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+Document: WM-048                                                 P. Webb
+Category: Internet                                            2021.01.15
+
+                      The Internet is (not) broken
+
+Abstract
+
+   Resistence is ~~futile~~ effectual
+
+Body
+
+   You will find no shortage of "tweet storms" or articles decrying the
+   current state of the Internet using adjectives like "doomed",
+   "broken", "ruined", &c. While I tend to agree with many of the points
+   shared in such posts, I stop short of feeling defeated. Maybe it is
+   because I am an optimist and I recognize my own power to create what
+   I wish to see. Maybe it is my decade-plus experience and work within
+   the tech industry and absorbing stories of those older than I who saw
+   success/failure in the dotcom boom. Whatever it is, a few things are
+   made clear to me:
+
+   1. People are not going down without a fight. The work happening in
+      the decentralization and cryptocurrency fields are proof of this.
+      Will these avenues catch on? Certainly not immediately, maybe even
+      ever. However, the exercise of creating/discovering solutions is
+      worthwhile regardless, IMHO (failures lead to advancement of new,
+      potentially better ideas).
+   2. These big evil tech companies? They did not start out that way.
+      "Mo' money mo' problems," shout-out to Biggie Smalls. If money
+      really is the root of all/most evil, maybe every company should
+      have an in-house ethics committee that is actually empowered to DO
+      THEIR JOB (Dr Timnit Gebru and countless other people of color in
+      the ethics space know this all too well).
+   3. Baseline technical IQ is rising — this means our bumbling
+      politicians who have immense difficulty deciphering non-answers
+      from facetious tech CEOs wearing shit-eating grins will finally
+      see what we see and shut that shit down. Well, AOC does not seem
+      to have a problem grasping technical concepts…she is also not 70+
+      years old so there is that.
+
+   Before continuing, it would be useful to recap what ails the Internet
+   as seen by enthusiasts of this wonderous platform. Rather than
+   enumerate, I will share a list off the top of my head:
+
+   - Too much of today's Internet is dependent upon a handful of
+     tech companies.
+     - Most of "FAANG": Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google
+   - All these companies are based in the United States, and various law
+     enforcement agencies routinely subpoena (order) said companies to
+     hand over data in the interest of "national security." Half-truths
+     are technically the truth, right?
+   - The data brokerage economy, which is a fancy way to say your
+     personal data is sold and traded around the world for cheap, was
+     enabled by Facebook, Google, and a LOT of smaller companies you
+     have never heard the name of (but the investors you follow on
+     Twitter? Oh, *they* know).
+     - In all fairness you *did* agree to the terms and conditions of
+       these services you use so they can *legally* do whatever they
+       want with the data you give them…but does that make it right?
+       Ethics apparently has no place in law.
+
+   For fans of capitalism (like myself), this seems like
+   not-that-big-a-deal in the grand scheme of things. The best companies
+   became successful and just pivoted to what makes the most money.
+   Maximizing profits while keeping margins low? That's Business 101,
+   babeee! Pull yourself up by the bootstraps! No pain no gain! Working
+   hard or hardly working? ARE YA WINNIN' SON?!
+
+   But I digress.
+
+   Any time a major service like Google Analytics, YouTube, or Amazon
+   Web Services (AWS) is down, a couple technical people get on Twitter
+   and say "SEEEEE?! We shouldn't rely on them!" but the fact of the
+   matter is, software is created by humans, humans are fallible, and
+   shit happens. And, servers falling over? Nobody wants to deal with
+   that, it's annoying! For those of us who aren't technical enough to
+   perform DevOps, the idea of managing a server (let alone setting one
+   *up*) is intimidating at best. So…the alternative is to quit
+   using/paying for one service in favor of a less "evil" or problematic
+   one. For example, the people who leave their grandparents behind on
+   Facebook in favor of Twitter. It is alarming that Twitter only
+   *started* to reign in the President's fear-/hate-mongering and lies
+   in the weeks leading up to the election…not one time prior to 2020.
+   10 days left of the presidency he's managed to hold onto and that's
+   when Twitter FINALLY finds the guts to boot him off their
+   platform. Anyhoo…
+
+   Where do we go from here?
+
+   The pessimists of the tech crowd will say there's no point in
+   creating alternatives.
+
+   - "No one will sign up for your service, what makes it better
+     than ⟨MAJOR SERVICE⟩?"
+   - "⟨MAJOR SERVICE⟩ has existed for years, you're not just gonna eat
+     their lunch."
+   - "Normies want free, they won't pay for your dumb idea"
+   - "How are you gonna handle moderation, if ⟨MAJOR SERVICE⟩ can't
+     do it?"
+
+   I'm old enough to remember what is commonly referred to as the "Wild
+   West" of the Internet. Internet access speeds were excruciatingly
+   slow by today's standards and web browsers were not capable of what
+   we take for granted now. Developers favored XML over HTML! Because
+   the Internet was still fairly new, there were no established norms
+   nor preconceptions. "Data harvesting" sounded more like a malicious
+   act some corporation in a cyberpunk novel would engage in. But, when
+   people wish the Internet was back to how it used to be, I believe
+   they are (usually) talking about the *feeling* of it, rather than the
+   limited functionality (interestingly, Gopher has seen a resurgence
+   lately along with Gemini).
+
+   When I was in middle school in the year 2000 I got an account on
+   homestead.com and was able to play around with the free website space
+   they gave me. I downloaded a website theme from some place and
+   learned CSS and HTML by tweaking parameters in Notepad and
+   re-uploading the changed files. As archaic as that process was, it
+   blew my mind that I could create a Megaman Battle Network fan-site
+   and have it reachable by a URL to show my friends at school in the
+   computer lab. As I got older I wanted a site without ads and more
+   storage space so I moved onto mediatemple and continued my web
+   development explorations there.
+
+   This level of access seems to be gone these days. Services are still
+   free, of course, but mostly services where you can be siloed in. This
+   is how brand recognition/loyalty occurs. Apple, Microsoft, and Google
+   are not giving schools free laptops and tablets out of (just)
+   kindness, it is a long-term play that usually pans out. Bah, I feel
+   pessimism settling in so onto solutions, as I see them.
+
+   YOU CANNOT PUT THE GENIE BACK IN THE BOTTLE
+
+   Tech companies have tasted the delicious nectar of wealth that is
+   user data and it is the gift that keeps on giving. Well, maybe it
+   should not be called a gift. The companies are spending investor
+   dollars to pay their employees to build features that will get you to
+   sign up and use their product in exchange for your usage habits and
+   keywords within your memes and online rants. You…well, *they* get
+   what they pay for. You get a nice park to play in and garden to eat
+   from while the wolves watch from behind that tree over there. To
+   reduce our reliance on said companies, we need new ones with our best
+   interests at heart to tackle:
+
+   - analytics
+   - blogs and free websites
+   - collaborative documents
+   - DNS and domains
+   - email
+   - search
+   - social
+
+   The easiest way to handle free services is to offer a more capable
+   paid service alongside it. Google currently has a monopoly over most
+   of this list and best believe, they want *more*. Poor Facebook just
+   cannot stop being creepy long enough for people to foolishly trust
+   them again and that is crushing their dreams of becoming
+   American WeChat.
+
+   As for me? Well, I am just one guy on the Internet with a voice and a
+   plan for every item on this list. I am also not afraid of not knowing
+   what I do not know so 2021 should be an informative year for me (us,
+   if you want to follow along). Watch this space. 🕸