this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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How would you have communicated without someone owning a server and paying for it? Reddit and other centralized platforms emerged for some reason... You would have to literally make that illegal, i.e. make it illegal to host your own server and let users use it.
You can't just imagine some fantasy utopia, and compare that to the current system.
You do realize the Internet first started being used by universities and the military, not the private sector, right? I see literally no reason why Internet infrastructure couldn't be publicly owned. It could function pretty much like any other public utility.
And would it have grown into more than that? Into something that everyone, and not just military and scientists can use?
It did though? I don't know what point you think you're making but the internet did in fact grow from a technology limited to universities and the armed forces to a publicly accessible network, mostly off the back of publicly funded researchers and various techies that started their own neighborhood ISPs.