As far as I can tell, we are only allowed to go online at the pleasure of our ISPs, who have been shown to be more than willing to let 'the man' do whatever he wants to our connections.
In order to be able to use the internet and connect to our peers, a vital necessity in today's world that is where free speech happens now, we need mesh networks. I've seen Steem, Pocketnet, and various free speech platforms, but they're just a firewall away from being unavailable, because the ISPs can cut them off as they did New Zealand.
Thanks!
Yea. I've been thinking a lot about that lately, as my connection gets slower and slower over time. Hmmm....
Well, after the Mosque massacres last year were live streamed on Fakebook, the government of New Zealand ordered ISPs to no longer resolve the IPs of the chans, where warnings of the upcoming attack were provided. Weird how the actual vector, Fakebook, was never considered being held accountable, but the free speech platforms that enabled folks to protect themselves were silenced.
Maybe ISPs are slowing our connections down, but the real problem is that they can just completely cut us off at will.
Right. AND...I fully expect that we will one day be expected to log in to have access to the internet, and that those who haven't paid a special "internet access fee," (beyond the ISP charges) and/or who are on a government black list, will simply not have any access.