it kind of is a left/right issue when all the right defines themselves as is "in favor of exploitative corporations"
it shouldn't be a left/right issue, everyone should be cool with people having more freedom, but the GOP has aligned with being against that
and it's fucked up that we're framing this as "anti-consumer" where "consumer" is literally the only definition for "private citizen" you can get them to care about
and part of the reason the dems are so fucking weak is that they accept the idea that the consumer is the most important identity a person can have
we're just accepting this shit about having your identity based on what you consume
as if repealing net neutrality's making the cost of accessing the internet go up is the main problem
as if the part that matters is that you might have to fucking pay more for netflix
and not the fundamental promise of an open internet anyone can contribute to being threatened
seeing the chilling effect of harassment and the fundamental paradox of hate speech in action has reduced a lot of my faith in that dream
but i was around and a kid during that early age of the web when people could put anything up for free or cheap and expression just fucking exploded
we have thousands of these communities and folk art movements and independent artists that could not have survived or find audiences in the past
and people are fucking framing this as the problem of having to pay an extra ten bucks a month for their fucking netflix
the power of the internet isn't in those dozen services that might end up throttled if net neutrality is repealed
it's in the millions of things that will never see any light if we cut off the long tail
it's the queer kids who'll never find that there are words for the feelings they have and a community of people like them
it's the artists paying their way through college on commissions who won't be able to find patrons
it's the crowdfunding and the podcasts and the folk music
it's the generation of fiction writers that learned to write from fanfic being the last one of its kind because the next one's cut off from AO3
we're already handing so much of this shit over to corporations that net neutrality's already basically collapsing
good luck figuring out how to make a living off queer content when only straights are allowed to monetize on youtube
good luck networking when facebook and twitter are way quicker on the trigger to ban trans people than the people trying to drive them to suicide
way too much of this is already being syphoned into the pockets of a handful of monopolies with no vested interest in public good
i found out what my migraine aura was thanks to a gif on wikipedia and could convey that information to my doctor
i've gotten more info and help from cpap user forums than i have from the doctor i get 15 minutes with every year to adjust the machine
the long tail is independent artists and clothiers and tech support forums for the weird mouse that's the only one that doesn't hurt your wrist
it's mods that get your favorite old video game to work on a modern computer and someone you've never met that shared their family's old cookie recipe
people are obsessed with the porn thing and yeah, like, it'll be harder to find that. especially the weird shit, which is all long tail
but it's also kids sharing their obsessively crafted and mind-blowingly cool minecrafted creations
it's every painstakingly archived meme collection and the wiki that lays out the characters from that book you're reading with fanart illustrations and maps of the fantasy region it takes place in
it's years of dedicated work creating wiki entries for Sonic games that never existed
it's the collection of psalms rewritten by a Unitarian pastor to refer to a gender-neutral god and the virtual books of shadows shared by countless Wiccans
people talk about this stuff as being 99% crap but do you have any idea how much stuff is out there?
99.99999999999% of it could be garbage and there would still be more content that you'd love than you could look at in a thousand lifetimes
i just started listening to a new podcast that's been going weekly since 2014, that's like, several days straight of content to listen to
i'm setting stuff up so i can either sell or give out (or both) single-sheet pages to generate little flavor details for tabletop games
that kind of little stuff adds up
it adds up to a cottage industry of people like me doing small art stuff for a small audience
and sometimes people like that get bigger and you end up people becoming at least minor celebrities for it and making a living off of it
and that shit drives art and culture
i don't know what will save this idea of an open internet. it's already falling apart now
the chilling effect that happens when hate groups are allowed to publicly organize on here and reddit and other sites is huge
we've talked about this a lot lately with all of the abusive men being outed-- all the work we lost from the people they drove out of their fields, whose dreams they stole
we lose the same kind of thing online on a regular basis from hate groups who are able to organize and dox and harass people offline
we need some responsibility to be forced on the people who allow that kind of cesspit to fester on their servers, too
the survival of net neutrality alone won't give us the free-as-in-speech internet that we dreamed of in those heady days of the late 90s and early aughts
and i don't know how to get net neutrality to survive when even the democrats are completely uninterested in fighting for their constituents
like everything the only long-term solution for this is the full overthrow of capitalism as a system
but i want people to actually know what we're losing here
look around at the people who met on MUDs and got married and are now raising kids
the people who got book deals from their blogs
the podcasters doing liveshows in their cities
the subcultures of modding and glitching old video games and remixing them into new art forms
the blogs of people who spent a couple years testing to see what they could cook with only a waffle maker
every flash game that went through several versions and now you have on steam or your phone or your console
every friend of yours that works a day job but posts their music online
the website for every local restaurant that looks like shit but that you still visit all the time to check if their menu has options for your friends' dietary restrictions
decades of video game mods and hacks, painstakingly archived as sites from geocities to homestuck disappeared
this is just the stuff off the top of my head, the stuff i've seen and loved and mourned before when their hosts disappeared and went under
i've spent most of my life with internet access and have seen so many beautiful things and met so many wonderful people that i could never have otherwise
flawed as it is, an open internet gives us access to worlds of niche content that we will feel the loss of gravely but that is hard to articulate
because everyone has their own experience with that weird small thing that changed their life
that's what the internet could be, and what it won't. that's what we're losing. that's what's being stolen from us
and more importantly, that's what's being stolen from any generations who grow up without access to it
because they'll still get the mass produced stuff. they'll still find a way to get the shows that are on cable
even if they're using weird backchannels on facebook to share pirated videos, they'll find it.
they'll use whatever's available to do what we did with Kazaa and Invader Zim in 2001.
but the niche stuff. the recipes and the friendships and the fanart. the stuff that nurtures the parts of you that you didn't know other people had
that's gonna be a void. that's what'll be gone. that's what's being killed.
so in a year, when you're looking for a copy of the manual of a space heater that was discontinued a decade ago and you can't load any of the google results, that's what happened
if this is useful to you, support my work by paying me
paypal.me/norareed
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if you can't afford to do that, overthrow capitalism
paypal.me/norareed
patreon.com/norareed
if you can't afford to do that, overthrow capitalism
if you're the person that inevitably screenshots this and puts it on some tumblr, please include that information instead of just fucking stealing it, thanks
