the long goodbye of the wide open web?

How did we live without the internet and the web before they were invented? Oh sure we found directions with maps and overpriced GPS devices, got our news by reading the papers, and watched TV for entertainment in absence of other options. But today we have a massive, globe-spanning network of countless servers which host billions of websites filled to the brim with just about anything you could imagine, and whether the content in question disgustingly cute or psyche-scarringly terrifying, legal or illegal, kid-friendly or the kind of hardcore porn after which you start seriously pondering if applying bleach to your brain will let you un-see what you just saw, your internet provider will let you navigate to them to your heart’s content. At least for now if you listen to a government expert who says that the future of the web is about to be sealed shut by just four corporations which will destroy new neutrality. And thanks to these four horsemen of the Net Apocalypse, all content will be safe, filtered, controlled, scrubbed, and sanitized for our consumption because that’s what brings in cash. So that’s it for the kind of web that lets us burrow into the deepest corners of the internet then, huh? No more fun, exciting or risqué things allowed because the Amazon/Facebook/Google/Apple oligarchy says so? Really?

Now if there’s one thing you take away from all my posts about technology and computer science, let it be this little tidbit that will serve you very well should you ever find yourself making decisions involving investments in new technology. Always beware of people who are introduced under such vague terms as “internet expert” or even more ephemeral and nefarious labels like “tech pioneer” or “tech evangelist” because they don’t actually mean anything in the real world. As noted before, the net is a very big place and while one can be an expert in network protocols, or routing, or information security, it’s awfully difficult to be an expert on the whole internet, which is why the internet expert in question is actually a trade lawyer, not a computer scientist or researcher, and this is why he’s focusing on preemptive strikes against tech monopolies rather than the technology. And this seems to be why he thinks that four juggernauts with a huge web footprint could actually use that heft for the kind of Orwellian censorship of the net that he envisions. Obviously, you should have the right to access a free and open internet to your heart’s content and yes, he’s worried that major telecom companies really want to leverage their ownership of the pipes transmitting the terabytes of data flowing between web servers every day and extract more money by playing around with how those data packets are being transmitted. But it’s not the doing of any web company. That’s an issue with Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and Time Warner.

Just because a few big companies team up with a certain data infrastructure owner and offer special deals to their customer base doesn’t mean that your internet will be cleansed and filtered so you don’t wander where a corporate overlord doesn’t want your eyes to stray, it just means that you’ll be pushed into using the particular technology stack they want to sell and there will be competitors offering rival technology stacks. None of them really wants to be your nanny either. We covered that when talking about major social networks’ handling of controversial or NSFW content, which is to put up a warning tag or ask them to move to another network with lenient content policies. And that’s really the big worry of many net activists, that the web we love is going to be whatever major corporations find to be an acceptable version of it and dole out access based on how much a content provider is willing to pay for the right to have his or her data make it to an end user without an artificial timeout getting in the way. Say goodbye to blogs, adult and controversial content, and personal sites since it’s now going to cost more to host them and set them up because an ISP wants you to pay up to be seen by the world at large, and anything that it thinks will gets its bosses in trouble will be blacklisted into oblivion. But it’s going to be pretty hard to sell your own custom version of the web to people who are used to using unlimited sites and roaming freely across search results, and as long as there are servers willing to host whatever you put on them, there will be ISPs which can deliver whatever you want from the web.

In fact, any effort to customize the web for profit is bound to create companies more than happy to offer to get your data moving once again, and while the major ISPs may have regional monopolies, they still do compete in a number of areas and will bound to offer a less restricted experience as a selling point. But before we go off wondering what will happen if corporations will try to tame the web, why don’t we look at our Horsemen of the Net Apocalypse again and ask if it’s in their best interests to filter your web usage as per the scenario we are being given by The Guardian? And the answer is no, it’s not. Apple is a hardware company which couldn’t care less where you surf with its computers and mobile devices as long as you buy them, and the draconian, arbitrary rules by which it approves apps are simply its clumsy way to ensure good PR and high quality in its private store. The others want to know where you go so they can more finely tune their offers to your habits or show you ads that fit your interests closer then a simple, keyword-based guess. Far from wanting to box you into the web of their choosing, they want you to navigate away to your hearts content and give them more and more information about who you are and what you like so they can make more money advertising to you. The only companies which wouldn’t mind controlling your internet have nothing to gain from studying your surfing habits and just want to use their ownerships of data pipes for financial leverage.