Bonum Certa Men Certa

Internet Companies Are Becoming De Facto Governments and There Are Almost No Laws and Constitutions to Regulate Them

An important conundrum we'll need to talk more and more about in the coming years



Summary: Techrights videos about Internet policy will likely become a regular feature/topic; it seems abundantly clear that over time (at an accelerated pace when people are stuck at home due to a pandemic) Internet companies are becoming like unaccountable and unelected governments; working around them is becoming difficult and subjected to retaliation/deterrence tactics

OUR prediction, which seems like a rather safe prediction, is that censorious tendencies will rapidly increase with corporate media manufacturing consent for it (using straw man arguments and scare tactics). That being the case, last year we did a lot of work towards making Techrights a decentralised site which is difficult to censor. No ClownFlare or Twitter or any of that other outsourced nonsense. Google's YouTube is also increasingly censoring entire channels, sometimes based on what viewers are doing rather than what the producers of the videos say or do. It'll get worse as social control mechanisms are "sold" to us as absolutely necessary for some perceived "safety" (usually keeping the powerful people in their position of privilege; see Putin's response to recent revelations, culminating in many arrests and assassination attempts against journalists).

To carefully separate the general issue from my personal issue [1, 2, 3, 4] I will attempt to only speak in general terms (and in broader context) about the underlying issues [1, 2] because quite a few companies are silently and covertly attacking Net Neutrality (NN) in an effort to superficially shape the face of the Web and the Internet as a whole. Nobody holds them accountable. In the US, the media at least talk about it, sometimes (it extends to related issues like zero-rating). Based on my research, many people have been having the same problems; those who have not will inevitably notice the same and it's just a question of time. Companies try to discourage in-depth exploration into their tactics, sometimes by settlement.

Last month when Parler got banned by pretty much every company (as if every user of the platform was culpable and everyone needed to be collectively punished rather than the culprits and offenders surgically removed) the media rushed to paint what Parler claims to be as many as 8 million people as seditious nazis. What an incredible over-simplification. Google used similarly-awful reductionist 'logic' to ban Element (that's what happens when people come to rely on centralised 'stores' and a platform controlled by one single company), so the slippery slope is now well behind us. This is becoming a norm...

Sharing, decentralisation and federation are being equated with "crime" and/or "suspicious activity" as if anything not controlled by governments or companies that are de facto informants of the governments must be banned and discriminated against at the least.

This morning I spent an hour arguing with BT. This is a high escalation point (management) after nearly a month of telephone disputes (I've lost track of how much time/effort was invested in it, but certainly over 24 hours all in all). To finally speak to them (they made excuses and didn't phone back on time) I had to skip breakfast, delay exercise, and sit in the cold (literally). But I don't mind it much anymore; this issue isn't just about me. They throttle people's lines, I know this for a fact now, and they do this in retaliation for certain traffic types. Obviously they don't want to acknowledge that as that might lead to class action. I demanded a new letter with factual details (it's part of the evidence) and I am going ahead with a formal complaint (forwarded publicly and relayed over time; it's an Ofcom/ombudsman complaint, which is not confidential and is in the public interest). The interesting thing is that they still want to pretend there's no throttling and they're even sending out hardware and engineers just to claim that someone is "working to resolve" the issue, somehow.

But enough about my situation; what we have here raises many concerns about the future of the Internet, VPNs aside (they too aren't guaranteed to offer what they claim). They harvest packets (DPI), they censor lots of stuff, and they even refuse or slow down particular types of traffic. It's not about copyrights, it is about power. Companies like BT are protecting foreign monopolies and a centralised Internet, including peer-to-peer botnets like Windows Update (apparently some decentralisation is "better" or more "benign" than others). To suppress proper investigations those faceless and barely accountable corporations relay complaints/issues to less and less technical staff. They become "polite corporations" with no technical knowledge to avoid having to argue about the actual substance and facts. They barely even escalate internally. They persist with "sales" and "products" and attempts at settlement (e.g. settling with one-off compensation payment). They don't try to actually tackle the issue of high-priority lanes (or fast lanes) and they've resorted to collective punishment over a relatively miniscule share of the network's capacity (less than 5%). Who's going to stop them? What's going to stop them?

There are many "big issues" at hand here. It's not even about BT or about my experience. It's not about COVID-19, either (they'll likely carry on doing this after the worst of this pandemic 'blows over'). This is a fight over how information is delivered over the Internet or how the network is structured in practice. They want people to hit "like" buttons like a bunch of pigeons and get farmed like cattle. The last thing they want is people contacting one another over the network directly. Their latest routers have no option for password-free login (for local Wi-Fi; it used to be an option) and by default they use a firewall that prevents incoming connections. They stubbornly warn about turning that off. I saw that for myself a fortnight ago. It's only getting more and more restrictive every year and even some VPN services become incompatible with such gear (half a decade ago, for example, OpenVPN stopped working with the latest router/hub -- apparently a common and known issue, as documented online).

Right from the start I told BT (on every call) that they had been throttling me, only to have my line disconnected to "test the line" (almost 20 times all in all) and then some gaslighting, denying the simple observations. Shallow attempt to exhaust the client, making it seem like an isolated case? Cult tactics?

Microsoft is a lot like a cult, as a former insider recently noted. One person recently took note of Microsoft cult isolation tactics[1,2]. "Cults often use isolation tactics to gain control over its victims," said the person.

"Shallow attempt to exhaust the client, making it seem like an isolated case?""One method that Microsoft uses for that has long been to change the name of technologies away from standard and or traditional names to ones referenced only in Microsoft documentation. No reference to the real names is ever given, so that the cult victims become isolated and thus much more controllable." _____

  1. Isolation to facilitate abuse - Wikipedia


  2. Cult Indoctrination | HowStuffWorks

Recent Techrights' Posts

From EPO to "MAGA Regime": A Shift Away From Reality to Fake News and False Metrics
Disbelief in itself isn't a bad thing; but the problem is that people are taught to believe rich people in suits more than they believe others
Skype is Officially Dead Today and This is Why People Should Use Free Software Instead (Goodbye, Microsoft)
It's also a good reminder of why people should move to GNU/Linux
'Simple Articles' in MyGemini Just One of Many New 'Sites' in Geminispace
Geminispace has grown fast lately; it's turning 6 next month
SUSE the Company Now Uses LLM Slop to 'Write' Its Blog, What Does That Tell Us About SUSE?
There are many giveaways
 
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part I: Hiding Behind Lawyers (or Guns for Hire) After Abusing Many People and Even Strangling Women While Microsoft Paid Salaries
This whole thing is very typical of the Microsoft and Bill Gates mindset
Links 05/05/2025: TikTok Still a Romanian Woe/Foe, Signal Perils Showing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/05/2025: Debian and GNOME and a "Welcome to Simple Articles"
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2025: US Economy Shrinks, US Presidency Spreading Deepfakes
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2025: Breaches, Environment, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Richard Stallman is in Alicante Today to Give a Talk, Czech Republic in Two Days (Wednesday)
Of course he can deliver the talk in Spanish
Gemini Links 05/05/2025: XL Bullies and Luddites
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 04, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, May 04, 2025
Links 04/05/2025: Science, Conflicts, and Monopolies
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Above 7% in Bulgaria, Rising Just Like in Most of Europe
Up to 7%, not counting Chromebooks
Data Shows Largest EU Economies Shifting to GNU/Linux
all-time highs
statCounter Says Only One in 6 Web-Connected Clients in Hungary Are Using Windows, iOS Almost Bigger Than Windows Now
Hungary is a cautionary tale in the world of European (or Russian) politics
Many Reports About Microsoft's Financial Report/Performance Are False, Fake News, Churnalism/Parroting, and LLM Slop (Machine-Generated Lies)
Even if you see a thousand sites saying that Microsoft is performing well ask yourself why the company is rushing to fire tens of thousands of workers and cancelling datacentres
Links 04/05/2025: FCC Turning Into MAGA’s Censoring Machine, SEC Pressured to Delist Chinese Companies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/05/2025: Historical Artifacts and Date Calculations in POSIX Shell
Links for the day
In the First 3 Months of 2025 GAFAM Debt Rose by More Than $14.4 Billion
That's based on their official statements
10-Step Strategy to Get BRETT WILSON LLP ("Gun for Hire"), Microsoft's Serial Strangler, and the Serial Defamer to Compensate Techrights and Tux Machines for Years of SLAPPs and Abusive Litigation
There's no room or capacity for forgiveness here; enablers and protectors of crime need to be scuttled and pay up in full
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 03, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, May 03, 2025
Microsoft's Debt Grew 2.1 Billion Dollars in the Past 3 Months Alone or 8.2 Billion in the Past Half a Year
That's very different from what the mainstream press tells the public, including shareholders
Happy 20th Birthday to OpenDocument Format (ODF)
nowadays many companies use "online" "webapps" to collaborate on various things
Links 03/05/2025: Amazon and Apple Problems (the A's in GAFAM), Hard to Hide Any Longer; Australia’s Election
Links for the day
Why Law Firms and Courts in Particular Should Dump Microsoft
Giving a notoriously corrupt and chronically law-breaking company control over one's systems and data is a recipe for disaster
Gemini Links 03/05/2025: Showerhead Mod and Micro Dosing on LSD
Links for the day
Links 03/05/2025: Bribery in Dutch Microsoft DC Probe, Zuckerberg Conflates Slop With 'Friends'
Links for the day
Passkeys Are Vendor Lock-in and Imperialism, Not Security, So Escape Them Before They Latch Onto Your Workflows
This is their 'grand vision' of computing. You merely 'rent' what you assumed you truly bought to own.
Today is World Press Freedom Day, 3rd of May
2025 World Press Freedom Day
Gemini Protocol's Momentum Ahead of Its 6th Anniversary (Next Month)
The more capsules go online, the more people participate in writing, not just reading
Corporate Media, a Cheerleader of Wall Street Facade, Spent Days Saying "META" and "MSFT" Lifted "the Market", But Their Debt Soared
Facebook's debt has never been higher
Microsoft Windows Falls to a Meager 9% "Market Share" in South Africa While GNU/Linux Rises Above 5% in Desktops/Laptops
South Africa is where the founder of Ubuntu (or Canonical) comes from
Let's Put Slop In the Casket Once and for All (Call Out the Sites and People Who Produce and Spread Slop)
Together, through a movement of integrity and solidarity, we can marginalise the spread of slop in all its forms, including code
Windows Down in the Largest Countries, Microsoft Cannot Dodge This Reality Forever
Talking about "clown" and "hey hi" (AI) - sometimes "Quantum" - is like telling bedtime stories to infantile investors who don't understand those buzzwords
Links 03/05/2025: Australian Election and manpage for Gemini Considered
Links for the day
Links 03/05/2025: UK Arrests for Bribery Connected to Microsoft Datacentres
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 02, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, May 02, 2025