Hoping that Google/YouTube will fail, could help to destroy the best
of the Internet
I'm seeing a lot of people apparently rooting for Google /YouTube to
fail, to be split apart by the government, to be intensely regulated
and otherwise subject to massive fines and other actions.
It's difficult to emphasize how shortsighted a viewpoint this is, for
among the pantheon of Big Tech, on balance Google is very much a good
guy, and one of the last bastions against what amounts to a horrific
takeover of the Internet by government, a takeover that is being
pushed by politicians on the Right and the Left.
Is Google perfect? Of course not. Hell, there are aspects of Google
I've complained about for many years, and pushed back on both publicly
and during those periods that I was working inside.
But most of the complaints about Google/YT (ads, Play Store, etc.)
have become overblown politically-motivated excuses to try
micro-control content.
Google is bending over backwards to build an ad ecosystem that can
still provide advertisers with enough info to be useful without
risking people's privacy. But that's not enough for many observers.
They don't want any ads. They don't want even anonymous "tracking"
that can't possibly hurt users. Seemingly, they want everything for
free. And often they tout the tired old "you are the product" mantra
that was never true but is so often blindly parroted.
Meanwhile, government is on the cusp of imposing vast new tracking --
tied to government IDs -- requirements on the Internet in the name of
"protecting the children" -- potentially turning the Internet in the
U.S. into a nightmare clone of China's Internet regime, where you can
end up in prison for accessing the wrong site.
You think it couldn't happen here? Think again. Pay attention to what
the politicians are saying and the laws being passed in various
states -- and the cases before the Supreme Court right now!
Most people who use the Net don't have a clue how much they could
lose, and how quickly, if these government efforts succeed. They have
been seduced by political rhetoric and are standing on the edge of a
cliff that they don't even realize exists.
And unless this changes immediately, you can likely kiss most of the
best of the Internet goodbye. -L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
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