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?
Ah. The Spartan if.
You use a phrase like “economic growth” or “depression” as though China works like places where those concepts matter, i.e. the capitalist west. Having dealt for a little while with Chinese business I can say with certainty… it does not. It’s hard to get used to.
Also: can you suggest a time at which the US government has held up its end of the deal with its people? I don’t live there, but from the outside it doesn’t look like things have improved there any time while I’ve been alive (since the first moon landing, more or less). Certainly the politicians (the successful ones at least) don’t seem to emphasise moving towards a bright future, but rather returning to some (mythical?) utopian past, a promise they repeatedly fail to deliver on yet people keep turning out in ever greater numbers to vote for it, as if it makes a difference. Who’s being hoodwinked here?
I can contrast this strongly with the UK – life was pretty shitty in the 70s and the 80s were tough if, like me, you came from the industrial north of England. But the 90s, especially the late 90s, saw a turnaround, and many aspects of life got better for a decade and a half or so. They only took a massive downturn some time around 2010, and have generally gone severely downhill since. It may be possible for an astute observer to spot a correlation with UK politics in those dates. In any case, I don’t remember anyone, even the right wing parties, ever banging on about how great life was back in the day and how we should go back to that. Everyone’s always on about how great it’s going to be – Blair swept to power in ’97 to the tune of “Things Can Only Get Better”. Even Brexit wasn’t sold, even by its most egregious swivel-eyed racist lunatic promoters, as a step BACK, per se, but rather a step FORWARD. A lie, obviously, but a forward looking one. I’ll be interested to see if the current government can pull anything out of the bag over the next 5 years.