The internet is no longer a safe haven

The Internet has really been an interesting case study for what happens between people when you remove a varying number of layers of social control.

All the way back to the early days of Usenet really.

I would hate to see it but at the same time I feel like the incentives created by the bad actors really push this towards a much more centralized model over time, e.g. one where all traffic provenance must be signed and identified and must flow through a few big networks that enforce laws around that.

"Socialists"* argue for more regulations; "liberals" claim that there should be financial incentives to not do that.

I'm neither. I believe that we should go back to being "tribes"/communities. At least it's a time-tested way to – maybe not prevent, but somewhat allieviate – the tragedy of the commons.

(I'm aware that this is a very poor and naive theory; I'll happily ditch it for a better idea.)

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*) For the lack of a better word.

What would prevent attacks between "tribes"? What would prevent one from taking over the others and sending us back to square one?

Little would prevent attacks by APTs and other powerful groups. (This, btw., is one of the few facets of this problem that technology could help solve.) But a trivial change: a hard requirement to sign up (=send a human-composed message to one of the moderators) to be able to participate (or, in extreme cases, to read the contents) "automagically" stops almost all spam, scrapers (in the extreme case), vandalism, etc. (from my personal experience based on a rather large sample).

I think it's one of the multi-faceted problems where technology (a "moat", "palisade", etc. for your "tribe") should accompany social changes.