deny you service at any moment, for any reason, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Ok, find some ISP in some other country, like Russia, where they don't give a flying fuck what you publish on the internet? Surely these Silicon Valley tech corporations can't censor that? There are Tier 1 networks there, and there's nothing they can do to block those?
Except they still can. There are many things they can do.
For one, banking and funding services like PayPal and Patreon can deny you their services, especially if what you are running is some kind of company yourself, but even if you are just an individual. Likewise credit card companies can deny you their services. Suddenly you may find yourself in a situation where you are denied banking services, and nobody can fund you, and you can do no financial transactions.
The above is not just a hypothetical. It's actually happening, in real life. There are already several examples of exactly that.
But ok, no big deal, you don't need funding from anybody. You work and you get your own livelihood, and you can maintain your website without extra money, and your work is safe from attacks and doxing attempts, so nobody can take it away from you. You should be safe, right?
Nope. The resources of the big internet megacorporations don't end there.
You see, they might not be able to remove your content completely off the internet, but they can stop anybody that uses their services from seeing it, or even having access to it.
The biggest search engines (most prominently Google, but also the other big ones) can censor all of your content so that it never appears on their site. Moreover, service providers can configure their DNS servers to completely block the server that contains your stuff. In fact, they can configure their main routers so that they block access to that server even using a raw IP address. Which means that nobody that uses the services of that company can access the server, even with a direct IP address.
(There have been many situations where ISP routers have been accidentally configured, or somehow become corrupted or the like, in such a manner that certain IP addresses become completely inaccessible through their servers. IP packets are simply not routed to the correct address and they just stop at the router. You simply cannot connect to that server, even with a raw IP address. I have actually witnessed this first-hand. It was a completely innocuous site, and the situation was some kind of configuration error by one of the major Tier 1 service providers here in Finland. While this is usually some kind of error or mistake, which gets fixed when it's found out, nothing stops a service provider from deliberately blocking certain IP addresses so they become completely inaccessible.)
A website can become completely invisible and inaccessible to the regular user this way. It can become inaccessible even if you know the site and have its IP address.
Using a VPN or a Tor browser could ostensibly bypass this kind of IP blocking (because you are essentially connecting to some other service provider elsewhere in the world in a manner that your own ISP can't see nor control because of encryption), but the average person does not have the knowledge nor really the motivation to do so.
Most importantly, the average person will never stumble across that content eg. by browsing the internet or doing Google searches. (Even if by pure chance they happen to end in a website that contains a link to that other content, the link will simply be broken from this user's perspective and just return a 404 or similar code to the user.) To the vast majority of people it will be exactly as if that site doesn't exist at all.
All this isn't just hypothetical and fear-mongering. It's happening right now. Websites that openly support free speech, such as gab.com, are being denied service (both ISPs and PayPal are denying their services to them). People with the "wrong" opinions are being banned from social media platforms, and ISPs are refusing to offer them internet connections. Government after government, very much including the EU, rather than oppose this, are actively encouraging this and in fact pushing for laws to enforce this.
Internet censorship is real, they want to suppress free speech, and it's the megacorporations who are engaging in it, with the blessings of governments.
This is true... to an extent. To an increasingly limited extent. To an extent that's becoming narrower and narrower by the day.
Yes, sure, no single entity can drive something or someone off the internet... but what happens when the majority of the corporations responsible for running the internet and its multitude of services start colluding to get something or someone censored?
The fact is, if you want to publish something on the internet, you need a server that's connected to the internet. Even if you have your own server, you still need an internet connection. A connection that's provided by some big megacorporation. (And even if you get one from a much smaller company, that small company will itself be paying to a much larger corporation for internet access. It's very hard, and expensive, to have an internet server connected to the internet in such a manner that it doesn't go through the servers of some megacorporation. Essentially you would need a so-called Tier 1 Network connection, which is economically and logistically unfeasible for the average person, and essentially feasible only to large tech corporations. It's the "top tier" of internet protocol networks that does not depend on any other corporation nor its servers, nor has to pay anybody for the service.)
So what happens when the company you are renting a server from, or the internet service provider company that provides you with access to the internet, decides that they no longer want you as their client, because they don't like what you are publishing?
Currently, especially in the United States (where the vast majority of internet corporations reside), there is no recourse. They can deny you service at any moment, for any reason, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Ok, find some ISP in some other country, like Russia, where they don't give a flying fuck what you publish on the internet? Surely these Silicon Valley tech corporations can't censor that? There are Tier 1 networks there, and there's nothing they can do to block those?
Except they still can. There are many things they can do.
For one, banking and funding services like PayPal and Patreon can deny you their services, especially if what you are running is some kind of company yourself, but even if you are just an individual. Likewise credit card companies can deny you their services. Suddenly you may find yourself in a situation where you are denied banking services, and nobody can fund you, and you can do no financial transactions.
The above is not just a hypothetical. It's actually happening, in real life. There are already several examples of exactly that.
But ok, no big deal, you don't need funding from anybody. You work and you get your own livelihood, and you can maintain your website without extra money, and your work is safe from attacks and doxing attempts, so nobody can take it away from you. You should be safe, right?
Nope. The resources of the big internet megacorporations don't end there.
You see, they might not be able to remove your content completely off the internet, but they can stop anybody that uses their services from seeing it, or even having access to it.
The biggest search engines (most prominently Google, but also the other big ones) can censor all of your content so that it never appears on their site. Moreover, service providers can configure their DNS servers to completely block the server that contains your stuff. In fact, they can configure their main routers so that they block access to that server even using a raw IP address. Which means that nobody that uses the services of that company can access the server, even with a direct IP address.
(There have been many situations where ISP routers have been accidentally configured, or somehow become corrupted or the like, in such a manner that certain IP addresses become completely inaccessible through their servers. IP packets are simply not routed to the correct address and they just stop at the router. You simply cannot connect to that server, even with a raw IP address. I have actually witnessed this first-hand. It was a completely innocuous site, and the situation was some kind of configuration error by one of the major Tier 1 service providers here in Finland. While this is usually some kind of error or mistake, which gets fixed when it's found out, nothing stops a service provider from deliberately blocking certain IP addresses so they become completely inaccessible.)
A website can become completely invisible and inaccessible to the regular user this way. It can become inaccessible even if you know the site and have its IP address.
Using a VPN or a Tor browser could ostensibly bypass this kind of IP blocking (because you are essentially connecting to some other service provider elsewhere in the world in a manner that your own ISP can't see nor control because of encryption), but the average person does not have the knowledge nor really the motivation to do so.
Most importantly, the average person will never stumble across that content eg. by browsing the internet or doing Google searches. (Even if by pure chance they happen to end in a website that contains a link to that other content, the link will simply be broken from this user's perspective and just return a 404 or similar code to the user.) To the vast majority of people it will be exactly as if that site doesn't exist at all.
All this isn't just hypothetical and fear-mongering. It's happening right now. Websites that openly support free speech, such as gab.com, are being denied service (both ISPs and PayPal are denying their services to them). People with the "wrong" opinions are being banned from social media platforms, and ISPs are refusing to offer them internet connections. Government after government, very much including the EU, rather than oppose this, are actively encouraging this and in fact pushing for laws to enforce this.
Internet censorship is real, they want to suppress free speech, and it's the megacorporations who are engaging in it, with the blessings of governments.
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