What I seem to be seeing is that the 'googles', 'microsofts' and 'facebooks' are moving fast to be able to not only make money but control lines of thought and communication.
It seems as though (Even reading Agit Pai) that we are heading to a place where we will be charged for data use and bandwidth as customers, website proprietors will be charged to put their content up and the big players at the top will not only control the priority of what we can find, but they will be able to slow a site such as this down to an unbearable speed while Politico and Axios move at hyperspeed.
Am I getting lost in seeing a growing potential for censorship?
If so, does either option protect against thought control?
No, you're spot on, as far as I can see...
Consider and study:
All the internet data centers are mostly centralized or concentrated regionally. Consider how they are set to merge and exert market control as soon as barriers are taken down for them to move forward as they wish.
Study decentralized newcomers like BitChute (https://www.bitchute.com) and others like them, especially how they are ideal for countering unconstitutional censorship an for promoting continued free unfettered access.
Study how front groups that are created, financed, propped up by Wall St. (Facebook), CIA (Amazon), Deep State (NGA, NSA for Google, etc.), how they and their affiliates, contractors, partners are rushing to file patent applications on the software and technology used by BitChute and similar upstarts. (Note: patent applications are being made for related software and technology, not the underlying foundational technology; these related beleaguering ‘nuisance’ patents can be used to set roadblocks to any entities that are not ‘part of the club’ aka market barriers aka free market restrictions.)
Consider Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. Does it work? Does it allow for commerce? Is it regulated at the federal or state level or both? Are its users subject to federal or state enforcement? Are state, local, private roads and related facilities allowed to exist apart from the interstate system? (Yes, of course). Keep asking all these questions of the Eisenhower interstate system to teach yourself all the questions and issues of its governance and operation. Ask yourself counterquestions such as would the Eisenhower interstate system have been better if it had been left to private companies to develop?
Take all these questions and issues to regular meetups of like-minded persons and start discussions.
Take the original legislation for Eisenhower’s interstate highway system, print it out and mark it up as a crude draft of a Trump National Internet.
Now for a more ambitious effort. After you and your meetup group have mapped out issues and strategies for this very important subject (which goes to the heart of our constitutional rights), having taught yourselves and attained a broad brush political expertise, having understood the long-term threat to free expression and association, quickly select a leader to write Betsy DeVos in the Trump Administration and ask for an appointment to discuss what your citizen’s group has come up.
Betsy DeVos should be very receptive to how your group’s knowledge and vision can ensure children, and especially children in rural areas, especially as digital schools are expanded (btw digital schools are very successful), how a Trump National Internet (TNI) would resolve the debate about promoting new technology while preserving rights.
Betsy DeVos is a great place to start. Be sure to have a draft of TNI legislation for her office to review and present at Cabinet meetings with the President. If the President likes it, he can have it proposed to Congress.
Although Betsy DeVos is heading up the Dept of Educ. which many of us conservatives are not enamored with in principle as a cabinet-level group, she can take this as a prime mission to hand off to Dept. of Commerce or wherever the President decides to land it.
The President is extremely pro-education while keeping an eye on making sure the states have the lion’s share of educational policy-making. But he is also cognizant of his role as Chief Executive to leverage the nation’s technical resources (such as NASA) into the growing, successful digital schools. He can also allocate legal resources in the USPTO to eviscerate nuisance patents that serve technical and regional oligarchs.
It’s a big job but the time to strike is now.
What can we learn from history?
Cellular telephones were invented by ATT’s Bell Labs in NJ in 1948. Of course, batteries were very big. So they were called “car phones”. The FCC greatly restricted what ATT could do with them because they were a monopoly. And why were they a monopoly? My 5th grade social studies book said because it was too expensive for multiple companies to compete. Beside that text was a picture of a town in Kansas with a massive number of telephone poles and wires of 7 competing phone companies. So the picture of successful competition contradicted the socialist text of my 5th grade textbook in the 1950s.
In 1979 Jimmy Carter’s Judge Green broke up ATT into the Baby Bells. But still, the FCC would not allow ATT, or NYNEX, or Ameritech, nor any baby bell from using their patents. So Bell Labs sold the patents to Motorola.
Motorola had a headstart on cell phones. They locked in airtight contracts with the BabyBells to deliver the celltowers. Motorola had the newest and best chip factory in AZ. The cellphone division in IL just assumed their sister in AZ would send them all the chips they needed. So Motorola invested big in Cellular and told AZ: “OK, Send us the chips”. AZ replied “What chips. We read a book on how to prepare for the bad times ahead. So we mothballed 80% of our brand new factory.”
While Motorola Cellular had their halls and cafeteria filled with equipment just waiting for the chips, competitors took most of their market share and Motorola was stuck paying penalties for non-performance to not only the Cell phone companies, but also to Apple as Motorola could not perform on its contract to deliver chips for the McIntosh and had to pay penalties for that.
So the Baby Bells grew. Sprint grew. Yet they are now threatened by google and Comcast. And Comcast is threatened by google. And google is threatened by the next wave.
The goal of net neutrality is to protect the existing players from unfair competition from new cowboys who might try to turn technology into the wild, wild west again.
The fight is not between the various current players. The fight is between the current players and the players who don’t yet have names. The current players might be fighting over the slices of the pie. But they are united in fighting against new players seeking a slice of the pie. They do not want the size of the pie to increase because it will not benefit them.
The current players want to turn the new startups into a farm team that they can buy up once the farm team has proven itself. They do not want a farm team to think that it can become an independent major league team, equal to or better or bigger than existing players.
Nope, not even here. 🤡