So Big Tech Wants To Shut Us Down. They Must Have Short Memories

Self | Traveler59

[Traveler59]

I had to think a bit about this. For those of you less than 30 years old, when the internet was in it's infancy, there was a whole lot of things going on. Did you ever do an Archie search? How about utilizing Gopher menu's? The only three web browsers for DOS6.22/Win3.11 were Mozilla, Netscape, and Lynx. But there were, and still are, places on the internet that big tech doesn't own and can't own because it's too decentralize.

For the the geeks like me, BBS'ing was where we started. This was the mid-80's. Imagine, posting a message on a local dial-up BBS, and 2 days later getting a reply back from someone on the other side of the world. For me to reach the internet was a dial-up shell account through a local SprintNet port. Only hyperterminal, no graphics.

Then came AOL, and Genie, and Compuserve. AOL was first to attempt social networking with ICQ. Clunky, but it whetted the appetite for those who wanted real time (or near real time) interaction. But this is when the “point and click” generation started. Had to have a GUI (graphical user interface) or they wouldn't use it. Want to know if you're part of that generation? Disconnect your mouse and navigate through the internet without a mouse or a touch pad. If you're wondering how, try using your 'TAB' key. See, learned something new.

Anyhow, before ICQ, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, Parlor, (etc,etc, ad nausium) there where two social networks that are still in operation. One is Network Newsgroups, the other is Internet Relay Chat. Both of these are decentralize, and neither is run or controlled by big tech. Many, not all internet service providers have access to one or both of these networks. You'll have to check with your internet customer service.

Network Newsgroups is a message board. Text only, no grapics or hyperlinks. At least the last time I used it that was the case. This is part of the real 'wild,wild west' of the internet. There are moderated groups where you request permission to join much like Free Republic on facebook. Irritate the moderator and you get the boot. All you can do is read the messages, no posting. The unmoderated groups... well that's why asbestos keyboards where invented. Gives new meaning to the phrase “Flame On”. I think there are some flame wars that have been going on for years. Post to the local ISP's newsgroup server and within one hour it will hit/bounce/relay through several thousand servers around the world. Can't kill it, too decentralized. My newsgroup reader client of choice was Agent by Forte, Inc. Still out there, I just checked. Either connect to your ISP's Network Newsgroup (NNTP) server or find an open NNTP server and go to town.

The other social network that predates the world wide web is internet relay chat (IRC). This one is real time online chat. It can be either across one or two dozen open servers with several thousand “channels” all going at the same time, or a single server with invite only access. IRC is where you go to lose hours and days on a weekend. You got off work Friday night and it's now Monday morning. Fun, thrilling, aggravating, and humorous all at the same time. However, if you have “dainty tendencies” you do NOT want to go here. The open servers are generally rude, crude, and socially unacceptable, just the way the internet was meant to be. Closed servers, or invite only servers, can keep the riff-raff out but it's still a bandwidth hog on an unimaginable scale. If your try to run an IRC server from your house, your ISP will turn you off in under 30 minutes. Voice of experience here, I plead ignorance and they put me on probation for 6 months (no funny stuff). My choice for an IRC client was mIRC. Still out there. Again, you can't kill IRC. It's been going for far longer than the world wide web and it is also decentralized.

My .02 on the subject. There are many more old-time geeks out there with ideas.

[ConservativeMind]

I agree!

[Political Junkie Too]

I remember playing Star Trek in high school over a phone receiver plugged into an acoustic coupler link to the local university computer, on a dot-matrix printer.

Similar to this:

-PJ

[A Conservative Future]

How did big tech get so much power over the internet? Did they buy it? Did they just take it? How?

"Big Tech" isn't any different from any other large accumulation of capital in American history. In general, they are companies that created a product which revolutionized the market, or created a new one, or displaced the existing market leader, etc etc. There isn't anything special about it, for the most part:

• Google created the best search algorithm and became the most powerful corporate entity in the world. From there, they gathered the most traffic, sold the most ads, hired the best people, and created the best products to offer along with search and ads

• Facebook created the most popular social network

• Twitter came up with an idea perfectly suited for our short attention span lifestyles and text message culture

• Netflix created the first viable digital media streaming platform and disrupted the established media landscape, finally breaking the monopoly grip of the cable and satellite providers and making cord cutting viable

• Amazon defined the online retail experience and ruthlessly drove down prices while increasing customer expectations in terms of service. Then, almost by accident, they basically invented cloud computing when they realized they could sell their internal virtualization project as a service; AWS started life as an internal project to streamline their own hosting efforts and is now one of their core businesses

• Microsoft started in the seventies and eighties providing operating systems. Their big break came when they provided DOS for the IBM PC, which grew into Windows as we know it today (a very long story which I am happy to tell if anyone wants to hear it). But in the twenty first century, Microsoft has reinvented itself; long gone are the days of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer with their paranoia and FUD. Microsoft is a savvy, modern competitor, eagerly participating in the open source world, happy to distribute its development tools, and selling time on its Azure cloud services

• Apple is a cult. No, really, they are. I use that word descriptively, not pejoratively. The Apple way of doing things is a way of life for millions of people, and they are willing to pay extra for the privilege. They'll tell you all about how much they love it, get excited about the next version of it, wait in long lines for it, etc. That's their business model: Apple stuff works a certain way, it always works and it never breaks, and if it does break, they will fix it and say they're sorry. But you have to buy a new one when they tell you it's time, you have to pay more for it, and it only works with other Apple stuff, so you have to be all-in on the idea. Thus is Apple a trillion dollar company

So, there's nothing magical about "Big Tech". Like "Big Oil" or "The Big Three" auto makers or "The Big Banks" or any other group of powerful moneyed interests, they are accomplished capitalists; nothing more, nothing less. And at this point in human history, their products are critical to the function of human society, giving them disproportionate power over our lives.

[Ancesthntr]

I have all of you beat - I remember using punchcards instead of keyboards. For on class we had periodic assignments to create simple programs (in FORTRAN!) and would leave our bundle rubber-handed together in a file drawer in the computer room for the computer geeks to run at night or over the weekend. If you REALLY didn’t like someone you slipped a rather file piece of Swiss or Limberger cheese in with his or her cards (the computer geeks really appreciated that) :>)

We played some games like Star Trek or landing a rocket on the Moon over a 300 baud line...slower than s huff!

[StoneWall Brigade]

Blockchain is the next big innovation right around the corner.

[bunkerhill7]

All you guys appear to be mere babes in the woods.
I remember calling people up on my g randma’s crank telephone and the whole town practically (10 people) could listen in coz it was a PARTY LINE.

[Delta 21]

Spot on!

The Apple explanation is too perfect. It freaks me out the way Rush just gushes over all of his Apple toys. Didn’t catch him today.

[ThunderSleeps]

I’m an old school FIDOnet and Usenet guy. Anyone else remember uuencoding to turn binaries into text? Ah the good old days when you got a solid 1200 baud connection and no one questioned why you had three phone lines going into your apartment...

[Rembrandt]

I wonder if Stuxnet is still around?

[Rembrandt]

” There are many more old-time geeks out there with ideas.”

I’m sure they’re too busy to write viruses, pat said virus on the head and say go meet Amazon or...

[A Conservative Future]

Blockchain is the next big innovation right around the corner.

I agree. Institutional investment in blockchain is taking place under the radar at an incredible pace. I believe BTC will hit 50k easily this year and 100k is not out of the question in my opinion. This recent bull run and correction shows that BTC is being treated like any other store of value by the institutions, and there's no better endorsement of the technology than that. I took a position at 3k a few years ago and am happily HODL for the foreseeable future :) I mean, it could all blow up in our faces, too, but life is short, y'know?

[Paul R.]

Well, this is all fun and stuff, but, practically speaking:

If the commies keep pushing this, possibly undermining even operations like GAB, how does President Trump maintain contact with freedom loving people to whom most of what you posted is tech gibberish. (That would be most of them — most people already have very busy lives without taking on a new expertise.)

Same question, but for organized contact between those people. Even DJT can’t run everything in a struggle for freedom.

[Pollard]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse

Plain English explanation though outdated, hence the future tense; https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/03/introduction-distributed-social-network

Excerpts:
But federated social network developers are doing two things differently in order to build a new ecosystem. First, the leading federated social networking software is open-source: that means that anybody can download the source code, and use it to create and maintain social networking profiles for themselves and others. Second, the developers are simultaneously collaborating on a new common language, seeking an environment where most or even all federated social networking profiles can talk to one another.

To join a federated social network, you'll be able to choose from an array of "profile providers," just like you can choose an email provider. You will even be able to set up your own server and provide your social networking profile yourself. And in a federated social network, any profile can talk to another profile — even if it's on a different server.

Imagine the Web as an open sea. To use Facebook, you have to immigrate to Facebook Island and get a Facebook House, in a land with a single ruler. But the distributed social networks being developed now will allow you to choose from many islands, connected to one another by bridges, and you can even have the option of building your own island and your own bridges.

Friendica, Diaspora, Mastadon are three such pieces of software and they are compatible with each other to some degree. Friendica for instance is compatible with; Friendica, Diaspora, GNU-Social, Mastodon, email, RSS feeds via native protocol support.

So if there were 100,000 members running on 100 installations, how would big tech know who's who? That would also mean there could be 1,000 members on each of the 100 installations. Less concern about needing a room full of server racks or relying on amazon's AWS. This software won't run on your $5/mth shared hosting however but mostly because they all require root access to install via command line. There is hosting that will give you root access that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Maybe $20/mth which would be fine for 1,000 users or maybe more. Pretty affordable imho. Most are written in php which all web hosts have.

I see this as the way of the future for social networking, especially these days. Since it requires typing commands into a terminal, conservatives would need to "Learn to Code". Not really though. You can copy and paste. One would need to know how to obtain and use a hosting account, eg; cpanel. I know many of the young conservatives like on thedonald.win know this stuff. I build websites so I know it. I joined a Friendica server years ago but it was all techies and therefor leftists/liberals at the time. There's around 200 servers running GNU-Social and and 200 Friendica and 3,900 for Mastodon but Mastodon is microblogging a la twitter.

Visual

THIS

NOT THIS

Pretty good representation in that second pic with all roads leading to Silicon Valley. Also makes one think of the United Stated compared to communism or a monarchy which has a single State. Speaking of monarchy, even though we have alternative social networks like gab, parler, mewe etc, it's still one entity running the show and now we have a larger entity shutting down parler so maybe it's more like feudalism in a sense. This Distributed Social Networking gives control back to the people. I don't know Andrew Torba other than he runs gab. He could end up not being a good guy and get busted for something and have everything taken away, including gab. He could have health or family issues and just give up on gab. Then all the members are SOL. Same with Parler or anyone else that's not a huge, publicly traded org with a board of directors and/or investors.

[Pollard]

Nicely done.

[Pollard]

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3924224/posts?page=33#33

[Paul R.]

That is ok for the IT savvy, or even sorta savvy, but 60 million Trump supporters’ eyes glaze...

The only way it’s gonna work is, for average users:

Simple link to a simple sign-in (or sign-up) page.

Once logged in, simple, user friendly GIU. There’s really not THAT much wrong with FR’s, except that if this is to serve as more than just a political connectivity vehicle, to help bring in users, something a little more up to date may be needed.

That said, no knowledge of HTML, command line, etc., should be needed. (Gad, I tire of having to add paragraph breaks every time there is other HTML in a post I’m writing.)

Link to forum rules posted prominently on home page.

I could live with non-intrusive ads if need be.

[alexander_busek]

So Big Tech Wants To Shut Us Down. They Must Have Short Memories

Because...?

I am not a tech geek, so keep it simple! What is the gist of your essay? Big Tech won't be able to shut down regular Internet-users (who lack advanced skills) because...?

Regards,

[WinMod70]

“How did big tech get so much power over the internet? Did they buy it? Did they just take it? How?”

Actually, yes they did buy it; one politician at a time.

Also, since Algore invented the internet it was destined to thwart Conservatives.

[sauropod]

I remember NewsNet.

Of course I’m old enough to have actually *used* punch cards for programming.

[trebb]

Took me back with the Agent - what would you recommend for binary newsgroups...a lot of the music groups have so many articles (songs) that most newsreaders I have tried get bogged down.