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Comment by Joe-Z | Hacker News Reader

I sincerely hope that we will succeed in keeping the internet as democratic as possible and not let it be destroyed by corporate interests in the name 'terrorism prevention'.

I'd like to give a shout-out to epicenter.works, an Austrian NGO, which I've been following the last 1.5 years or so. I think it's hard to get the public engaged in these topics, but they seem to be really determined.

Here's a google translate link to one of their latest articles / achievements (preventing a 'surveillance package' in Austrian law):

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=h...

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The Internet was never democratic. When did you get to vote on anything?

> When did you get to vote on anything?

October 2000, there were a worldwide online vote to select some members of the ICANN Board of Directors.

https://www.icann.org/news/icann-pr-2000-09-21-en

I love HN.

Anarchy might be a better description, and that too within reason and having been made less and less so over time via law enforcement and such. The dark web is more of that ideal, but you know where that ends up.

The Internet was built on a synergy between cooperation and competition between the players. As such, the state of disorder implied by "anarchy" does not fit either. Each new competing tech was based on a strong base/protocols/rules made in the previous iteration.

To this extend, the Internet's core is very conservative.

Anarchy as a political philosophy has nothing to do with disorder and rather more with "self-organising".

It's more akin to American libertarianism, but approached from a leftist perspective.

> keep[...] the internet as democratic as possible and not let it be destroyed by corporate interests in the name 'terrorism prevention'.

Yups. Exactly this is what's going on in my opinion as well.

And there is even a term for that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

"Terrorism prevention", alongside of "9/11" and "save the children", has been the work horse of western "democratic" political system to concentrate power and restrict liberties over the past 30 years. It has nothing to do with corporate interest, if not to please a vocal minority seen as a threatening to their reputation.

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