A good summary of what is currently happening on the internet is given in those posts by Darin Stewart ‘Welcome to the Splinternet‘ and ‘TikTok is just the latest victim of the fracturing Internet‘. Of course the trend has been around for some time, but it now definitely clear that internet is not any more global, but multiple.
“What was promised as the great agent of globalization is rapidly becoming an enabler of isolationism. The borderless, digital frontier international businesses and organizations aligned themselves to is fragmenting. New borders and checkpoints are emerging.” “Technical fragmentation currently prevents roughly 25% of internet users, most in emerging markets, from accessing 70% of the Web. Political fragmentation has already divided the Internet into East and West, but recent developments are further divvying up the web into strongly bordered regional federations.”
This fragmentation has been driven by legal aspects (data protection laws), copyright and commercial issues, political issues (China being the best known, but India also participating) etc. It is quite interesting that this trend is parallel to the trend to reel back from globalization.
“Over time it creates a parallel reality that is extremely difficult to break out of. When amplified by the walled garden effect users are separated from non-aligned segments of the web as firmly as if they were on different networks altogether.”
When travelling it is possible to overcome some of the access limitations but when staying in one’s country, only advanced tricks will allow to overcome these limitations. Most people will increasingly be participating to a more limited version of internet. And that is probably reinforce the current issue of people being increasingly caught in the bubble of their own opinion and social network.
