Technology

When we talk about fixing the internet, we’re not referring to the physical and digital network infrastructure: the protocols, the exchanges, the cables, and even the satellites themselves are mostly okay.

Yes we are, just look at DKIM and similar. Their noble purpose is to protect from spam, but in reality it's a way to monopolize email. Here's a casualty.

The internet’s original sin was an insistence on freedom: it was made to be free, in many senses of the word.

My first reaction is Hell yeah! but servers do use paid electricity.

When the internet began to be built out commercially in the 1990s, its culture was, perversely, anticommercial. [...] This ethos also extended to a passion for freedom of speech, and a sense of responsibility to protect it. It just so happened that those people were quite often affluent white men in California, whose perspective failed to predict the dark side of the free-speech, free-access havens they were creating.

Ah... so it's that kind of article.

It’s targeting that makes people think their phones are listening in on their conversations; in reality, it’s more that the data trails we leave behind become road maps to our brains.

In reality there has been more than one occasion where researchers have proven that indeed mics are used as data points, especially in the likes home assistants.

As an individual, if you see [hate speech], you can just leave

No, if you post something on the fediverse that mildy offends someone, somewhere, for whatever reason (even if you're not targeting anyone specifically or the one who's complaining isn't the targeted one), then your post gets reported and the instance admins will at the very least delete the post, or just delete your account (that's a 50/50). Unless, of course, you belong to a perceived minority, then you can do what the hell ever you want.

I can't really take this article seriously, then again it's MIT, the killers or Aaron Swartz, so...