The Washington Post has a major editorial this midweek
fall morning, “The Internet’s Tilt Toward Tyranny” with the tagline, “The Web has
gotten less free for nine years in a row”, link. Online the wording uses a gerund: “The
Internet Is Tilting Toward Tyranny”. Or "slouching toward tyranny", like "slouching toward Gomorrah" (Judge Bork).
The editorial notes that many people are selling out
and saying what governments or influential groups will pay them to say. I see some of that in my own email and it is
disturbing. (A company in Shenzhen, China emailed me about a month ago that it
would pay me to run an article about its shipping service.)
In retrospect, it sounds amazing that when the
Internet started, we didn’t get how empowering the Individual to reach the entire
world through search engines without gatekeepers would change politics and
society.
Here is a morally relevant tweet by “The Decolonial
Atlas”. I am supposed to be responsible for my own
participation in the fruits of historical exploitation of native lands (sure,
and for historical dependence on slavery and segregation, I guess).
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