My poor, sweet, ugly, shocking, beautiful interwebs

[HunterNurturer]

I often imagine the circumstances in which I’ll tell my future grandchildren the story of the internet. Chances are, it will still be around, but in a far different form than the internet I knew and loved.

You see, the internet they know will be a completely traceable place where you will be held accountable for everything you do, everything you say, everything you show and even everything you look at. People will go to prison for saying or doing things on the internet that would actually be LEGAL in real life. Anonymity will simply be a distant, ideological dream.
How do we know this to be the case? Because it’s already happening. People are regularly being arrested for things they say on twitter or facebook – even things that would barely classify as a crime in the real world like insults, jokes and symbols of protest. A man has just been arrested for showing a video of a burning poppy on facebook, and while clearly offensive and in bad taste, anybody who believes this deserves an arrest is an enemy of free speech – but things are about to get a lot worse. The director of public prosecutions is about to issue guidelines on when criminal charges should be brought due to actions on twitter or facebook , and it’s barely even making the news. A senior government official recently sparked anger by stating the obvious – that people should use false information whenever they are asked to input sensitive details into websites they don’t know or trust. He was attacked left, right and center for this comment, and it shows the sad direction in which the internet is heading. The government wants every communication on the internet to be transparent and instantly traceable. Social networks are already forcing people to use phone and address verification to verify they are who they say they are. The decline has begun, and soon the internet will be nothing more than a branch of the media, a place where you’re spoonfed your information, and you don’t get to choose the flavour.

In such a world, how could I ever begin to explain the beauty of the internet I knew? The place where you knew you entered at your own risk, where the rules of real life were bendable, and where free speech and anonymity were considered it’s raison d’etre. It was the wild west of communication. A place where you could be anyone, see anything, broach taboo subjects in as much depth as you could possibly desire, with an unlimited number of other people and all with whatever level of anonymity YOU deemed necessary. You could see reality through other people’s eyes, you could see and experience the best and worst of human nature. Those who were weak, were bullied. Those who were too stupid to embrace their anonymity, who thought the same rules applied as in real life may have fallen victim to predators, be they emotional, physical or financial. It was a living case study in Darwinian theory as it applies to human psychology. So it’s strange that in a place where deception was so rife, that nothing else has or will ever feel so honest.

The internet was an ugly place, and it never tried to hide the fact. Of course it was ugly – it was essentially the collective human conscious. It was the thoughts and passions, hobbies and interests, the joys of victories and the achings of defeats. You could ride the rollercoaster of another person’s life without them ever knowing you exist. But it was also the anger, the hatred - and if you ventured into the wrong parts - the evil man is capable of thinking and doing.

To someone who wasn’t there, this might sound like a horrific place. This place where you could accidentally stumble onto pictures of executions, mangled animals or paraplegic porn with equal likelihood may seem scary, but it’s the price you had to pay to go further down the rabbit hole. We never complained. And refreshingly, there would’ve been nobody to complain to anyway. You took the risk, and as the meme goes, “what has been seen, cannot be unseen”.

What no amount of words could ever truly express though, is the beauty of having the world at your fingertips in a completely uncensored fashion. It was completely uncensored because nobody had the fear of what would happen if they didn’t self-censor. Your mind was free to wander in whatever direction it pleased, and your mind could be stimulated by fresh, relevant and real information no matter which path it decided to take. It was a place where you could find your little niche in the world. It didn’t matter if you were an anorexic, suicidal goth with an unbridled passion for beanie babies and a fetish for rape porn, you could still find a little slice of the internet that felt like home.

In truth, I know I never will be able to explain this to my grandchildren in a way that they will genuinely understand. The internet will be far too different and censored then to ever really grasp what it was like when the internet was free. It’s already too far gone now.
Those of us who remember treat it with reverence. It was not so long ago and yet now it feels so distant. My poor, sweet, ugly, shocking, beautiful interwebs. Gone but never forgotten. The brave last bastion of free speech. Rest In Peace.

[Destiny]

well what can we do to be honest?
Freedom of speech never really existed.
If it did, people wouldn't be getting arrested for offensive jokes that now seem to be as old as humanity.

[HunterNurturer]

(18 November 2012, 14:42)Destiny Wrote: well what can we do to be honest?
Freedom of speech never really existed.
If it did, people wouldn't be getting arrested for offensive jokes that now seem to be as old as humanity.

Nothing, that's not the point. I'm just lamenting the death of an old friend, not presenting a problem to be solved.
The only thing that would put the internet back to it's old ways is to completely deregulate it, but that will never happen. There are too many facebook idiots who will call the police whenever they see something they don't agree with. Like the christian who was demoted from his job for saying that gay marriages in church is "an equality too far". And they do that because that's the internet they know, one where everyone is accountable for everything they say. They never knew the internet I loved, and that's a sad thing.

[Metroyeti]

My freind worked for asda said the amount of people who got in trouble or sacked because other staff didnt like what they said on facebook. People need to grow up they shouldnt post certain things online but at the same time some people are upset by everything.

[bigpaul]

the trouble is we now live in a world which is far too p.c. for its own good, the slightest remark uttered in jest has every "lefty" foaming at the mouth, people need to get out and smell the roses, there was a nursery rhyme when i was a kid" sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me", people need to get a life!!

[Scythe13]

Wouldn't it be possible to set up our own network, like an ethernet system, and then work it around the world.....like an Internet 2.0?

Let's ignore the cost of such a thing though.

[CovertRunning]

I've seen this directly on certain forum's as well.
If you win an argument against some lefty pc type, you point out things fair and square, they go running to a moderator who has an axe to grind, then you get bashed with a ban.
Now back ten years ago the internet was a glorious frontier, a great unknown, a wild west with big dreams.
Then every man and his dog got on board. Some good, others bad.

ONLY the small forum's have weathered the 'change', the big forums and social networks have formed part of the mainstream.

The nasty stuff on the internet; I only really noticed in the past couple years due to a mainstreaming and increased desensitisation of peoples minds.

I'm a writer in my spare time and one of the things in a fictional universe I've created is that the internet (called nexus) is essentially 'planned' and is much more controlled so you can only access content within nations, to actually see the 'internet' in other parts of the globe you have to pass through 'gateways'. If you want to go through these without identifying yourself you need a 'hacker' etc etc.

Anyway, it could be the internet regulation has only just started folks.
There are places left, proxy-sites and even 'dark-net' areas that stay off the google search bots map....

[BDG]

(18 November 2012, 14:05)HunterNurturer Wrote: People will go to prison for saying or doing things on the internet that would actually be LEGAL in real life. Anonymity will simply be a distant, ideological dream.
How do we know this to be the case? Because it’s already happening. People are regularly being arrested for things they say on twitter or facebook – even things that would barely classify as a crime in the real world like insults, jokes and symbols of protest. A man has just been arrested for showing a video of a burning poppy on facebook, and while clearly offensive and in bad taste, anybody who believes this deserves an arrest is an enemy of free speech – but things are about to get a lot worse. The director of public prosecutions is about to issue guidelines on when criminal charges should be brought due to actions on twitter or facebook , and it’s barely even making the news.

You know that the guidance from the DPP is so that freedom of speech is promoted and they will be taking into account the context of material you put online - for instance, the guy that was arrested for posting a maddaline mccann joke - should not have been arrested - but if he had emailed it to her family, he should have been.

We have had laws around this kind of thing since public electronic communication networks began in the 1930's.

Before you put anything online, you should ask yourself, if I put this on a poster in my front window, could I expect a knock from the police, a brick through the window or my head kicked in.

I do agree that the internet is not the place it once was and it is the worse for it. I have been using it since the early 1990's and I put it down to back in the day, you had to have a certain geekishness about you to get online, it was not an easy thing to do and so you did not really come across thickos online, and so it was very self regulating.

Now the idiots are online, they need someone to protect them. Its like the fools who climb Ben Nevis in mid winter in a pair of old trainer.

[Scythe13]

(18 November 2012, 22:26)CovertRunning Wrote: I'm a writer in my spare time and one of the things in a fictional universe I've created is that the internet (called nexus) is essentially 'planned' and is much more controlled so you can only access content within nations, to actually see the 'internet' in other parts of the globe you have to pass through 'gateways'. If you want to go through these without identifying yourself you need a 'hacker' etc etc.

You mean like in China?

I've lived with LOADS of Chinese people (uni campus, house shares, that kind of thing) and they all joke about the Great FireWall of China. It's much bigger than the original Great Wall of China. Websites are shutdown and people are often arrested for creating a website. They have VERY limited access to foreign sites, including Facebook! They have a Chinese version of Facebook that forces all their posts to be checked by the governmental internet regulation team. It's a crazy thing.

Some people from the boarders are able to access external sites, but they are often arrested for doing so!

[CovertRunning]

(19 November 2012, 18:37)Scythe13 Wrote:

(18 November 2012, 22:26)CovertRunning Wrote: I'm a writer in my spare time and one of the things in a fictional universe I've created is that the internet (called nexus) is essentially 'planned' and is much more controlled so you can only access content within nations, to actually see the 'internet' in other parts of the globe you have to pass through 'gateways'. If you want to go through these without identifying yourself you need a 'hacker' etc etc.

You mean like in China?

Kind of.
The 'Nex' as I've called it somewhat regulated in Europe (gateway passages mostly), quite regulated in the Middle-East and the Far East.
In the America's there's hardly any regulation.

But not as heavy on clamp-downs as in these insane times we now live in.

I do believe that in China proxy-use is a way they try and get around the G. Firewall...