@lauren @amerika Of course. But thhis isn't an essayist format. and an essay isn't necessary to respond to something as succinctly backward as "it became commercialized when the government got involved".

@pieist @amerika I'm writing essays here but that's just me. I try to avoid letting overly simplified analysis stand without amendment, because the details do matter.

@lauren @pieist

Obviously, we are going to simplify a bit in these short messages.

The internet was quite different before it was let loose, and the DMCA and other acts had a lot to do with that.

Eternal September was also a problem, but one that should have been anticipated.

@lauren @pieist

We have degrees of government involvement.

ARPAnet was a military project. Then came the universities. Medical followed, and certain corporations related to telecommunications.

After that, a series of politically-minded government acts created the current situation, enabling monopoly conditions.

@amerika @pieist What monopoly are you referring to? There is no *Internet* monopoly. There *are* dominant ISP monopolies that are highly abusive, but that's a different discussion.

@lauren @pieist

Any of your Big Six, some variant on the major sites that take up most of the traffic and have most of the users.

ISPs are abusive mostly because running local wires is expensive, mostly because of heavy regulation that varies between localities.

@amerika @pieist Local regulation of ISPs has been decimated by years of conservative FCC and court rulings. You need to catch up on this I suggest.

@lauren @pieist

I am speaking only of the expense of running the wires.

Regulating ISPs directly is not going to help if the problem is that new market entrants are excluded.

Google fiber found out the hard way that running fiber TO a locality was far different than running fiber WITHIN a locality.

@amerika @pieist Keep in mind the efforts of the dominant ISPs to prevent communities from setting up their own fiber etc.

@lauren @pieist

This is a minor problem compared to the nearly universal problem of the high cost of running wire.

Look at our options:

* Cable from the 1960s
* Phone lines from the 1950s
* AT&T using old permits to run new fiber optics

It's always the high costs keeping out new entrants that preserve monopolies.

@amerika @lauren @pieist you forgot: wireless frequencies you need a FCC license to use (5g, starlink).

@PhenomX6 @lauren @pieist

The FCC has been a political organization for years, and it just about strangled radio before apparently satellite radio came along and finished the job.

@amerika @PhenomX6 @pieist C'mon, radio is still around. In almost exactly three hours I'll be speaking to something like a million listeners on network radio.

@lauren @PhenomX6 @pieist

I agree, but it has nowhere near the influence it once had, and the FCC had a huge part in causing market consolidation.

I enjoyed my days in radio. I'd link it here but it is mostly evil metal.

It's still around but Clear Channel and the like killed off a lot of the weird stations, other than the low power station that you can barely receive 80% of the time.

@PhenomX6 @lauren @pieist

It might be great if the FCC loosened up a bit on low-wattage pirate stations, because it might be better for the market to have real competition for content in there.

Then again, podcasts have kind of done that, and if self-hosted, are mostly censorship proof (until you get to the KiwiFarms level of extremity).

The thing with satellite radio is it's like cable TV or streaming, instead of answering to the FCC you answer to the much more lax censors there, who are worried more about subscriber count than ad revenue.

I remember in the mid 2000s Sirius was running ads about how Howard Stern uncensored is on our radio we're letting people listen free for a week or so to hear him. Nowadays nobody gives a shit about Howard Stern, Sirius merged with XM because neither could make a profit, and SXM has changed their business model hard because you can listen to any podcaster swear nowadays but you can't use a podcast app to get weather in an aircraft or play music in a store without having to pay for an extra performance license.

@PhenomX6 @lauren @pieist

Ugh. Costs get passed down, and bloat crushes good technologies.

It's piggybacking on the XM network. The Sirius Network was total garbage while the XM network had a lot more provisions built in along with higher sound quality. You can get stock quotes on many XM era radios for example, and then later GPS car head units with XM brought in traffic (for a few bucks a month). That's why the newer radios extended it to have even more channels.

They no longer sell new Sirius devices anymore.

@PhenomX6 @lauren @pieist

I keep meaning to get a satellite radio, but lack time to really listen.

Besides, downloading an assload of podcasts to a USB works pretty well too.

@PhenomX6 @lauren @pieist

I remember when Howard Stern was edgy, even if he said some horrible stuff that made me groan.

Then it was the Adam Carola type guys, and now we have Joe Rogan.

@pieist @lauren

Here's the original statement:

"The problem was that government got involved, the internet became commercialized"

None of the implied causality there.

@amerika @lauren Can you describe what the internet was like before the government got involved?

@pieist @lauren

Once you clarify your technical error, sure.

@pieist @amerika That's easy. There *was* no Internet before the government got involved. Period. Q.E.D.

@lauren @pieist

Do we mean the military here?

@amerika @pieist Sure seems to work well for something you feel is so bungled, eh? Otherwise, you wouldn't be reading what I'm typing right now.

@lauren @pieist

There are different degrees of "work."

Another medium dominated by a Big Six companies? I think that is not optimal, no.