In the US, every major company you can think of that makes its living from the Internet will fall on the side of the regime. Not just media companies, the money movers, purchasing and payment processors, geo-location, hosting, thousands of services, and basically the entire infrastructure underneath everything.
If push comes to shove, first every platform will be used to heavily propagandize, mis-inform, and sow division. (More so than now).
Then it will be used to track, spy, and honey-pot. (More so than now).
Then they’ll simply shut it off.
The era of an anonymous kid sitting in a basement and arguing the merits of some sweaty anarchist manifesto with his friends online is over.
The tool we thought was going to make us ungovernable via free communication will be used against us.
The dream of bringing the species together globally, a meeting of a million minds, to help and understand each other and advance a peaceful utopia is not going to ever happen.
Submitting a vote on an onion forum will start with a simple keystroke and end with a Palentir missile strike on your house.
The best we could hope for will be to seize the physical stations to prevent their use by others, basically nullifying its existence.
I weighed several responses to your reply, and even tried a few out before backtracking, more so for the benefit of the other readers, but I think I will settle on this:
I agree with the spirit of your response. I’ve heard variations of my own post for years, before there was an actual public Internet, on BBS and the like.
And I have made the same reply as you, almost word for word, to them.
While well intentioned, I realize now that the exasperated and cynical nature that results from watching the pot boil for years and yet the frogs still aren’t jumping out, makes my responses to others sound abrasive and arrogant.
From this point forward, when ever I see people waking up to the shit storm that hasn’t even happened in full force yet, I am going to be gentle and encouraging with them.
And remind people that the strength to carry on in a challenging world comes from investing and developing the community, the friends, family and neighbors, around us.
Thank you for the thoughtful response.
For me, I think it boils down to one simple question that each of us confronts on a daily basis - in the face of injustice, what are you willing to do to combat it? Will you show up to city council meetings instead of going to bar trivia, for example? Will you put your own time and energy into putting yourself and your livelihood and your personal freedom at risk because your fellow Americans are being deported simply because their skin might be a little darker than yours?
How bad will it need to get before you’re willing to change your life and your habits because your leadership has decided to steal from the public it is supposed to be serving?
Americans in the Los Angeles area knew what action to take in the face of injustice in May of 1992. Americans in 2026 seem to have lost the will to remind their corporate-sponsored overlords that they only govern through and by the consent of the governed.
Agreed and well said.
Your post is a reminder that we have choices. And whether we get the future we want rather than the one we are afraid will pass will depend on whether we’re willing to roll up our sleeves and make the hard choices, or give in to the temporary illusion of comfort and convenience.