At #DWebSummit, @nicopace notes that "people in remote communities want to connect with each other, not necessarily to the internet".
@nicopace There is a unique value in keeping these communities "disconnected", to preserve their cultures against the monoculture on the internet.
This is the opposite strategy of what Zuckerberg wants to build in the Global South.
"There is no decentralized web without owning your infrastructure." @nicopace
From Kenya and Pakistan, Cecilia Maundu and Nighat Dad also highlighted the vulnerability and harassment that is inherent to being online with the planet, and decentralization as a way of creating safe boundaries for digital networking. #DWebSummit
In other words, the internet is often a channel for *cultural colonization*.
And for most people in the Global South, "Facebook is the Internet".
Ethnocentric actors and organizations are blind to these problems.
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The business model of the Internet is intermediation.
Google Duplex (Google Assistant capable of making calls on your behalf) is branded as an "assistant" but it's in the long run a middleman: something that both consumer and producer will consider a necessary evil.
Consumers will consider the assistant necessary because they'll be dependent on it, either because they forgot how to research info on their own, or because they are time deprived.
Producers (small businesses) will consider the assistant necessary much like how Google-first SEO has become important for small business.
Google is migrating from Search to Suggest but they're not changing their middleman status: they'll influence small bizs to be "compliant".