this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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What I believe is in freedom of the internet. As in everyone should be able to access it and no one should be able to police what is on it. Complete free flow of information. Reddit should exist in the state that it does and lemmy should be there to counter balance it and no nation state should be able to say "no, we only allow one of these". This doesn't undermine any existing legal frameworks mind you. For example: distribution of underage pornography is still a crime almost everywhere and those who operate such sites are fair game for prosecution.
I get this may be too radical of an idea for some, but I truly believe education is the key to information literacy, not censorship.
This just means rich individuals decide what people see instead of states. It doesn't result in education.
No they don't. If I don't want to see what Reddit wants me to see, I just switch to Lemmy instead. Reddit cannot ban Lemmy. But if the state had censorship powers, they could ban Lemmy.
I think its the same problem with the press on TV and print form. Rich individuals can buy up all press outlets and control the narrative. Its hard (and restrictive) to broadcast on TV and print. On the internet, at least the freedom to publish and access information has a low barrier to entry. A rich individual may buy one lemmy instance, can they buy them all? Can they buy its successor? The lower barrier and less restrictive nature of the internet (or how it should be) is too fast moving for them to compete imo. All the states need to do is educate people on how to consume media correctly.
Yes, easily. Additionally, they can control the search engines which lead there or not, the commonly used platforms for code sharing so that development is more difficult, and so forth. They have an incredible advantage through economy of scale. The barrier to entry for putting any information on the internet may not be very high, but making it findable and accessible has a very high barrier, and relies on corporate-controlled platforms.
I think the better question is will they be able to buy them all. Buying implies the other party is willing to sell.
Its true that this information will be harder to access if not indexed properly, but word of mouth is a good backup for that. I didn't find lemmy from google, someone (non corporate entity) posted a link to it somewhere. Now, that 'somewhere' may be corporate controlled and ban certain links but I'd argue that will just split the internet into two (a corporate side and "free" side) with little cooperation between them and I don't think anyone will be able to keep people from either side - as long as the internet remains neutral.
I think its just too hard to completely control information unless you are a nation state (and even then).
This isn't a new idea though, it was the "hacker" ethos of the 90s. Most nerds believed in that. But it was wrong because we do need to limit hate speech. Because racist speech is racist recruitment. And we do need to limit the influence of plutocrats and corporations on information.
I also believe neoliberalism is a failed and genocidal ideology that should similarly be banned like advocating for fascism.
Like the other commenter pointed out the other problem is the massive power imbalance. They have billions and they crush us. It doesn't matter if something is right or wrong if billions are spend to hire the smartest sociopaths to craft an ad or PR campaign to emotionally manipulate the masses.
And the truth matters. We have a fundamental human right to reality. Constantly amplifying bullshit for revenue makes the actual flow of important information and ideas impossible.
OK?