this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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How would you have communicated without someone owning a server and paying for it? Reddit and other centralized platforms emerged for some reason... You would have to literally make that illegal, i.e. make it illegal to host your own server and let users use it.
You can't just imagine some fantasy utopia, and compare that to the current system.
You do realize the Internet first started being used by universities and the military, not the private sector, right? I see literally no reason why Internet infrastructure couldn't be publicly owned. It could function pretty much like any other public utility.
And would it have grown into more than that? Into something that everyone, and not just military and scientists can use?
Why not?
Sorry I just don't buy into the ideology that the free market has this kind of "magic sauce" that makes everything innovative and better.
The early Internet was filled of people doing all kinds of cool things for free just because it was interesting to do, the only thing the private sector did is provide the base infrastructure, this is something the state can easily do too. All kinds of communities, FOSS software and media popped up and none of them had VC funding or expected any money out of it.
It was only in mid-late 2000 that capital really sank its teeth into the Internet properly.
It did though? I don't know what point you think you're making but the internet did in fact grow from a technology limited to universities and the armed forces to a publicly accessible network, mostly off the back of publicly funded researchers and various techies that started their own neighborhood ISPs.
I'd probably have posted on one of the many voluntarily run forums that existed before reddit swallowed everything.
How would you have communicated without the telemasts installed and maintained by the state, which are now privatized and slowly falling apart?