I have a new column today on OnlySky. It’s about a discouraging trend: the fragmentation of the internet across national borders. Just when we’re the most connected we’ve ever been, we’re choosing to disconnect.
Totalitarian states like Russia and China are trying to ban foreign social media, forcing their citizens onto domestic platforms where they can more easily be surveilled and monitored for disloyal sentiments. But even the United States isn’t immune to this digital isolationism, as we see with the bipartisan TikTok ban. Whether or not you agree with it, it’s the first time in recent memory that the government has argued a platform can be banned based on the ideas it might be used to promote.
Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter:
These bans, as well as others imposed by other countries for similar reasons, are creating what some call the Splinternet: a splintered internet, fragmented across national borders, where your access to information depends on where you live. It seems as if every set of authorities wants to censor the web for their own reasons: to prevent a resurgence of hateful ideologies, to promote domestic companies over foreign competitors, to advance propagandistic myths of national superiority, to cover up an embarrassing history, to monitor popular sentiment so as to nip rebellions in the bud, or simply to deny their citizens knowledge that there are alternatives to the way they’re being governed.
Technically, the planet is still connected. All these net blocks are implemented in software; so far, no country has physically cut itself off. As long as that’s true, VPNs allow technologically savvy users to get around most censorship regimes. But that will never be more than a small minority of people.
“we’re choosing to disconnect”
Or… we’re choosing what we can be bothered connecting to.
“VPNs allow technologically savvy users to get around most censorship regimes. But that will never be more than a small minority of people”
Just like there was never more than a small minority of people reading The Morning Star or campaigning for Greenpeace or whatever. The depressing fact isn’t that governments are getting some sort of a grip on what the populace can easily access, it’s that the overwhelming majority of the populace demonstrably don’t actually care. If they can’t access it easily, is it worth bothering? No, not for most people. You’ll have an uphill battle convincing them otherwise.
I went to China a few weeks ago for work. I had VPNs set up and didn’t notice any particular interruption to my experience of the internet. I mentioned to one of my colleagues about the censorship and so on, and he pointed out that yeah, they’ve not got freedom… but anyone there my age (mid-fifties) can remember, or has family experience of, widespread crushing poverty and a massively agricultural economy, and compare it with now where most people have a much better lifestyle. So they’ve not got freedom as we recognise it… they don’t care, they’ve got food and houses and cars and entertainment and healthcare and stuff.
It’s fair to say that China’s government has made a tacit bargain with the people. In exchange for giving up political freedom, they’ll get economic growth and prosperity.
And for the past few decades, that bargain has pretty much held up. China has rapidly industrialized, and tens of millions of people have risen out of poverty.
The big question is what’s going to happen if China experiences a depression and economic growth stalls or goes into reverse. If the government can’t hold up its end of the deal anymore, but tries to keep its grip on power, how will the people react?