Comment by thekyle
5 years ago
Yes, in practice you always have to rely on someone. Even before the internet you'd have to rely on the USPS to carry your letters.
Unless you are physically speaking to someone in person, then there is always a middleman.
Well you can always just create your own courier. If you want true free speech these days you need to build your own stack from the ground up anyway.
This is well outside of the practical capabilities of anyone but a nation state or large commercial entity. Even then, it's hard. It's more practical for a physical letter than for digital stuff. For a digital service, you'd have to go down to cabling infrastructure or take something like the SpaceX route and launch satellites. If you need something between a few nearby buildings, it's more practical to come up with a solution, but anything further out ... you're kind of stuck.
(Your ISP classifies as a middle man as well...)
We Await Silent Tristero's Empire
Beat me to it.
Paranoia is not new.
> you can always create your own courier
It is illegal to compete with USPS to deliver letters.
AFAIK there are exceptions for express couriers, which is why you can still use fedex/ups to delivery documents.
...but you can delivery boxes...?
so put mail in boxes?
I mean, there's DHL, Fedex, and others...
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You start by creating the universe...
Oh? Is the government interfering in your ability to say what you would like to say in an online space?
I really detest this kind of attitude. Yes, the government is NOT restricting what you can say in an online space. But at the same time, there is no government platform I can speak from. They're not stopping me from saying what I want but they're also not giving me a platform.
Why are we giving corporate entities a pass on tyranny? It's not like restricting people's liberties is only something the government can do.
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the difference here though is that physically you can at least own the address, but even your digital address isn't actually yours. Phone, email, ip and whatnot are all provided by someone else and can be taken away.
Domains can be stolen, deprecated or simply restricted from your use.
> physically you can at least own the address
No, a town owns an address and rents it to you. If something goes wrong with the billing you get evicted, if they want a mall they forcibly "buy" it from you.
There's no resource you can count on in this way. Resources get reallocated at some point.
Well, the USPS has renamed towns before. Ask Waimea, Hawaii Island, Hawaii.