Will Distributed Data Networks Bring Digital Freedom?
Paul Green
Aug 20 · 8 min read
Distributed data networks hold the promise of unfettered free speech. They could liberate us from the big tech company monopolies and reduce the tyranny of censorship. But are we ready?
Person walking towards the light at the end of a tunnel
Photo by Benmar Schmidhuber on Unsplash
How Did It Begin?
The Internet was born with big promises of freedom. It was to be a place where people could freely share data with one another, freed of the shackles of our fleshy substance. It was considered a promised land, where individuals were sovereign, with their words existing in a space beyond states and their borders. It was a noble aspiration. The frontier spirit encapsulated in world without physical limitations.
Few have said it better than John Perry Barlow, in A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace¹ from 1996:
“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.” ¹
What Went Wrong?
Typing in 2020, clearly it didn’t go according to Barlow’s plan. Data has become siphoned, segregated and siloed. Governments have strengthened their grip on the gateways providing access to the Internet, blocking servers, spying on data in transit and suffocating freedom in the name of keeping people safe.
While the Great Firewall of China may have received the focus from those in The West, restrictions are happening all around us. Barely a month goes by without government officials calling for encryption back doors, to allow their spying on our lives to continue.
It isn’t just the rules and regulations that are choking off the Internet either. Those who run the gateways are also given enormous power.
Search engines are the on-ramps for many people, with their results dictating what they learn. They can censor or promote traffic to meet their own agenda.
Social networks have also created walled gardens where your data becomes their data. You become their asset, to maximise their profits. They control your feeds, restricting it as they please, diverting your attention for their benefit.
Intellectual property laws have been stretched to the limits. Laws which were originally intended to protect the consumer and encourage invention, now frequently have the opposite effect. Data is corralled, metered and monopoly control of it is traded for profit.
These centralised systems also provide the perfect honey pot for those in power. Ordering these behemoths to hand over data about you, based on little more than a suspicion, becomes easy. While governments may bemoan these monopolies, they provide turn-key intelligence gathering services, that they can tap at any time.
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https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/will-distributed-data-networks-bring-digital-freedom-bedebc1a24c1