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596 points pimterry | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.405s | source
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toyg ◴[] No.36863175[source]
This might be where the internet really gets forked, as it's been predicted over and over since the '90s.

On one side, we'll have a "clean", authority-sanctioned "corpweb", where everyone is ID'ed to the wazoo; on the other, a more casual "greynet" galaxy of porn and decentralized communities will likely emerge, once all tinkerers get pushed out of corpnet. It could be an interesting opportunity to reboot a few long-lost dreams.

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1. pessimizer ◴[] No.36865427[source]
> on the other, a more casual "greynet" galaxy of porn and decentralized communities will likely emerge, once all tinkerers get pushed out of corpnet.

The entire internet is "corpnet." For this fantasy freezone to happen, actual alternative physical networks would have to be built, the parts that those networks require will have to be sold to consumers without the hardware being locked down or nerfed, and if authorities do not approve of these networks, they'll have to be invisible.

I don't see a technical answer to that. Sneakernets maybe, but dogs can smell hard drives. Certainly not anything wireless, unless there's some sort of geometric arrangement or algorithm that allows them to hide their locations in other signals.

I'm of the clearly minority opinion that the people who run totalitarian governments are neither stupid nor weak. I also believe that the fantasy that there's always going to be an answer (that always looks like teen hackers dressed up like 90s punks in a Gibson Blade Runner urbanscape theme park) is a drug that allows people to take our real situation less seriously.

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2. mindslight ◴[] No.36865586[source]
> actual alternative physical networks would have to be built

I'd say this is an unfounded assumption. Given a choice of two massive changes that I could snap my fingers and will into existence:

1. Grassroots community and individual-run mesh networks of individual dwellings, not controlled by corporate entities, running IP/DNS/HTTPS and other naive protocols already in widespread use.

2. The same corporate-controlled physical Internet we have right now, but with widespread use of protocols that allow for decentralized permissionless identities (nyms), independent of the centrally-adminstered IP/DNS namespaces. Most traffic going to individually-run VPSs or consumer connections.

I would choose #2 in a heartbeat. The only reason I would see that we might need #1 is because #2 failed to gain a critical mass before the ISPs clamped down on non-corporate-endpoint traffic while it still only affects a minority of users. It's also not clear how the networks in #1 wouldn't just borg back up into corporate Ma Dell, or at the very least succumb to government regulation (each a different avenue for authoritarianism).