At the outset I must say I don’t believe in censorship in any form and I am becoming increasingly concerned about what is blocked by various gate keepers – whether they be governments, major email or browser developers, ISPs or even your own IT staff.
Imagine what would be said if your local newspaper was delivered with large sections blacked out, or the TV or radio programs were interspersed with periods with no content at all!
Bill Gates’ henchmen at Microsoft have effectively done this by blocking images in HTML newsletters so that about three extra clicks are now necessary to properly view a newsletter or e-zine. I do in fact understand the stated logic behind this action, however a whole online publishing industry has been affected and they had no voice in the decision at all.
And the blocking by Google of anti-government websites in China is another instance of a large US corporation making self interested decisions which are contrary to the original spirit of the internet – they certainly cannot claim they were ‘doing no evil’ in this instance.
Working online, all day everyday, not only exposes me to a lot of unwanted material (can’t spell s**m here) but also makes me more aware of the many subtle changes which are occurring, without much fanfare, and which probably deserve a whole lot more attention.
It had always been claimed by the pioneers that the internet should be free for everyone (techos / academics call this commons) and that big companies should never be allowed to dominate the web and particularly not to be able to charge people to use it.
In fact, in the early days (‘80/90s) there were very few adverts of any type and later, with the advent of powerful search engines, the search results were primarily organic (natural), i.e. not paid listings (now usually referred to as sponsored listings).
Fast forward to the noughties and we find search engine results swamped with sponsored listings and in many, if not most cases (in local search), completely dominating natural results.
What this means is the internet is effectively becoming just an online Phone Directory (but usually web addresses as well as phone numbers), and the big companies who pay Google or Yahoo the most money get the most prominent listings, i.e. same as the good ole and now much maligned Y****w Pages.
Of course users are still not paying for the service – but they are simply not getting what they used to get – but I would say of more importance is what they don’t even receive in their Inboxes or access online anymore!
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