For months, Google has maintained that the web is “thriving,” AI isn’t tanking traffic, and its search engine is sending people to a wider variety of websites than ever. But in a court filing from last week, Google admitted that “the open web is already in rapid decline” (with regard to advertising, kinda-sorta)

  • SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    10 hours ago

    The telecom companies got paid by the government to do it, they just as easily could have paid themselves to do it but we as a society are allergic to the idea of taking money out of the hands of poor billionaires and their potential profits

    • Hikki88@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      17
      ·
      10 hours ago

      That doesn’t undermine my argument that it was ultimately because of the capitalists that the internet spread in the first place.

      • SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        9 hours ago

        It does undermine your argument though, because you are saying that it only spread because of capitalists. I’m telling you it spread because of government funding and capitalists were just the medium by which the funding was used. The capitalist part is replaceable and unnecessary.

        • Hikki88@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          31 minutes ago

          I’m telling you it spread because of government funding and capitalists were just the medium by which the funding was used.

          It doesn’t work just by you saying it. According to multiple sources, the government clearly didn’t want to fund commercial internet and largely backed out during the 90s.

          The capitalist part is replaceable and unnecessary.

          It doesn’t matter if you think it’s replaceable, I can make that claim too. What matters is what actually happened in reality.