Averting the Internet's Great Decline

We don't quite know how we got here, but we did. As we sit in dismay amid the World Wide Web's Great Decline, our mindset is one of resignation. But history tells us that resignation has a threshold, and what comes next, is action...

Government and smaller enterprise has taken a stance of pandering to abusers like Microsoft, Google and Amazon, because there's an incentive to do so. But if providing the public with a means of escape becomes more profitable than sucking up to the abuser... Well, not even monopolists can fight the lure of money...

In October 2023, the broadband and telephone landline provider I was using at that time flushed an eighteen month contract renewal down the toilet.

I called them to renew; they demanded a mobile phone number. I told them they did not need a mobile phone number to renew a broadband and landline contract I'd had with them since 2015, at a stable address, with reliable payment, and to which a mobile phone was entirely irrelevant. Nevertheless, they insisted that they couldn't process the renewal without a mobile number. So I ended the call, went straight online, and switched my contract to another provider.

Over eighteen months, the money the old provider is now losing would obviously not be trivial, and I immediately began to consider the sanity, or otherwise, of a company preferring to lose that money rather than accept that a customer was not going to give them a mobile phone number that wasn't in any way relevant to the contract.

I wondered if the contact centre agent was new and didn't understand the system. I wondered if the company saw itself making more money from the sale of one mobile phone number than it would make from an eighteen month phone and broadband contract. Both options somehow seemed unlikely.

In the end, I concluded that the company knew it would lose a large amount of money in cases like mine, but that the collective value of the additional mobile numbers it would harvest by insisting that everyone provided them, would easily outweigh the losses that the business incurred from the minority who refused.

THE ERA OF DATA-BOUNTY

Whatever the truth, this would not have happened had the surveillance industry not established a culture of data-bounty. AKA, collect data you don't need, because it will be worth something to someone, so it's ultimately no different from collecting a £20 note, or two, or three, or... Depends whose data it is.

The two data disciplines have amalgamated into some grotesque quest to clone us all and then rent out our clones at £1 per hour as virtual service clerks. There's a reason why tech giants have been pushing everyone towards video and remote conferencing.

The aggressiveness of these data demands has now reached the level of extortion, and given that certain types of data do instantly convert to money, demands with significant menaces are extortion. For example, tech giants locking accounts containing life-critical information, without reason or valid explanation, and demanding monetisable data to restore access. Without fair warning, that is using severe menaces to procure monetary gain, which is a criminal offence. Literal extortion. But in the current climate of corporate anarchy, no one is going to jail, so it's not going to stop.

In the longer term, however, the "give 'em enough rope" principle looks highly likely to kick in. As elite tech corporations are given more and more licence to abuse, they eventually amass a length of rope which is long enough for them to "hang themselves".

ALL OPPRESSION HAS A TURNING POINT

One of the problems abusers have faced through history, is that it eventually becomes more profitable to provide a solution to the abuse, than it does to aid and abet the abuser. At present, only a minority of hardcore refuseniks are standing up to the surveillance giants. So when people like me withdraw a flow of hard cash in response to what I call GCC - Gross Contempt of Customer - there's still enough extra profit to be made from the compliant majority to outweigh the losses.

But as the abuse worsens, more and more refuseniks enter the mix. And once the number of refuseniks hits a threshold, there arise opportunities to implement new business models which service the refuseniks. Simultaneously, the monetary value of escaping the abuse rises. Yes, the more abusive Microsoft, Google, Amazon et al get, the more people will be prepared to pay to escape them. Which makes those new business models even more commercially viable.

We're already seeing evidence of this, albeit on a limited scale, as paid services continue to represent a greater and greater proportion of an online landscape which was, a decade back, almost 100% free from monetary cost.

We have to be careful that we're not simply paying in cash as well as paying in other monetisable commodities. That's become more difficult to avoid now that the rush for AI data has mounted alongside the rush for personal data, and the two data disciplines have amalgamated into some grotesque quest to clone us all and then rent out our clones at £1 per hour as virtual service clerks... With just enough manipulation of our features and voices to prevent us from suing, obviously. There's a reason why tech giants have been pushing everyone towards video and remote conferencing - which is horrendously expensive for them and would not be offered for free without the mother of all agendas.

People value the WWW far less than they did twenty-five years ago, and many are looking for an escape route rather than an entry pass. The climate is one of fear. Not optimism.

So good luck finding a new job when we reach the endgame of all that. But this vision of our future - disturbingly real in the minds of Surveillance Valley CEOs - will eventually drive drastic attempts to establish separatism across currently-connected societies.

There's only so much adversity a society will take, and making 30%, 40% or more of a population jobless to facilitate the multi-trillionaire dream of a few capitalist psychos, would necessarily create a revolution. The public, and their governments, will always take the least painful option. But in the grand erosion of human rights, there's always a point at which doing nothing becomes more painful than taking a stand. History attests to that. Repeatedly and consistently.

What, then, would separatism in online societies look like?

WELCOME TO THE NATIONAL WEB

If America were seen to be acquiring the bulk of the globe's wealth through its dominance of the World Wide Web, the almost inevitable reaction in other nations would be the setup of National Webs, which would restrict usage to an individual nation or region's resident populace only. A National Web may have its own infrastructure and access tools, its own service providers, who are not disadvantaged by global gatekeepers, and importantly, its own laws.

Whilst this sounds highly dramatic, we're already seeing shades of it in various instances of site- or platform-blocking around the globe. Various countries have blocked Wikipedia because they don't support its views. European nations have been edging closer to blocking Facebook. Indeed, the US - which likes to view itself as a nation of supreme tolerance - recently saw a serious motion to block TikTok. For me, that was never about the spying potential or any fears of corruptive influence on the public. TikTok is no different in basic nature from Facebook, and is in some ways less pervasive. So no, I think the motion was really about TikTok's threat to America's economic stranglehold over the Web.

National Webs would solve many of the WWW's legal headaches, and are a natural succession to the more discriminate commercial world that prevailed before the Web. They could help stem the worst of the crime against the creative industry, and much better maintain the value of commodities produced in each individual country. At present, many exportable commodities, which could provide a good international trade source for individual nations, are simply being plundered for free by other nations because there are no barriers to prevent that from happening, and no consequences when it does happen.

As elite tech corporations are given more and more licence to abuse, they eventually amass a length of rope which is long enough for them to "hang themselves".

One of the things that made National Webs an unlikely starter in the past was that the public believed a single, global Web was in their interests, and it would have been hard for a government to persuade people to accept a smaller and more localised default. But if you look at the climate today in intelligent pockets of online discourse, you see that people value the WWW far less than they did twenty-five years ago, and many are looking for an escape route rather than an entry pass. The climate is one of fear. Not optimism. Seriously, when was the last time you saw an intelligent person, who was not engaged in a marketing effort, displaying optimism with regard to the WWW?

Importantly, National Webs need not be zero sum. That is, people and businesses would be able to choose either their National Web or the WWW, or use both. There would probably be some things that a government would mandate to either one or the other, but broadly, people would have a choice, and choice is the enemy of monopoly.

National Webs would cost money, but this is where we return to the previous discussion of people today being demonstrably more prepared to pay for a better online society. I think it's only a matter of time before the WWW becomes sufficiently horrific a place to drive the required funding. National Webs would offer much greater relevance to the average user, and would contain illegal behaviour on home soil, making online crime easier to investigate and prosecute.

Ultimately, National Webs are one way that governments could help the public resolve their mounting concerns, whilst additionally protecting the internal economy in the event that it begins to suffer unacceptably at the hands of global monopolists. At present, National Webs admittedly don't look that likely. But if the WWW continues on its current trajectory for another five years, that could very rapidly change. Government-rubberstamped corporate anarchy may seem impossible to fight today, but what happens when governments themselves begin to suffer the ill effects of monopoly? And they will. I can assure you that they will.