ILLUSTRATION: CASEY CHIN; GETTY IMAGES
In the early aughts the internet was less dangerous than it was disruptive. That’s changed.
When this decade began, the ideal of the internet as a freewheeling intellectual playground remained largely intact: A medium that, after years of bubbly anticipation, had finally reached the mainstream and fulfilled its hype, bringing with it online marketplaces with infinite selection, viral videos, long-lost friends on Facebook, and even the hopes for new forms of protest and dissent against authoritarian regimes. The internet was less dangerous than it was disruptive, and that disruption, for most of us, held exciting possibilities.
It didn’t last. Today, authoritarian governments have turned the internet to their own purposes in the form of propaganda, disinformation, and cyberwar. Extremists have co-opted and corrupted social media to spread hatred and advocate violence. Startups that once seemed like innovative underdogs now loom over the economy as vast, unaccountable monopolies. The dangers of the physical world have seeped into the online one – along with a few new, inherently digital dangers that threaten foundations of modern society as basic as our democracies and critical infrastructure.
Continue reading and be scared!
Labels:
internet, dangerous_people, dangerous_organisations, Trump, Putin, Zuckerberg, Xi_Jinping, Assange,
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