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Paraphrasing an article by Time Magazine's Joel Stein:
The Internet's personality has changed -- once it was like a geek with lofty ideals about the free flow of information. Now the web is a sociopath with Asperger's. [ Submitter's note: the "Sociopath with Asperger's" comment is not my addition, but a verbatim phrase in the source article ]
The people who relish their online freedom to act under influence of the online disinhibition effect are called "trolls." Trolling is, overtly, a political fight; but it has become the main tool of the alt-right, an Internet-grown reactionary movement that works for men's rights and against immigration. They derisively call their adversaries "social justice warriors" and believe that liberal interest groups purposely exploit their weaknesses to gain pity, which allows them to control the leverage of political power.
When sites are overrun by trolls, they drown out the voices of women, ethic and religious minorities, gays -- anyone who might feel vulnerable. The alt-right argues that if you can't handle opprobrium, you should just turn off your computer. But that's arguing against self-expression, something antithetical to the original values of the Internet.
The article closes with a description of an exchange between Stein and a detractor. In meeting the detractor in real-life, he was surprised by her lack of bravado, to which she responds, "The Internet is the realm of the coward. These are people who are all sound and no fury."
Stein ruminates in response, "Maybe. But maybe, in the information age, sound is as destructive as fury."
(Score: 3, Touché) by Snotnose on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:59AM
Yeah, I don't do anything that I need to spend the money or hassle with a VPN. I don't like being tracked and love my privacy, but if Uncle Sam cares that I frequent /., Soylent, and fark, then so be it.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @09:42PM
Not scary enough to tack on $5/month on top of what you are paying your ISP to get on in the first place, apparently. You could also use a free VPN occasionally.
"I have nothing to hide."
(Score: 2) by number11 on Sunday August 21 2016, @04:03AM
I don't do anything that I need to spend the money or hassle with a VPN.
The money isn't much. They run $35-50/year. Boingboing has been plugging some that are less.
I find my VPN often speeds up file transfers. Don't know why (I'd expect the opposite) but I've measured and it's true. Depends on the server and location. Maybe the bigger datacenters are just really well connected. But if you're a gamer, ping times will probably increase some.
The only hassle I've found is that some CDN (Cloudflare?) keeps throwing captchas at me, and a few asshat websites refuse connections. And that if you use a German server, it breaks a lot of Youtube (but that apparently happens to everybody in Germany, my German friend says "we all use VPNs to the US or Thailand".