Comment by fhennig
3 days ago
Maybe it's a nitpick, but
> The reality is that the internet has become decentralized
What the author seems to mean is that internet _culture_ has become fragmented ("decentralized").
The internet (servers etc) always was decentralized by design. And the web built on top of it (commonly referred to as the internet) certainly hasn't become decentralized, rather it got more centralized.
It's unfortunate that the language isn't used precisely here, I think.
It's a newspaper, not a technical publication. I think most of its readers would correctly understand references to "the internet" to be referring to internet culture/community rather than the servers that host it.
Okay, maybe I was overly technical. I'd still say that the average reader maybe reads 'the internet' as 'the websites I browse', so I still think the language isn't good. I think it makes sense to talk about "internet culture" instead of just "the internet", that level of distinction isn't really too technical, right?
To me it's important because "the internet" meaning the sites we browse, has become incredibly centralized! It's not helpful then to say the exact opposite. And I'd also argue that this centralization, as it went along with algorithmic content distribution, is exactly the reason for the fragmentation that the article talks about.
I think there is a missed opportunity there to write a few sentences about this.