For months, Google has maintained that the web is “thriving,” AI isn’t tanking traffic, and its search engine is sending people to a wider variety of websites than ever. But in a court filing from last week, Google admitted that “the open web is already in rapid decline” (with regard to advertising, kinda-sorta)
I miss the old internet. Thanks capitalists
Late stage capitalism ftw
Late stage cancer is still cancer.
Yup, it wouldn’t have gotten to late stage if it was treated before it went metastatic
Maybe just a liittle cancer until we get smartphones and then we can nip it in the bud and ooops why is everyone mad oh no why are all the animals dying I just wanted to scroll for gods sake
You got internet because of capitalists as well.
Came out of government-funded research actually. Back when we could still achieve scientific feats on behalf of our country.
It was private at that time. My point is that it spread so quickly to millions of people worldwide because of capitalists specifically the telecom companies and ISPs stepping in. Without them, the internet could never have developed on such a scale.
No it wasn’t
First connections were between universities. Tim Berners-Lee at CERN then came up with web pages to easier share information
There was nothing capitalist about the internet back then
Talk about a (hazy) grey area…
https://www.secretboston.co/blog/weed-the-first-online-sale-ever-unpacking-an-ecommerce-legend
We all know how it came to be, you didn’t get the point but it’s okay.
I did get the point
I’m telling you that your point is wrong
Cool, I think it’s correct and to pretend that it’s otherwise won’t help when you’re in the search for truth. We can agree to disagree.
The telecom companies got paid by the government to do it, they just as easily could have paid themselves to do it but we as a society are allergic to the idea of taking money out of the hands of poor billionaires and their potential profits
That doesn’t undermine my argument that it was ultimately because of the capitalists that the internet spread in the first place.
It does undermine your argument though, because you are saying that it only spread because of capitalists. I’m telling you it spread because of government funding and capitalists were just the medium by which the funding was used. The capitalist part is replaceable and unnecessary.
It doesn’t work just by you saying it. According to multiple sources, the government clearly didn’t want to fund commercial internet and largely backed out during the 90s.
It doesn’t matter if you think it’s replaceable, I can make that claim too. What matters is what actually happened in reality.
Could you explain how it doesn’t undermine your argument?
Clarified here
And how would you know without the internet being developed under a different system at the time?
That’s not an argument. I don’t need to speculate on hypotheticals when reality already proves the point.
The internet would not have existed without government investment. Back when the idea of the internet was being floated around in the early 1960s the US government did contact every major telecom company in the country snd all flat out refused meaning the government had to publically foot the bill (and the work).
No, capitalists would never, ever have invented the internet.
And I never said that they invented the internet.
No, but you implied it, and you also implied that the reason we have it grow as it did is because of the government. This is bullshit. Capitalists did not invent that or the system anymore than they would have invented telegraphy, radio, telephones, and other such stuff. Even shit like the telephone was done initially out of a ‘hey do you think it can be done?’ by Alexander Graham Bell (And yes, I am sure you will bring up Elisha Grey and the race to the patent office, but even that is irrelevant).
You are speculating on hypotheticals though, since no one can know for certain how things would have unfolded in a different world.
I’m not even going to argue that capitalism doesn’t get you some positive outcomes for certain people.
How am I speculating when my argument is based on reality?
You’re speculating that an internet wouldn’t have emerged without capitalism. Capitalism exists, therefore we can’t know if that’s true or not.
We got internet thanks to scientists and engineers. No amount of capitalists, politicians, managers or business people can create an internet. They say ‘here’s some money to make stuff’ and that’s the limit of their involvement.
already clarified here
You could make the argument that nothing can be achieved without being able to dedicate the time required. That was the miracle of the agricultural revolution, we could do something with our time other than gather food. If you said ‘we got the internet thanks to farmers’ that would be indisputable, everything flowed from that. I don’t see why an internet couldn’t emerge in other economic contexts because internet technology depends on physics and those laws transcend any and all economic systems. We already know this because almost every jurisdiction has the internet.
The influence of capitalism on the internet has been a mixed bag. e-commerce: good. App ecosystem: ranging from good to addiction health crisis. Walled gardens and enshitification: bad. Misinformation and radicalisation of political groups: dire, potentially an existential threat.
And why not? Philosophically, a strong argument can be made that the Agricultural Revolution laid the groundwork for everything we know today, including the internet. I don’t see why admitting that would be a problem as it’s simply the truth.
I never disputed that it couldn’t be done, but it’s still a hypothetical. The reality is that capitalists stepped in, and the internet spread like wildfire. Could it be done in other scenarios? Maybe. But pointing out reality shouldn’t be inconvenient.
Everything has positives and negatives, everything is a mixed bag. People try to label everything in black and white boxes but reality is mostly gray. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that the internet is in people’s hands because of capitalism.
TIL DARPANet wasn’t a government funded project… \s