What a strange time for the Internet. Trump tried to take on Twitter. Then Twitter took down Trump, as did almost every other social media platform. It’s an ongoing tug of war between corporations and governments over who gets to control and moderate the free flow of information, ideas, and speech online. But who made these guys the boss of the web? Most of us experience censorship in some form or another. Sometimes we just call it geoblocking (thanks for nothing, Netflix…). But this is more of an inconvenience, it’s a violation of our human rights. Imagine living without the internet for a whole day. How about months? In some parts of the world, like in Uganda, governments can authorize a complete internet shutdown to aid their own political agendas. Whether it’s big tech or ruling dictators, there should be no way for someone to just flip a switch and deny you access to the web. Time to Break the Internet? Many people (including Twitter’s own CEO) believe that corporate censorship sets a dangerous precedent. Hate speech and inciting violence are inexcusable and intolerable, we can all agree. Yet normalizing the behaviour of businesses to set the social standards for freedom of expression is a slippery slope. Traditionally, companies such as and Cloudflare t , when in fact, the internet is public infrastructure. Amazon Web Services reat the web as a privately owned commodity And just as with public utility companies like electricity and water, there are ways to into a publicly managed and powered space. The internet belongs to everyone. turn the internet We know a lot about Web 3.0 here at . This new kind of decentralized web means we can shift , rather than businesses. Then we . HackerNoon governance processes to people all become gatekeepers This new ownership model for internet infrastructure would drastically change the way we not only run it - - but the ways we prevent things like dangerous hate speech. more accessible, secure and free We need to . It’s the home of free information and expression. It’s also the home of cat videos, memes, Wikipedia, and of course, protect the internet HackerNoon. Subscribe to ’s newsletters via our subscribe form in the footer. HackerNoon

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