The importance of the internet to our modern society and its current issues
Ever since its creation, the importance of the internet has been constantly growing every passing year, with new platforms and new tools being developed on a non stop basis, and an increasing number of people spending more of their time in the digital world. It is fair to say this technology has earned its position in the center stage of our current lives because everything of what we do, is one way or another registered in the internet, every transaction and a lot of our decisions end up being stored someplace in the net, which is why this tool could be considered as one of the most important ones there is, if not the most important one.
However, despite all the advantages it brings to everyone of us, and all the ways the internet has to make our lives easier, it is not perfect. Due to its centralized nature, there is the possibility of single entities leveraging their power and influence to control and manipulate what type of information can be consumed on the net.
There are specific examples of this all over the world with governments that don’t respect citizen’s freedom, and use their power to simply block certain websites that they happen to find as inconvenient for their interests. Specific examples of this are China and Venezuela, where people are getting use to being completely at the mercy of their government whims when it comes to freely consuming digital information.
I experience this first hand because I live in Venezuela, and it is no surprise to find certain websites blocked for sharing information that could hurt the government’s credibility and reputation, by blocking these websites they expect to avoid this delicate information to be known inside the country and keep people ignorant regarding these facts.
But governments are not the only type of entity that can abuse their power to control which information is consumed and which is ignored by the masses, internet providers can certainly do the same as a way of favoring the consumption of content in the platforms where they have economic interests, a specific example was reported by Wired:
AT&T already lets you watch its DirecTV Now video service without having it count against your data plan, but watching Netflix or Hulu still chews through your limit. | Source
This is why net neutrality was created in the first place, it consists in ensuring internet providers treat all data flows equally, without favoring some websites over others and giving equal speed to every connection there is. However, in December 2017 net neutrality was repelled and as of now it remains like that.
Another major issue that exists is how people’s privacy is handled. The majority of websites and internet companies use ads to monetize online content, and in order to make the user interested when displaying the ads, they need to gather enough information to create an online profile about that particular user and display relevant ads based on this profile. The negative aspect of this dynamic is that these companies will do whatever it takes to find access to this information, even to the point of not respecting people’s privacy. Which is exactly what happened with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, where information about millions of people with Facebook profiles(including info about their Facebook friends) was used without them being aware of it. This was done in order to “build psychological profiles on a large portion of the U.S. electorate”. | Source
And the same can be said about government agencies such as the NSA and all the methods they have to, in every sense of the word, spy on people, as was disclosed by Edward Snowden a few years ago.
Every single one of these problems, being basically lack of proper freedom and privacy regarding internet use, are possible because of the centralized nature of the internet. Up until this point, mostly everything worked on a centralized way, there wasn’t another option when approaching the development of different platforms and projects, but that is no longer the case.
After the creation of Bitcoin in 2009, there has been an incredibly high amount of new decentralized developments, looking to disrupt every single industry there is, and Decenternet is the one capable of solving each and every issue mentioned in the previous paragraphs.
What is Decenternet and how can it provide future-proof protection for people’s freedom and privacy?
Decenternet, according to its whitepaper, can be defined as:
... the most powerful complete hyper-speed P2P distributed Internet infrastructure solution platform that Blockchain technology can create. It doesn’t belong or report to any third-party organization except to its users | Source
By not reporting to any entity with interests that differ from those of its users, it is impossible to experience a lack of freedom when searching for information that is available on this network. There won’t be anyone manipulating or controlling access based on the type of data, and everything will be accessible without favoring any content nor suppressing any information.
It will operate completely independently, and it will even use its own currency called Spyce that will be used to do any type of typical transactions like for example “purchase hosting services, apps, or goods, or process micropayments with ease.” Source
Spyce will be created by mining activities anyone can do with common computers, which can ensure proper decentralization for the long term, because anyone willing to participate in this activity will be able to do so without needing to invest in an extremely powerful computer. The mining protocol that allows this to happen is so far only implemented in this project, it is called Proof-of-Reliability (POR) and will let anyone to mine Spyce based on how reliable their node is.
Under these circumstances, the possibility of a single entity enforcing control and manipulating the consumption and the availability of certain data is zero. All the content will always be available for users and by users with no censorship whatsoever.
When it comes to personal information, there will no one spying on the users because those backdoors employed for this type of activities will be non existent in the Decenternet’s network, this protection can be expanded even further by the use of the ANUVYZ operative system that will be discussed in the next article.
Summary
The internet is one the most important tools ever created by humanity, allowing all sort of new possibilities to expand our knowledge, however, there are issues with certain entities having too much power and influence over what type of content “should” be consumed, and they use said power to manipulate in all sort of ways which content is available and which is not. Besides, there are privacy violations perpetuated by government agencies as well as private corporations, where they gather data without the user being aware of it, this is clearly an unacceptable abusive behavior.
All of these problems can potentially be solved by the Decenternet network, where decentralization is guarantee thanks to the Proof-of-Reliability protocol that allows for any user to provide their own node for the network without needing to invest in extremely expensive computers, and since this is designed to work as a P2P network, there won’t be any entity distorting the data flow between the content and the consumer.
If you want to know more about this project, feel free to:
- Check out Decenternet’s website
- Check out ANUVYS website
- Follow the Decenternet Facebook page
- Follow the Decenternet Twitter page
- Join the Decenternet Telegram group
“DISCLAMER: The information contained within this post shall not be taken as financial advice. I am not a financial advisor and none of your investing should be carried out based on any information presented here. You can lose all of your money by investing. The following information is for educational and entertainment purposes only.”