You can’t take the web from me!
The Internet started out as a space of freedom and diversity, where everyone could do, whatever he wanted. A realm of endless possibilities, an infinite collection of wisdom and ideas. A little bit like the Wild West, but with adorable cats. But this cosmos could be in danger. More and more pages are controlled by large companies, such as Facebook, Google and others. Furthermore, the internet traffic on sites controlled by Silicon Valley increases exponentially. And this is increased by features like Facebook’s “instant articles”, which are used to keep users on their site, when they click on links to newspaper articles.
Why is the web in danger?
Internet corporations, just like TV broadcasters, earn their share by placing advertisements and they get the most money, when the target group (usually age 14–49) is on the website. Most ads are directed towards western societies. Due to the fact, that most westerners already have an internet connection and a Facebook/Google/etc. account, the number of users who are relevant to the advertisers is limited. Which is why they need to make their current users stay on their page even longer than before. Facebook already is something like the starting page of the Internet for many people. And they succeed: In the year 2015 more than half of the internet traffic in North America fall upon Netflix, Facebook, YouTube and iTunes. It may well be, that in a few years almost all of the internet traffic will go through those corporations.
Net Neutrality
Another topic, which is closely connected to this one is the issue of “Net Neutrality” one of the core principles of the Internet. All of the web is built upon the fact, that every internet page, no matter how small and insignificant, that all data in the Internet gets treated equally. What if corporations like Facebook could buy more speed for their websites, so that their users could get information faster than elsewhere. People would simply take the fastest page to get information, naturally, and smaller pages could not be as successful as now. For more information I recommend John Oliver’s piece on “Net Neutrality” from his show “Last Week Tonight” on HBO.
Why I won’t let that happen
The freedom of the Internet is one of the biggest innovations of mankind. That everybody can create a website on basically every subject is crucial to its infinity of information. The more the internet becomes a monopoly of a few big corporations, the less it becomes a part of my life. The diversity is the very best of the internet, but if features like “instant articles” or lawsuits against net-neutrality are successful, it will be lost. The internet will consist of a few pages controlled by big companies and there would be no place for your own opinion and for the freedom of thought. So I will use the smaller websites, besides Facebook/Google/Twitter and I encourage you to do the same; to keep the web open and free. The Internet just needs to be a bit like the Wild West, with adorable cats.
