Has the internet been a net positive or negative for humanity?

[SvennoJ]

BraLoD said:

For now and at least a decade in the future, for all it has provided up to this point, it was a massive positive.

But as people are becoming, and already are, far too depedant on it, and it keeps being more weaponized by a few bilionaries into the biggest form of social control and manipulation mankind has ever faced, it's going to be a massive negative eventually, with the potential to literally reset us back in time as society and it's definitely going to cause civil and international wars too.

I'm not that optimistic, in my view we're already on the net negative side.

The internet is fueling genocides already
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/amnesty-report-finds-facebook-amplified-hate-ahead-of-rohingya-massacre-in-myanmar

All the misinformation on the internet made the pandemic much worse, over 7 million dead.

People don't talk to each other anymore, instead fortify their beliefs in echo chambers weaponized with confirmation bias.


While the internet gives everyone access to all the information in the world, most people don't look further than anything that confirms their bias. Algorithms make sure to keep you on that confirmation bias. 

The internet is being turned into a form of thought control, as well as a means to profile dissenters. We're already at the stage of Minority report, except it's through whatever you say or read online, collected, distorted and used to arrest and deport people.

The internet with AI turn George Orwell's 1984 into reality.


And the internet has failed to mobilize people for the real threats humanity is facing, running out of potable water and climate change wreaking havoc on everything we depend on. Instead disinformation campaigns make sure we keep running like Lemmings of a cliff.

It was a positive, but now the internet is in the hands of a few tech billionaires that don't have the interest of humanity in mind.