Who closed the web?

Remember when the web was open?

No?

Well, I’m not surprised.

It’s a long time since the web was the open medium we were promised.

Who closed the web?

You might be surprised at some of the culprits...

...and at how close we might be to breaking the web open again.

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You can’t do much on the web these days without giving your real name, your social security number, your driver’s licence and your fingerprints, without some shadowy mechanism dictating what you can and can’t say and see, without some nameless functionary nudging you away from what you want to do towards what they want you to do.

How did this happen?

When the web was invented, it promised open connection between every person on the planet.

Who broke this promise?

Here are the four forces that have worked to close the web...

...and how Open Web Mind will open it right back up again.

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References:

• Companies like The New York Times, Barnes & Noble, eBay and Amazon, not to mention little known phone companies, health companies, travel companies and even florists, were willing to pay AOL and CompuServe hundreds of millions of dollars to bring their content inside the walls of their gardens.
• The FBI directed Twitter to censor certain ideas, certain stories and certain people.
• In some countries, politicians fund independent media, too, paying journalists a substantial portion of their salaries.
• In some countries, politicians pass clumsy legislation dictating what tech companies can and can’t show us in our feeds.
• Governments can, at a whim, hit tech companies with massive fines for arcane transgressions, force them to fund local media, and strangle them with antitrust lawsuits.
• We need to be eternally vigilant.

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Hosted by Mark Jeffery founder of Open Web Mind