Thread by @juanof9

Thread (1/7): @TheEconomist published a Special Report Titled "Fixing the #Internet", which relied on #Centralisation as its core lens

Huge victory for a technical community that has spent decade explaining how the architecture & ethos of the internet are under attack.

6 arts!

2. "But like Sir Tim, many people have recently become more critical of it (...) At the heart of their disenchantment, this special report will argue, is that the internet has become much more “centralised” than it was even ten years ago."
economist.com/special-report…

3. #Decentralisation is ultimately a question of #democracy. As digital technology penetrates society ever more deeply & the two become ever more intertwined, the rules of the former will increasingly govern the latter" economist.com/special-report…

4."A related idea being considered is to block big online firms from offering certain services on top of their platforms because they might favour them over rival offerings." economist.com/special-report…

5."Centralisation is also rampant in what could be called the “third layer”(..) Most people use one of two smartphone OS: Apple’s iOS or Google’s #Android. Cloud computing is a three-horse race among Amazon, Google & Microsoft. And then there are data...."economist.com/special-report…

6. "Decentralised services, then called “peer-to-peer”, briefly flourished in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They fizzled out mainly because no one knew how to build a robust decentralised #database. That changed in 2009 with the invention of Bitcoin" economist.com/special-report…

7. "China’s biggest advantage in #AI is #data, of which, thanks to more than 770m internet users, it has more than any other country. But instead of decentralising this treasure trove (...) China’s plan seems to be to centralise them even further" economist.com/special-report…