On “Rethinking the Internet: how we lost control and how to take it back.”

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For those who might be interested on listening to a really good discussion on important topics often brought up in AskWoody:

In this 58-minute long video there is first an interview on the topic of what is wrong and needs fixing in the Internet, particularly in what respects to the capturing and selling of personal information, privacy and the uses and abuses of social media, followed at half-time by a panel discussion on the uses and abuses of AI algorithms, social manipulation by tech giants and how things could be and need to be made better for society now and for a better future:

Rethinking the Internet: How We Lost Control and How to Take it Back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slsX_wihgCY

This and many other good videos, each with full a discussion, covering a large diversity of technical and scientific issues, can be found on the “World Science Festival” Website:

https://cdn.worldsciencefestival.com

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AlphaCharlie, Fred

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I totally agree.
This earge to survive, nothing less.

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I prefer text based info but this article sums up my view, I’ll just add there’s nothing stopping people from hosting plain sites without php or JavaScript or analytics.  Good content, not a flashy “tv” experience controlled by corporations:

 

https://learngerman.dw.com/en/irans-blogfather-why-social-media-is-killing-the-free-web/a-35910896#

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Mele20, OscarCP

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Billjoy: That is a very good article from an Iranian blogger, the one that you have linked in your reply.

Excerpts:

“When the internet emerged in the 90s, it created a new window of opportunity for serious discussion. After 20 years, this window is now closing, and the internet is becoming like television. It is actually forming a new kind of television which is internet-based and personalized and it is available on all kinds of devices.”

…

“Social networks may be useful to have emotional reactions to certain news or certain events. Maybe even to bring people to the streets in some cases. But as an Egyptian activist [during the “Arab Spring” pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East in 2010-2011] has brilliantly put it, this has not helped the Egyptian revolution. Social networks were successful in bringing out people and giving them a negative voice about the status quo, but that did not lead to anything positive. They started to fight each other.”

The video I have linked in my original statement at the start of this thread, covers in substantial detail different aspects of what is problematic today with and on the Internet, with the opinions of several people who actually know what they are talking about and an articulate and well-informed moderator organizing the discussion.

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OscarCP wrote:

In this 58-minute long video

Is there a link for READING it? I hate videos and rarely watch them…the proliferation of videos on the internet is part of what is killing it IMO.

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here is an EFF link to “Net Neutrality”, , though it’s not very recent, it’s very actual

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/eff-30-freeing-internet-net-neutrality-pioneer-gigi-sohn

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It’s a video, but I’m pretty sure is not what some may think. It’s about ideas presented by experts with serious credentials, starting with an interview to Jaron Lanier, Internet pioneer, computer scientist and author of  “Ten Reasons for Deleting All Your Social Accounts Right Now”, followed by a panel discussion between professors from MIT, Harvard, one ex Google employee that had a top tech position there, etc., all talking as knowledgeable people, not as “celebrities” or from some company PR department. I also don’t like to see videos if there is a written alternative, but this one is something else.

Before judging it unseen and unheard, I recommend to those really interested on what this thread is about to watch some of it and then make up their minds on the evidence of their own eyes and ears. There is no better way.

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Mele20 wrote:

OscarCP wrote:

In this 58-minute long video

Is there a link for READING it? I hate videos and rarely watch them…the proliferation of videos on the internet is part of what is killing it IMO.

InterNet Neutrality is a concept that is later born, and used by f.i. EFF to build on a “less bound and less-dependant” use of the internet, trying to minimize some of the data eagerness of the big companies.
In EU some parliaments have embrased this already.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/eff-30-freeing-internet-net-neutrality-pioneer-gigi-sohn

 

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Mele20

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Thanks! That link led me to the TEXT of the interview which is what I wanted. Slow reading but I have read most of it and will finish it later.

It brought back my experiences with the internet in 1999 when dialup was the only option even though I live in the second largest city in Hawaii. Oahu residents already had cable.

I used to read EFF daily….somehow I stopped so glad to be reminded of it again. Where I live there is no competition. We have cable or dialup for years now in my area but no choices as to the provider of cable and it is only 200 mbps down. (There is fiber connection but only in certain areas of my town and NO intent by the provider HawaiianTelcom to expand. Plus, you have to embrace Google to get it).

A comment on Youtube regarding this:
Scott Carroll
3 years ago
You can’t lose control of something that you never controlled

How very true. It looks like that might be changing though for California at least:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/victory-californians-can-now-choose-their-broadband-destiny

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Fred

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Mele 20 and others: There is quite interesting material in that EFF site, but no link in it to the video I linked when starting this thread.

I am still hoping someone would inform himself or herself about the video by watching or listening to it and then comment on it here.

But I am beginning to feel this is not likely to happen. Oh, well! If it turns out to be so, then let this be a lesson to me.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

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Friday 29july2022
-EFF Staff Technologist Bennett Cyphers:
“When you see the volume of data that’s up for sale, and the lack of regulation in the vast majority of American states regarding how companies can use data, it seems like a match made in privacy hell.”

https://t.co/tOcEvoORi2

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I prefer not to repeat myself once more. So I refer the reader to my original comment.

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There are lots of sites dealing with opinions of this matter, though many are not so independant as one might wish.
For instance, much of this is written in Australia and France end Germany; and there is much legislation on the way. (unfortunately: reading French and German might be handy).
And the formal EUcommission sites speak of this too, wanting to deminish the power of the data-eager-slurping companies. But, a second matter of concern is that goverments wish to bring back the dataencryption between the messaging applications, and also bringing back the possibilities of uploading data to the internet by using filters to control.  By all, I think this is of the outmost importance.
Many consumers and journalists are very concerned about the freedom of speech that threatens to disappear;
These parts are hardly spoken of.

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klang

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https://www.techradar.com/news/duckduckgo-others-warns-big-tech-will-attempt-to-weasel-out-of-new-fair-play-rules

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And still no comments on the video’s interview and panel discussion that followed.

As I have said: let this be a lesson to me.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
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And time dribbled by rethinking the future, internet and democracy can be sculpted by the west on it’s own. A few years afters this ‘awareness’ in the US passed, still nothing has changed at all. Anyone was and is doing their thing, making money no matter what.

One believe may say, this is an optimistic holistic new view on what might be very technically necessary that the datacompanies may bring us.
Ohhh, and what do I care? I am not harmed by this dataslurping, and let them control the others, I am not touched. Or something like it.

In the Metaverse, Your Heart Can Be as True as the Boobs Are Fake
New HBO documentary We Met in Virtual Reality is a tender portrait of human connections made in VR — sexism and ableism be damned.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/features/in-the-metaverse-your-heart-can-be-as-true-as-the-boobs-are-fake/?ftag=CAD1acfa04

.

 

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Is this so difficult? Website is stuck?

Fred wrote:

And time dribbled by rethinking the future, internet and democracy can be sculpted by the west on it’s own. A few years afters this ‘awareness’ in the US passed, still nothing has changed at all. Anyone was and is doing their thing, making money no matter what.

One believe may say, this is an optimistic holistic new view on what might be very technically necessary that the datacompanies may bring us.
Ohhh, and what do I care? I am not harmed by this dataslurping, and let them control the others, I am not touched. Or something like it.

In the Metaverse, Your Heart Can Be as True as the Boobs Are Fake
New HBO documentary We Met in Virtual Reality is a tender portrait of human connections made in VR — sexism and ableism be damned.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/features/in-the-metaverse-your-heart-can-be-as-true-as-the-boobs-are-fake/?ftag=CAD1acfa04

.

 

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You triggered a moderation pending.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Fred

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[Fred]

Thanks for releasing this “lifetime proze”,

I wasn’t aware, and didn’t mean to, triggering the site in a difficult mode. Have no idea what happened.
Perhaps it was the metaverse intervene at it’s own protecting it’s sacred Artificial Intellectual calling

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• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Fred.

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People can write here whatever they want, of course, but I am very interested in learning the opinions of those who do watch, or listen, to the discussion on the video (linked in my original comment, at the top of this thread), which is why I started this thread in the first place.

To those who have a problem with watching a video I say: not a problem, just minimize the screen and listen to the people in the discussion, as this is  filmed  discussion, so seeing as well as hearing is not necessary. This would be like listening to the radio, or to a podcast.

Those who also do not like to listen to the radio or podcasts, can buy Jaron Lanier’s book and read it.

To those who do not like reading books, in addition to disliking the two previous options, I have no solution to offer. Sorry.

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OscarCP wrote:

How to Take it Back

No way to take it back.
Meta, Google.. are hyping Metaverse…
There is no way back to the old days of clean, no social media, no tracking…Internet.

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klang, Fred

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If you watched the video, you might not be so sure about that.

There is no need or reason to go back to what, on  recollection, might seem like “the good old days.” Both the need and the possibility posited there are about how to move forward from these not-so-great days to different and better new days.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

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Alex5723 wrote:

OscarCP wrote:

How to Take it Back

No way to take it back.
Meta, Google.. are hyping Metaverse…
There is no way back to the old days of clean, no social media, no tracking…Internet.

see #post-2466361 please,

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/on-rethinking-the-internet-how-we-lost-control-and-how-to-take-it-back/#post-2466361

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At this point it is clear that most likely nobody has watched or listened to the video that moved me to start this thread, primarily asking for comments on what I consider to be a very important and also a very well-informed and informative discussion on matters of real importance in our day. People commenting here, so far, not only have not mentioned that discussion, but mostly have repeated things already well known to most of us interested on Web and, more generally, Internet security (or lack of same), their use for false information dissemination, the extremely ultra-super-mega-hyped and mostly Zuckerberg-PR creature “the Metaverse”, etc., etc. All tha those commenters have a perfect right to write about, but it’s not what I wanted this thread to be for and I have made clear repeatedly already.

So I declare this attempt of mine of starting this thread primarily with a very specific and, in my opinion, worthwhile reason in mind, to have failed in spite of my repeated entreaties asking people to have a look at the video of the discussion and then let me have their opinions on it. Consequently, I am out of here.

Cheers.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

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Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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OscarCP wrote:

At this point it is clear that most likely nobody has watched or listened to the video that moved me to start this thread, primarily asking for comments on what I consider to be a very important and also a very well-informed and informative discussion on matters of real importance in our day.

Really excellent video!

I think modern social media has, among a number of things, conditioned people to only read and respond to headlines and short texts as if they are Pavlovian dogs responding to mass behavior modification. Endorphin stimulation guaranteed. Divisive? Even a bigger rush!

Unfortunately, a lot of what you see on social media is designed by algorithms to keep you engaged and influence you.

A lot of context and critical thinking is lost on the masses that only live in the headlines and sound bites. We are easier manipulation targets that way.

Bottom line is I think that the best solution offered by one of the speakers is to delete your social media accounts. That’s the only realistic way to force these companies to improve and do better. They will only change if we force them to survive by changing their behavior. The power is in the sheep’s hands. Don’t be a sheep!

And the side discussion about deep fakes could be a topic unto itself. That is quite worrisome.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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OscarCP

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