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The open web is to content agnostic user experiences as network neutrality is to content agnostic network pipes.
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In both data counts, but is not counted. They *are* different cases. Which is how a tech co.s can be pro-network neutrality & anti-open web.
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Slack, for example, couldn't afford a freemium model w/o network neutrality but they don't allow external services to access or archive them
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Slack, therefore, would probably be impossible without network neutrality, but is absolutely anti-open web. So is Twitter. Same reasons.
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In the end, limitations on either side of the equation are potentially terrifying in the scale they restrict access, and destroy history.
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History you ask? Let's take an obvious example related to me by an open source historian...
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WordPress's community once heavily relied on IRC, which was constantly archived. The archives could be searched, abstracted into data, DLed.
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Now, like many open source projects, they are on Slack. Slack's structure and TOS prevent archiving, external DL and search...
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WordPress's community is therefore now opaque to the greater web. And the growing, important(!) history of the project? Probably to be lost.
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This is sad. Also important, because WordPress writes the web (25% of it). And the same is happening in many open source projects...
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There are sure to be consequences to this beyond the academic, ones we can't predict. That's the danger of the closed web.
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I honestly think it might be more dangerous than network neutrality issues. Bad networks are terrible, but we can route around them.
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Humanity doesn't do quite so well when it comes to working around lost history.
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