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2025-05-02 20:34:03

existentialcomics@mastodon.social

Capitalism didn't give us the internet.

Large-scale cooperation, open protocols, and free software gave us the internet. Capitalism gave us mobile sites that don't work because fifteen ads cover the screen.

2025-05-02 20:44:35

PRW

prw@mastodon.sdf.org

@existentialcomics there's an early RFC on why capitalism won't deliver an Internet:
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc873.html

2025-05-02 20:49:21

craignicol

craignicol@glasgow.social

@existentialcomics capitalism took the web from us, and gave us apps instead.

2025-05-02 20:56:01

Greenpete :dustSprite:

greenpete@sunny.garden

@existentialcomics The U.S. government gave us the Internet, so the tax payer...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

I think you mean the (World Wide) Web.

2025-05-02 21:10:47

Kagan MacTane (he/him)

kagan@wandering.shop

@existentialcomics

> Large-scale cooperation, open protocols, and free software gave us the internet.

Also government. The foundations of the internet started as US government research projects. That's why, to this day, reverse DNS lookups include references to the `in-addr.arpa` domain, with ARPA being the Advanced Research Projects Agency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.arpa

I am no fan of government, but I gotta give them their due on this.

(But yes, very much agreed on "not capitalism"! 👍🏻💯)

2025-05-02 22:06:53

Robin Doody

RobinDoody@musicians.today

@existentialcomics Sounds like you're defining the internet as 'the bits I like about the internet'. The fundamental open protocol of the internet, TCP/IP, came from a defence research project.

2025-05-02 22:53:48

Martin Kostera

martin@libera.site

BS. ARPANET was before internet(TCP/IP). In 1983 ARPANET adopted TCP/IP and internet appeared. Made by military org. DARPA in capitalistic USA.

2025-05-02 23:23:26

Karl Matthias 🇺🇦

relistan@mstdn.social

@existentialcomics @tdp_org yeah, capitalism gave us CompuServe and AOL. The government gave us the Internet.

2025-05-02 23:34:47

Dom

dom@mstdn.ca

@existentialcomics Technically, it's the military that gave us Internet, just like global positioning systems and satellite images. For-profit corporations rarely develop something that is truly ground-breaking. They simply repackage stuff differently with a "brand" and some hype to make a profit.

Not trying to promote military development, but just showing that when money is not the goal, technological innovations often flourish.

2025-05-02 23:47:44

not obscene, just deeply concerning

apophis@kill-corporations.enterprises

@existentialcomics the way capitalists and capitalist institutions take credit for things https://www.youtube.co...

2025-05-03 00:24:38

ferricoxide

ferricoxide@evil.social

@existentialcomics@mastodon.social

Government spending, like is being dismantled in the US, brought us the original Internet.

2025-05-03 00:58:42

Justin Mason

jmason@mastodon.ie

@existentialcomics also don't forget copious NSF funding

2025-05-03 02:46:02

Zalasur 🐸🇺🇦

zalasur@mastodon.surazal.net

@existentialcomics Fun fact: Capitalism *did* try to develop a protocol on top of IP called OSI that was co-developed by a bunch of industry titans at the time. It was complex and bloated with a very proprietary tech stack.

It never caught on because of an open protocol that was much simpler overtook it back in the early 80s called TCP.

These days the only remnant from the OSI initiative in use today is the "OSI model" used to describe the tech stack for the internet in general.

2025-05-03 02:55:20

Sage 🇵🇸 🇱🇧 🇺🇦 🇿🇦 🇨🇺 🍉

Sage7225@mas.to

@existentialcomics Specifically the US government and the Department of Defense gave us the internet.

2025-05-03 03:17:49

Irenes (many)

ireneista@adhd.irenes.space

@existentialcomics also, the core protocols were mostly built with military research funding

2025-05-03 03:54:42

Kurio :Blobhaj_Pumpkin_Face:

kurio@sunny.garden

@existentialcomics Ads apart, mobile sites are also very painful to use and the design is poor and unoptimized purposefully, to force you to install another app to track you.

All these apps could've been well mantained, efficient websites!

2025-05-03 04:09:59

Dustin Mitchell

djmitche@fosstodon.org

@existentialcomics and academia

2025-05-03 04:13:01

ruakueqche

ruakueqche@kolektiva.social

@existentialcomics There is so many people arguing that "despite what existential comics say, it was actually the government and the military that gave us the internet"...

Like, Existential Comics is not saying that the *government* did not participate in the creation of the internet, but that *openness and cooperation* are what built the internet. The government and the military, along with universities and some corporations, developed *open* protocols for anyone to connect to each other. This contrasts with the tendency of Capitalism to make everything closed and restrictive to maximize profit, as seen in the mobile computing space.

Some of the people who added "government" did add interesting things to the conversation, but that angle is not a "gotcha", it does not contradict EC's point.

2025-05-03 08:18:26

Farooq | فاروق [Master Patata]

farooqkz@cr8r.gg

@existentialcomics

oh and don't forget spyware being normalized and embedded in almost any website.

2025-05-03 08:40:23

★ STMAN ★ 🏳️‍🌈

stman@mastodon.social

@existentialcomics It's much worse than this. Internet is the official cyber-religion. Internet is just one possible cyberspace architecture and concept within an infinity of alternative possibilities. The current cyberspace architecture and concept is capitalistic, fascist and imperialist by design, but other possibilities enabling the exact opposite political goals exist and could be deployed. You should stop praising for the internet, it's an evil cause.

cc FYI @fanchon_nowak

2025-05-03 09:11:35

Nick Silkey 📻 N5ILK 🪓🪵 🪣💧

nicksilkey@hachyderm.io

@existentialcomics Public good and public service and love for knowledge as well as other humans just like all of us got folks connected.

Tired ass capital extraction wrecked it. Same boring basic bitch playbook!

It's fixable tho! By passionate people and their free will after learning this. The only way is through. 🫂💃✌️💙

2025-05-03 09:59:27

CrypticCatfist

CrypticCatfist@kolektiva.social

@existentialcomics
I remember when the "Information Superhighway" was suddenly shut down and replaced with "E-commerce".

2025-05-03 17:44:14

ezaquarii

ezaquarii@social.etacassiopeiae.net

@existentialcomics actually, if was cold war and military that gave us the I internet.

2025-05-03 19:29:38

June Blender

juneb@mstdn.social

@existentialcomics University professors developed the internet to share physics papers.

2025-05-03 19:43:33

Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐

gcvsa@mstdn.plus

@existentialcomics The Internet was created primarily by government investment and government-funded research.

FTR, I've been "on the Internet" since 1986, which is a lot longer than 99% of people in the world even knew the Internet existed. My first email address was gs1v+@andrew.cmu.edu, and if you immediately recognize that domain and subdomain and know why there's a plus inherent in the email address, they you are at least as old as I am.

2025-05-03 20:56:05

Marty Fouts

MartyFouts@mastodon.online

@existentialcomics By the time the BSD protocol stack had become free, the modern Internet was well established and the backbone implemented in proprietary implementations on corporate hardware. The large scale cooperation was mostly corporate through things like InterOp and the infrastructure is still very much corporate, both the devices and the networks. Open protocols played a role but so did and still does massive corporate investment.

2025-05-03 21:23:48

Pilsnerd

psilonaut@idtech.space

@existentialcomics The first thing to be sold on the internet ever was

weed

2025-05-04 15:42:12

Space Hobo

spacehobo@teh.entar.net

@existentialcomics https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/3470/How-Not-to-Network-a-NationThe-Uneasy-History-of ← This book tells the story of how the US won at making the Internet because they acted like socialists, while the USSR tried to do it through cOmPeTiTiOn, and failed.

2025-05-05 01:10:16

Tallak

tallakt@functional.cafe

@existentialcomics @TanteGulo capitalism gave us wap

2025-05-06 05:28:36

Jaycosm🔆

jay@mastodon.gamedev.place

@existentialcomics Internet? 👀 I'll search for it on Yahoo! Is that why my AOL account only has some dude named bgates on it? AOL was basically AppleLink on steroids. Apple was trying to launch eWorld at the time also... and HyperCard, the original Web interface. So, capitalism is responsible for a lot of tech behind the current Web. Capitalism in the right hands can accomplish a lot of good things. It's the people who abuse it who are the problem. 'Got a notification on CompuServe - 'gotta go!

2025-05-07 15:31:33

David J. Atkinson

meltedcheese@c.im

@existentialcomics Government, specifically military research, gave birth to Arpanet, a technical example of an inter-network. About 10 years later, government decided to let anyone use Arpanet for educational, private, public or commercial use. It took an huge variety of efforts big and small by many communities of interest to make the newly renamed “Internet” useable for anything other than academic email and file exchange.

We gave ourselves the Internet. We are also responsible for some parts of it getting screwed up. If we didn’t tolerate what we do, the screwed up parts would get fixed by the same kind of people who created it in the first place.

2025-05-08 12:12:16

Mikkel Lentz

MikkelLentz@mastodon.social

@existentialcomics true. Capitalism cannibalized and commercialized the trust of the users. We should seek for altruistic based platforms.

2025-05-08 22:41:58

Sunny

Sunny@universeodon.com

@existentialcomics

Agreeing and elaborating....

I think technically, the Department of Defense gave us the Internet. Specifically, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA.

Capitalism as you illustrate, is just a parasite that came along and infested the Internet later.