Chuck Todd: The race to build a better internet — before it's too late
Chuck Todd: The race to build a better internet — before it's too late
Analysis: A new book proposes a framework for the internet that would give consumers more control over their own personal data.
While I truly hope something is done on the US side, I am much more hopeful that the EU will be able to arrive to such a solution in a reasonable time.
They would definitely be the most likely to lead the way.
Unfortunately for us, unlike with hardware requirements like USB-C, software restrictions likely wouldn't cross the pond.
They still break new ground globally. The DMA/DSA has Japan follow the EU's lead for example, and the more countries adopt better regulations, the more the US gets pressured to follow.
Wow - while I sympathize with their goals, this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Internet works. They need to restrict and govern corporate entities, not the Internet itself.
I haven't read the book but as far as I gather they aren't proposing to restrict the internet as it is, but rather make digital rights for consumers to be able to control and own the data that is given to third parties.
So Google for instance can't say like "we'll give you this for free but you have to give us your data". Instead, you'd probably need to pay directly for Gmail for instance or Google would have to pay you for access to your data. Either option might be better than what we have today.
Wow, cool, even NBC is catching on to the Fediverse now?
... nope, it's just another blockchain fueled social media system, the main use of which so far seems to be as a haven for QAnon types (according to Wikipedia,) rapidly burning up venture capital. Good luck to them, I guess.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
What if the big tech companies achieved their ultimate business goal — maximizing engagement on their platforms — in a way that has undermined our ability to function as an open society?
"It has failed to function as a trusted, neutral exchange of facts and ideas and has therefore catastrophically hindered our ability to gather respectfully to debate, to compromise and to hash out solutions.
The book opens with a challenge, similar to the rhetoric of the 1700s in Colonial America: “Do we want to envision, write and be in charge of a future in which we are respected as individuals and in which we can enhance and enrich our society?
We will install cameras and other monitoring systems in every room of your house, including your bedroom, as well as in your car, and we will use all the information we gather from them to decide what among our product offerings, and those of our clients, to bombard you with pitches for.
That's why McCourt, through an organization he founded called Project Liberty, is trying to build our new internet with new protocols that make individual data management a lot easier and second nature.
This week on the Chuck ToddCast from NBC News, Laura Jarrett and Lawrence Hurley look at how the Trump trials are stretching the court system.
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I'm pretty skeptical about how much fundamental change is possible on this issue. So long as we give consumers a choice, the overwhelming evidence is that most people dgaf about their data, and are willing to trade it away.
This is a totally free exchange. Even when you plant the choice in front of users as an obnoxious and intrusive accept-cookies prompt, they'll happily click Accept All even for sketchy websites (let alone something like Gmail). So you end up wasting everyone's time for little benefit.
A common response to this is to mull heavy-handed centralized government controls, like how China regulates its internet giants. But this would be a decisive move away from the entire idea of a decentralized internet. People pushing such legislation often retort that it's possible to pick off the internet giants while leaving smaller operators alone, but this seems like a forlorn hope. Google and Meta already signalled that they are not concerned about EU data laws, because they have so much internal data, and the regulations could even entrench their dominance by preventing other players from catching up.
Easy answer: kick companies the fuck off the Internet, make internet service a public utility, and provide tax supported services for the most important functions (payments, medical records, SEARCH, etc)
Where will the tax money come from? Well nowhere, the Pentagon is too busy blowing it on wars and hiding aliens. This won't happen because we don't get things like this because companies are too busy innovating civilians into shitty lives.