If you could go back and recreate the internet ...

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Glomming off the contest placing thread ....

Knowing what you know now about things like piracy and validity of truths among so many others things, if you had the 'power' to start from scratch and make the rules, what would you do?

 

[Voboy]

So, here's the problem.

My background is in history, where a big part of the training involves the validity of sources. Meaning, some event happens... and it is factually knowable by practically nobody. Because eyewitnesses are always flawed and biased, and they transmit those flaws and that bias through what they leave behind, meaning people constructing secondary sources are forced to piece together "what happened" by, essentially, guesswork.

The point of training as a historian is learning to evaluate whose sources you should use in your guesswork.

The internet has allowed EVERYONE to become a primary source writer, a secondary source writer, and a historian... simultaneously, and with no formal training. It's likely that 90% of the people making up the internet are reasonable, rational (but still biased) people with no ill-will... but the other 10% are louder, bolder, and have nothing to lose. The result? Nobody will ever know what actually happened, anywhere, with any certainty.

We now live a choose-your-own-adventure existence.

I don't believe there was ever a way to construct the Internet in a way that mitigated that specific problem. Not while keeping it "free" and "unregulated." Keeping the internet reliable would have meant a great deal of early regulation which would have stifled its development and encouraged piracy by hackers. I'm generally in favor of individual critical thinking, and I oppose overregulation by "benevolent" overlords.

So I'd keep it like it is. What I'd try to do is educate the populace a bit in order to make sure they could recognize bias and dismiss it.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Piracy is one of the best things about the internet.

The desire to control, exploit, and regulate others tightly is ingrained in the psyche of those in power, and piracy has always been that act of rebellion that pushed against it.
It has died down significantly in the later years, together with the global desire for freedom. The powers that be have managed to cull it in the name of patriotism, national interests, and the supposed fight against terrorism.

Free and unregulated flow of information has always been one of the key concepts of the internet, the most important one of all, and if we ever lose that, we are truly fucked.

 

[Comshaw]

So, here's the problem.

My background is in history, where a big part of the training involves the validity of sources. Meaning, some event happens... and it is factually knowable by practically nobody. Because eyewitnesses are always flawed and biased, and they transmit those flaws and that bias through what they leave behind, meaning people constructing secondary sources are forced to piece together "what happened" by, essentially, guesswork.

The point of training as a historian is learning to evaluate whose sources you should use in your guesswork.

The internet has allowed EVERYONE to become a primary source writer, a secondary source writer, and a historian... simultaneously, and with no formal training. It's likely that 90% of the people making up the internet are reasonable, rational (but still biased) people with no ill-will... but the other 10% are louder, bolder, and have nothing to lose. The result? Nobody will ever know what actually happened, anywhere, with any certainty.

We now live a choose-your-own-adventure existence.

I don't believe there was ever a way to construct the Internet in a way that mitigated that specific problem. Not while keeping it "free" and "unregulated." Keeping the internet reliable would have meant a great deal of early regulation which would have stifled its development and encouraged piracy by hackers. I'm generally in favor of individual critical thinking, and I oppose overregulation by "benevolent" overlords.

So I'd keep it like it is. What I'd try to do is educate the populace a bit in order to make sure they could recognize bias and dismiss it.

"We now live a choose-your-own-adventure existence."

I absolutely agree. The second people had access to all the info (true or false doesn't matter) floating around on the interwebs, it became that. And with the growth and maturity of AI it will only get worse. When you can use AI to produce reports and vids that are almost impossible to distinguish from the real thing, the world is no longer black and white, right and wrong. All you need do is believe a thing and there are web pages and vids on the web that "prove" what you believe to be true is true.

"What I'd try to do is educate the populace a bit in order to make sure they could recognize bias and dismiss it."

The problem with that is many, I'd almost say a majority, of people don't want to think critically. They would rather engage in confirmation bias, searching out things, true or false, that support what they believe and dismissing anything that conflicts with their chosen view. And the more AI blurs the borders between true and false, the easier it is for those people to swap beliefs for facts.

But I digress. Let me address the OP's question. What would I implement on the interwebs way back if I had the power? I can't really think of anything. Once the computer started to grow and mature as an appliance used by the populous, I can't see anything that would send it on another track. Once the gate was opened, we were caught in the current and I don't think there is anything anyone can do to change the direction it's going, short of burning every computer in the world. As to what that direction is I have no idea. But it sends chills down my spine to think of the possibilities.


Comshaw

 

[SimonDoom]

I agree with what both my colleagues here have said so far.

Criticism of Internet culture is somewhat overstated. And I say this as someone who grew up without even having personal computers. I'm an old fart, by many people's standards (though I'm still clinging to what I call "middle-aged"). There's a lot of bad, but it's better than it used to be. After all, we're here, right? This place wouldn't exist without the Internet.

For whatever reason, the rise of the Internet coincided with a political climate in the USA that favored a hands-off approach, and the government passed a law that limited the liability of Internet providers. That probably wouldn't happen now. I think it was fortuitous and beneficial.

Regarding what Awkwardlyset said about piracy, I would say that while I don't necessarily agree that piracy is a GOOD thing, it's far better to have an online environment in which piracy exists, and in which people say bad things that other people don't like, than an environment in which some small group of people are trying to control what others do and say.

I agree very strongly with this point that Awkwardlyset made: the flow of information is more important than the protection of intellectual property, or safeguarding against defamation, or protecting people from obscenity, or protecting people from hate speech, or other things. There is nothing more important to the welfare of the species than the free flow of information. Other things matter, but they don't matter as much. This is the great boon of the Internet, and we don't want to screw that up.

 

[TinaCole]

When the internet was run and ruled by DARPA it was actually a useful asset..now it just shit.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Regarding what Awkwardlyset said about piracy, I would say that while I don't necessarily agree that piracy is a GOOD thing, it's far better to have an online environment in which piracy exists, and in which people say bad things that other people don't like, than an environment in which some small group of people are trying to control what others do and say.

I think this is mostly a matter of us coming from vastly different cultural environments. I know for a fact that piracy has been THE ONLY way for both teenagers and adults in a large part of the Eastern World to get a taste of the latest Western movies and shows, music, books, programs, games, comics, you name it.
The disparity in earnings made it very hard for most people there to consider buying original copies of anything. Yet the cultural and intellectual impact of those products was way more important than the fact that some rich individuals or companies were losing a minor percentage of their income.

But my point about piracy wasn't even about all of that. I've always believed that committing piracy, that tiny act of rebellion and sticking it to the man, has significantly contributed to the formation of a mindset capable of rebelling about much more important things.
Sometimes, even some pointless acts of rebellion are a good way of keeping the right mindset, especially in this ominous world we live in now.

 

[dirk2024]

The problem with that is many, I'd almost say a majority, of people don't want to think critically. They would rather engage in confirmation bias, searching out things, true or false, that support what they believe and dismissing anything that conflicts with their chosen view. And the more AI blurs the borders between true and false, the easier it is for those people to swap beliefs for facts.
Comshaw

This is a significant issue and, we (speaking in the broad concept of our society) aren't smart enough to stop it.

 

[Voboy]

I think this is mostly a matter of us coming from vastly different cultural environments. I know for a fact that piracy has been THE ONLY way for both teenagers and adults in a large part of the Eastern World to get a taste of the latest Western movies and shows, music, books, programs, games, comics, you name it.
The disparity in earnings made it very hard for most people there to consider buying original copies of anything. Yet the cultural and intellectual impact of those products was way more important than the fact that some rich individuals or companies were losing a minor percentage of their income.

But my point about piracy wasn't even about all of that. I've always believed that committing piracy, that tiny act of rebellion and sticking it to the man, has significantly contributed to the formation of a mindset capable of rebelling about much more important things.
Sometimes, even some pointless acts of rebellion are a good way of keeping the right mindset, especially in this ominous world we live in now.

I think rebelling against authority is a wonderful thing, virtually always. Authority MUST be kept accountable, and thinking about rebellion is good for authority. They should be scared of the populace.

This is why I respect what Wikileaks did. As a guy who used to be an intelligence officer with SCI clearance, it appalled me professionally... but it was a wonderful thing as far as forcing the government to account for some of the shitty things it's done.

The internet encourages that sort of rebellion, tacitly, and that's a delight to me. I can't think of a way to have guaranteed that level of freedom without also opening the door to all the riffraff, however. Not in 1997 or so.

 

[dirk2024]

Glomming off the contest placing thread ....

Knowing what you know now about things like piracy and validity of truths among so many others things, if you had the 'power' to start from scratch and make the rules, what would you do?

Personally, my focus would be to ensure the Internet is a safe place where people could explore and experience without falling prey to the various predators who roam the hallways.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think this is mostly a matter of us coming from vastly different cultural environments. I know for a fact that piracy has been THE ONLY way for both teenagers and adults in a large part of the Eastern World to get a taste of the latest Western movies and shows, music, books, programs, games, comics, you name it.
The disparity in earnings made it very hard for most people there to consider buying original copies of anything. Yet the cultural and intellectual impact of those products was way more important than the fact that some rich individuals or companies were losing a minor percentage of their income.

But my point about piracy wasn't even about all of that. I've always believed that committing piracy, that tiny act of rebellion and sticking it to the man, has significantly contributed to the formation of a mindset capable of rebelling about much more important things.
Sometimes, even some pointless acts of rebellion are a good way of keeping the right mindset, especially in this ominous world we live in now.

It raises a profound political/philosophical issue, which probably is beyond the scope of this forum, but which you can be certain would not be treated seriously in the Politics Board.

How do we balance the flow of information and intangible things (ideas, images, writings, music) with the perceived need to grant rights in these things to incentivize people to create them? There's no obvious answer to that question.

You refer to the Eastern world and the importance of piracy to gain access to things. The obvious answer is that governments should stop limiting access. Then piracy wouldn't be necessary. That's not an argument in favor of piracy, per se. But I get your point.

 

[Voboy]

Personally, my focus would be to ensure the Internet is a safe place where people could explore and experience without falling prey to the various predators who roam the hallways.

Freedom and safety are always at odds, though, whether online or off it. I think that the internet prioritized freedom, which thrives best in a chaotic environment which is, yes, dangerous.

That's when it's on the individual to guard his or her own safety.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

The obvious answer is that governments should stop limiting access. Then piracy wouldn't be necessary. That's not an argument in favor of piracy, per se. But I get your point.

I assume it's countries with anti-Western-minded regimes, like Russia and China, that you had in mind there, and you are correct. But I was also talking about Europe, the part of it that's east of the Germany-Austria-Italy line. There are plenty of countries there where there was no censorship and no limitation to the products or ideas of Western culture, yet people who lived there couldn't afford to buy legal copies of anything. The gap in earnings in comparison to the West was too wide for that.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

But how do you determine who is predator without invading the rights of everyone who isn't?

 

[Voboy]

But how do you determine who is predator without invading the rights of everyone who isn't?

Yep.

This is why freedom is dangerous. It's always a balance, and many societies get it wrong sometimes.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Would it have been better to start from the very beginning to require personal identification to get access to the web? Sort of like getting a driver's license or other government ID required to do things back then. It would just have been another step in your daily lives.

If you never had privacy and anonymity on the web from your very first day, would you have missed it?

Would the web be any less risky now?

Bad people are always going to be bad people, so they could have found ways around it of course, just like bad people drive when they're not supposed to.

 

[Voboy]

Would it have been better to start from the very beginning to require personal identification to get access to the web? Sort of like getting a driver's license or other government ID required to do things back then. It would just have been another step in your daily lives.

If you never had privacy and anonymity on the web from your very first day, would you have missed it?

Would the web be any less risky now?

Bad people are always going to be bad people, so they could have found ways around it of course, just like bad people drive when they're not supposed to.

I don't know, but here's my guess:

The benefits of the internet were self-evident to any educated person with a motive to bother installing Netscape. Many of them IMMEDIATELY grasped the ways they could monetize and manipulate the system. I know this because my roommate was a computer-science major in 1994-97, and he and all his buddies were already talking about things like file-sharing long before there was any capability to actually do it, back when modems were still just 2400 baud.

I do not believe there would have been any level of regulation that would not have promptly been defeated by people like my roommate. There were simply too many computer people who were smarter, faster, and more ambitious than the government could have ever responded to flexibly. I don't believe any attempt at regulation would have worked. I mentioned that earlier: it would have stifled development and been beaten by pirates.

Meanwhile, some other country would have deregulated, and left us in the dust.

 

[dirk2024]

Freedom and safety are always at odds, though, whether online or off it. I think that the internet prioritized freedom, which thrives best in a chaotic environment which is, yes, dangerous.

That's when it's on the individual to guard his or her own safety.

Then we need hero's to prey on the predators. Most don't have the skills to protect themselves on the Internet. Although even if they were capable, I don't think the tools exist.

Had I the skillset and the tools, this is what I would become. Violent retribution onto those who prey on the weak.

 

[ronde]

Glomming off the contest placing thread ....

Knowing what you know now about things like piracy and validity of truths among so many others things, if you had the 'power' to start from scratch and make the rules, what would you do?

I can't think of many radical changes I'd make, but that's because I grew up without a computer and easy access to anything.

I remember long hours in a library researching term papers and in reality, the available information in libraries was much like the information on the internet today. One had to review several sources and then decide which made the most logical sense. That's because authors have been biased since time began. History is full of accounts of things that supposedly happened, but in actuality did not. All literature is also colored by the ideologies of the time.

I disagree that people today aren't smart enough to figure out what's true and what isn't true. A lot of people are just too lazy to do the amount of work required to make that decision. My rule is if it seems too extreme to be true, I need to check some more sources.

I would stop the push for age verification for sites having adult content. There is no way to enforce what seems like a good idea to some. How does a user prove his or her age without giving the site, or even worse, some third party site vital information such as a credit card number, real name, address, or driver's license number? The promises they might make are probably as reliable as the safeguards in place by the many corporations that have had their databases hacked. The program won't work anyway. When I was growing up, you couldn't buy adult magazines until you were 21 and anything relating to sex including condoms was illegal to send via US Mail. We still read adult magazines our dads bought and you could buy condoms in any gas station restroom for a quarter. Banning anything, and especially to young people, is a guaranteed way to encourage those people to figure out ways to subvert the ban. I need a credit card number? Mom leaves her purse on the dining room table. I'll just "borrow" it some night and write down the number and the PIN.

The only real change I would make is to make social media companies subject to the same rules as newspaper and broadcast corporations. I understand why they were given special protections initially, but as we learn more about collusion between politics and those social media companies, they need that protection removed. If they're sued a few times, they'll honor free speech as they have always proclaimed and not censor opinions from any political party or ideology. Yes, this would allow some with radical ideas to influence people. I believe those people would be influenced into a particular ideology even without the internet. I might just take a little longer. The internet didn't cause the KKK to form and grow, but it still did. As soon as we attempt to determine what speech is "right" and which is 'wrong" or "misinformation" we've launched ourselves down a slope from which it will be difficult to escape.

 

[yowser]

An early tech guy, Jaron Lanier (credited with coining the term 'virtual reality') has a number of writings out there on the ways that the internet went wrong (and I am guessing that most of us mean the 'world wide web' when the word 'the internet' is used) and what it did well.

His basic argument is that what has happened has destroyed the middle class - that the imbalance of huge companies vs. their customers has made the idealistic prospects of the internet go way wonky.

His books include: You are not a gadget and Who Owns the Future? both thoughtful, provocative takes on this subject.

Here's a statement from an extended but worthwhile article. It does raise questions about us, as authors, creating content, and how that content (viewed as 'free' by readers) is part of a bizarre network of communication, monetized by often dominating companies.

https://www.edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-the-local-global-flip-or-the-lanier-effect

It can become such a bizarre system. What you have now is a system in which the Internet user becomes the product that is being sold to others, and what the product is, is the ability to be manipulated. It's an anti-liberty system, and I know that the rhetoric around it is very contrary to that. "Oh, no, there are useful ads, and it's increasing your choice space", and all that, but if you look at the kinds of ads that make the most money, they are tawdry, and if you look at what's happening to wealth distribution, the middle is going away, and just empirically, these ideals haven't delivered in actuality. I think the darker interpretation is the one that has more empirical evidence behind it at this point.

 

[PennameWombat]

I don't know, but here's my guess:

The benefits of the internet were self-evident to any educated person with a motive to bother installing Netscape. Many of them IMMEDIATELY grasped the ways they could monetize and manipulate the system. I know this because my roommate was a computer-science major in 1994-97, and he and all his buddies were already talking about things like file-sharing long before there was any capability to actually do it, back when modems were still just 2400 baud.

I do not believe there would have been any level of regulation that would not have promptly been defeated by people like my roommate. There were simply too many computer people who were smarter, faster, and more ambitious than the government could have ever responded to flexibly. I don't believe any attempt at regulation would have worked. I mentioned that earlier: it would have stifled development and been beaten by pirates.

Meanwhile, some other country would have deregulated, and left us in the dust.

I was a computer science student a number of years before those you cite, and I also happened to do it at one of the few universities connected from the early days of the embryonic internet.

Back then, we called it ARPANET, and its creation predated my studies. But at the time I was there, it was morphing into USENET, which was a reflection of the upper layers of software that ran on it. But 'internet' came from 'internetworking protocols,', which are the underlying protocols still in use. If you've ever seen any reference to IPv4[1] (Internet Protocol version 4, there's been a push to force everything to IPv6, but that's been very slow), that was released to the world in 1983, as the fourth version of the defined protocols. The 'internet' is more properly just the underlying networking capabilities that transmit the data packets.

And that, the transmission, is key to my comment here.

As the ARPANET came out of US government and military research (DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration), it's goal was to maintain communication during emergencies (i.e., limited or all out nuclear war). Thus, the intent from the beginning was to route around damaged or destroyed links. And, to the internet, intentional blockage looks a whole lot like damage. Thus, route around it.

This is why, for those with an understanding of the stack, it's easier to hide nefarious activities, or at least to obfuscate them.

So your comment around file sharers and the like was reflective of something built into the foundation of the networking. It's all layered, all each layer knows is what's shown by the next layer down. Thus, I want this info to go to Kalamazoo. That's it. I send it. All I get told is it made it (although, I can just send and forget, that's an option.)

What we're looking at here on LitE is the World Wide Web. That came out of work at CERN in the early 1990s, with additional layers (HTML as the data layer, URL as the addressing layer) built to depend on IP, TCP, UDP, and a whole slew of other acronyms, created by Tim Berners-Lee. Netscape grew out of Mosaic, but was the first 'commercial' browser, that interpreted HTML to display web pages.

As a note, the networking layers don't care about user identity. It's invisible. They care about hosts, and getting to the next host to get to a destination. To the lower layers, my identity as PennameWombat and the contents of this forum post, are simply "payload" to be carried from a source point and delivered, somehow, to a destination point.

I'll add more on this latter point, but do a separate post.

[1] If you've ever looked at the internet settings on your computer or phone, you might've seen something like:

IP Address: 1.2.3.4

That's how IP understands hosts. But, you say. I don't type 216.150.65.190 in to pull up Literotica.com. No, but you could. 'Literotica.com' is a hostname, and a service called DNS translates between the two. You can use various commands to look up IP addresses and hostnames, such as nslookup:
C:\Users\Penname>nslookup literotica.com
Server: UnKnown
Address: 2001:8003:308c:7a00::1 [note: this is the IPv6 address]
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: literotica.com
Addresses: 216.150.65.200 [these are IPv4 addresses]
216.150.65.190

 

[crookedletter]

I'm not sure what you could change fundamentally about the internet to make it better. Like with anything I think the issue is people. I wish people were better. Just in general.

But if we need to get specific I wish there were more rules -- or just commonly adhered-to guidelines -- about storing personal data. I'm tired of hearing about data breaches from companies who have no legitimate reason to be holding onto my information. Keep your free year of identity monitoring -- delete my shit from your servers.

 

[PennameWombat]

An early tech guy, Jaron Lanier (credited with coining the term 'virtual reality') has a number of writings out there on the ways that the internet went wrong (and I am guessing that most of us mean the 'world wide web' when the word 'the internet' is used) and what it did well.

His basic argument is that what has happened has destroyed the middle class - that the imbalance of huge companies vs. their customers has made the idealistic prospects of the internet go way wonky.

His books include: You are not a gadget and Who Owns the Future? both thoughtful, provocative takes on this subject.

Here's a statement from an extended but worthwhile article. It does raise questions about us, as authors, creating content, and how that content (viewed as 'free' by readers) is part of a bizarre network of communication, monetized by often dominating companies.

https://www.edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-the-local-global-flip-or-the-lanier-effect

It can become such a bizarre system. What you have now is a system in which the Internet user becomes the product that is being sold to others, and what the product is, is the ability to be manipulated. It's an anti-liberty system, and I know that the rhetoric around it is very contrary to that. "Oh, no, there are useful ads, and it's increasing your choice space", and all that, but if you look at the kinds of ads that make the most money, they are tawdry, and if you look at what's happening to wealth distribution, the middle is going away, and just empirically, these ideals haven't delivered in actuality. I think the darker interpretation is the one that has more empirical evidence behind it at this point.

Since the Internet was originally meant as a reliable communications medium for government, military, and civilian researchers, certain capabilities weren't put in place.

One was identity of users. The network doesn't care. It's all payload. Its job is to get this data from that host to this other host. In whatever way it can.

Another, and this reflects Jaron Lanier's thrust, was no consideration in paying for all this. It was all government money being funneled to computer and network hardware makers, and telecoms providers. And, in many cases, the communications is a side effect. When I was a university student, and then in the first few years of my professional career, the network had various uses, but mostly it was a sideshow.

Yes, even in 1983, one of the most popular discussion items on USENET was something called 'Risks Digest.' This was a periodic collection of risks of depending on automation. Not always disasters, some small, some big. But clearly something not fully paid attention to.

Anyway. Back to point. Paying for things. Through the 1980s, there was little commercial traffic on the internet, in part due to restrictions, and more importantly, lack of reach. I used it, but to read Risks Digest, other newsgroups, and send email. Home computers didn't have it, unless, like me, you could dial in to a host that DID have it (although we could discuss BBSes, but we won't.)

Then, the walled gardens appeared. These were AOL, Prodigy, and a few others. You could dial in to these, and they provided something like a primitive, self-contained, "internet,' more properly, a self-contained World Wide Web (well, each was their own, not interconnected to one another.) These were paid for by subscribers. But they were parallel to, and isolated from, "the internet." Which remained free to use.

Then Tim Berners-Lee unleashed HTML/URLs on the world, and that pushed the internet from text only, to a graphical world. And it was free.

And therein is the rub. Since most companies couldn't charge subscriptions now, as they didn't have walled gardens, how to survive.

Ah, how had commercial radio and TV done it? ADVERTISING.

Back in the early years of the 21st century, whenever I would point out to Google employees (who were, of course, the absolute Best of the Best of the Best of the Best There Have Ever Been), that they made almost all of their money from selling and brokering ADVERTISING... boy, would they get SO ANGRY . They did nothing so base as THAT. No, they were Computer Science Gods. Actually, yeah. They did some awesome things, software wise (you try scaling software to thousands of parallel nodes that survives across failures.) But none of that paid the bills. Still doesn't. Never has.

So, in a way, the fact that internet users DO NOT PAY for what they use, is both a useful feature and a terrible sin. (Yeah, I know, everyone here pays an ISP (Internet Service Provider) bill, for the on/off ramp. But you don't pay for Literotica, or to use Google, etc.) Instead, as Lanier's quote says, YOU are the product.

I don't see it much anymore, but back at some point, there was much discussion around 'micropayments.' These would have been fractional payments that would add up for content providers to earn and users to pay. The issue was, at that time, we only had bank accounts and credit cards. And the overhead for doing anything like this overwhelmed the actual payments. This was meant to eliminate the need to depend on advertising.

But we knew, more or less, how to do advertising. We didn't know how to do micropayments, and once the Web Cat was out of the bag, it moved fast.

 

[SimonDoom]

I remember reading Lawrence Lessig's Code 2.0 back in the day and being struck by his message that there's nothing inevitable about the way the Internet is. We can create rules to make it what we want it to be.

I think that's somewhat true, but there's a limit to that truth. I think information is like a living organism, in that it wants to escape its confines and get out. And I think you need a very justification, in any system, to contain information. Most of the ways I can think of to change the Internet involve trying to contain information, and I'm just not sure that's ever going to work.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Would it have been better to start from the very beginning to require personal identification to get access to the web? Sort of like getting a driver's license or other government ID required to do things back then. It would just have been another step in your daily lives.

If you never had privacy and anonymity on the web from your very first day, would you have missed it?

Would the web be any less risky now?

Bad people are always going to be bad people, so they could have found ways around it of course, just like bad people drive when they're not supposed to.

We were talking about the "Online Safety" business going on in the UK at work the other day. One of my older coworkers brought something really interesting. He was saying how when he was a kid there were all these PSAs about being safe online and they all centered around not sharing any personal data. Essentially being as anonymous as possible.
I grew up in the social media age where everyone was sharing every minute of their lives at every opportunity.

I think we were better off when there was more anonymity.
Ideas and information want to be free.
Many of the Founding Fathers in the US wrote under pseudonyms in the debate leading up to ratifying the Constitution.
We are edging ever closer to the various governments tracking everything you do online. That's a terrifying thought.