Ask Lemmy

Read - yes | write - no

I don't think it's as serious as "denying their right to exist," but the more things require an online presence, I think more that online access should be guaranteed. Or, if it's not guaranteed, it should be illegal for a service deemed necessary or even important to only exist online. Both are slippery slopes. Like, my cell carrier (Visible, an MVNO by Verizon) does not have phone support. They have support on Twitter and Facebook, and in their app via chat. Verizon will not help you even though they own Visible. But, carriers with phone support do exist and we are free to pay (a lot) more to choose one of them. But we each pay $30 a month for Visible and we are happy with them. No family plans. Everyone pays their own line. I think they start a little less, we have the middle plan.

Computers? To include smartphones? I dunno. I'm afraid for a world in which every citizen must carry a smartphone, and if you cannot afford an iPhone, you have to carry an Android phone, with all the spyware that comes with it (and one issued by the government would probably have even more). So yeah, you have a mobile computer in your pocket, but it tracks you everywhere, shows you ads, and probably runs like shit. That's not to dump on Android flagships; that's a whole other can of worms. But I also see people using cracked and otherwise beat up iPhones to avoid all the tracking BS, but sometimes they cut themselves on the chipped glass back. Like a real dystopian cyberpunk aesthetic. Wake the fuck up samurai, we have a city to burn. But don't cut yourself on that edge. Or let the corpo-rats track you right up to their front door.

In my country, we have that I think.

Several banks and gorernment functions are only accessible via internet, so it the state's rsponsibility to assure every resident has internet access.

Not amazing internet access, or even "good", but access.

Some places you have to bus to the nearest library during opening hours to use one of the freely accessible terminals, but it's free and available. You can also apply to have the bus ticket refunded if you're really struggling.

I think so, yes. It sounds like your stance is similar to my own. My reasoning is that the internet is so ubiquitous in countries like my own, and for all its ills, I am so glad that I was born in a time where my voracious appetite for learning can put me in contact with an abundance of free learning resources and people who are just like me.

Acknowledging the internet as a basic human right would require addressing the severely uneven distribution of its access; I can't ignore the fact that I'm only able to access all this cool stuff because I live in a country that colonised and oppressed a significant chunk of the world. It's no wonder that it's becoming harder to find worthwhile knowledge and community online when the internet and all the technology that supports it is borne of historic injustices. If we want the internet to do something besides serve the interests of capital, we need to address the structural inequalities regarding its access. It's fucked up that there are so many places in the global South that only have access to internet because companies like Meta went in pretending to be charitable, so they could create and capture a new chunk of the market. Apparently in Brazil, it's not abnormal for official government communication to use WhatsApp. Sometimes it makes me feel hopeless for the future

However, I am bolstered by reflecting on the history of other technologies. I was reading recently about how the printing press disrupted society, by giving far more regular people the opportunity to access written ideas, as well as share their own thoughts with the world. This was not a straightforwardly positive thing. There were (and indeed, still are) many privileged people who were of the sentiment that regular people having wider access to the written word was harmful to society, and to those regular people. Whilst I vehemently disagree with the classist sentiment they espoused, I do see some of their point — someone having the ability to read something doesn't necessarily mean they have the skills to understand it. Widespread misinterpretation and misinformation were side effects of the printing press, and it reminds me of some of the harms of the internet that we're experiencing today.

I've read a lot of scholarly works on the question of "what the fuck should we do about all this online misinformation?", and it seems that we don't really have an answer to that right now. It's too late to close Pandora's box now though, so we'll have to figure that out. I think that working towards equitable access to the internet is an important step towards collectively solving that problem, because the internet is something that affects everyone nowadays — even those who can't access it themselves.

Without question. Complete unrestricted access. Especially to tge dark web so folks can get cheap drugs and affordable wet work

Yes.

It doesn't need to be in every world, but it does in this one, where so much shit you need is only on the computer. Some things they simply do not stock in stores anymore.

Don't see why it should be

Considering where we are due to cheap and accessible internet, no.

What would that accomplish? Designating something as a human right doesn't decommodify the thing, nor does it magically make it infinite.

No one is denying anyone access to the internet and a computer.

And no, it shouldn’t be a human right, that’s ridiculous.