Comment by athrowaway3z
10 days ago
I'm not sure this old horror story still works. The things to be afraid of have changed too much and at a far larger scale than people then could comprehend.
The "temporary anomaly" is one of perception. It was individuals talking to individuals. In terms of volume the world has never had this much free flow of information, and its never been easier to transmit encrypted data within a group.
At the same time the problem with letting the internet be without government means it pushes digital crack to all children, and an oligarchy of (natural) monopolies tightly control certain powers through systems like "sign in with Google".
The options for companies to instead use a government backed digital identity seems like an obvious step forward if designed carefully enough.
That requires the right mindfullness of people's rights, eg the right story. I just don't think the war on the free-internet narrative from 30 years ago is up for it.
But the "digital crack" isn't what the government wants to restrict from children.
They want to stop children from accessing porn, which really isn't all that bad. Certainly it's not nearly as bad as wasting hours on perfectly legal social media and streaming sites