The promise of the internet and Russian election meddling

If I recall correctly, the promise of the internet, early days, was the democratization of political discourse.

Forward twenty years or so, and it's considered a verity that the current US president attained the office as the result of Russian meddling via the internet.

While actual evidence of said meddling has been non-existent, the claim has been repeated often enough to attain the status of fact. While the alleged meddling allegedly never favoured one side over the other, it allegedly sowed division in the American polity.

Ponder that for a moment.

Is divisiveness among American voters the result of teens in Montenegro running a click-farm, or is it the result of profound divisive issues within the American polity itself?

I'm going out on a limb here, but I would suggest that the divisive nature of US politics has absolutely nothing to do with alleged Russian meddling, and everything to do with the fact that the on-the-ground reality of life in America has been more divisive than anything that the allegedly Russian meddlers could conceivably concoct.

America is the world leader in the percentage of its population behind bars.

America is the world leader in arms sales.

America is the world leader in instigating wars with other states.

America has infant mortality rates and education outcomes more in line with third world kleptocracies than with other developed states.

These are all facts that the internet has allowed to spread far and wide.


Which is why the US is leading the charge to disembowel the freedom of the internet.


Too much democratization of information hasn't been good for the Empire...

Choking the internet

I've often wondered about the vagaries of internet traffic.

This little blog chugs along nicely at three to four thousand looks per month. That's not a big deal, but it's not nothing either. Historically, the top three audiences for the think tank at Falling Downs are the US, Canada, and Russia, in that order.

Russian page views have sporadically disappeared for months at a time. That's not something that can happen unless somebody somewhere is deliberately choking off traffic. It's impossible to have had 50,000 page views from Russia over five years and then have exactly none for months at a time.

We're not surprised by this. After all, Putin's Russia is much given to paranoia, and probably for good reason. After all, you'd be paranoid too if the greatest military empire in the history of history had it in for you.

But here's a real puzzler; my number one audience is following the Russians. Today I had more page views from France than I had from the USA!

Again, that can't happen unless somebody somewhere is deliberately choking off traffic.

Why?

Who dat messin wit my web?

There's a certain amount of discussion in the air about "internet freedom."

What does that mean?

I've noticed over and over that there are mysterious forces at work that seem to limit internet traffic.

This is what I notice. You post a blog that seems very popular. You get a couple of dozen views in the first five minutes. Then internet traffic stops.

Theoretically, if something takes off it should keep taking off. But it doesn't. It's like somebody puts the brakes on.

I've even seen page counts disappear. You had 91 views in the first half hour but three hours later you're at 21. How does that happen?

Maybe "internet freedom" is already a relic of the past.