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🤨 Who owns the internet?

Best Codes on December 18, 2023

Have you ever wondered who owns the Internet, or what companies the Internet is composed of? Is it a republic, democracy, anarchy, or what? In this...
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lnahrf profile image
Lev N.

The internet is centralized, the governments own it (51% principle). Don't fall for the illusion of anything "free" being decentralized.

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best_codes profile image
Best Codes

Hi Lev, thanks for commenting!

While the government does have control over how the Internet is viewed (e.g., The government in countries like North Korea and China), it doesn't control the internet itself.

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bwca profile image
Volodymyr Yepishev

Well, if the governments control the content on the internet, couldn't one conclude that the Internet is controlled by the governments? I mean, what's there is to the internet if not content? 🤔

Apart from the dark web, your content can only exist on the servers of the countries, on which it doesn't violate any laws after all, doesn't it?

The Internet is not what it used to be in Web-1 days 😁

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best_codes profile image
Best Codes

They don't control its contents. They control what websites citizens can access in some instances. (Not in free countries). And servers are not owned by the government, but by private companies and individuals.

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lnahrf profile image
Lev N.

I will refer you to @bwca 's comment

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bwca profile image
Volodymyr Yepishev • Edited

If you try hosting something, which is illegal in China, while being in China, I am pretty sure something bad will happen, even if you host it on your laptop.

Unless the government cannot control the Internet, cos it's content on your personal laptop 😀

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best_codes profile image
Best Codes

I was it.

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best_codes profile image
Best Codes

If I were in say Iceland, like many secure servers, or in the USA, like GoDaddy, or another safe country, however, it would not be a problem. So some governments can control what their citizens can see, do, or add to the internet, but they can not control the whole internet themselves.

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lnahrf profile image
Lev N.

They do control the companies and corporations who control 100% of the clear (e.g not dark) internet’s traffic. aka they own the internet.

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Ihor Filippov

As I know, North Korea has its own internet not wired with the global one at all.

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best_codes profile image
Best Codes

Wow! That's crazy! I didn't know that...

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Mateusz Koteja

I was hoping for deep dive into corporations like Amazon (AWS), Cloudflare, ownership per traffic (Google, Facebook, Bytedance). This would be interesting. Not to mention last Cloudflare accident, or last Amazon Aurora issues when 50% of sites was down.

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Best Codes

That sounds interesting… perhaps it could be my next post. I wasn't really what I had in mind with this one.

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David Velasco • Edited

Thanks for your post.

I would additionally recommend a previous article on the topic by Bert Hubert, who has a quite interesting background in intelligence agencies.

berthub.eu/articles/posts/who-cont...

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best_codes profile image
Best Codes

Awesome, thanks for commenting. I'll be sure to check out that article!