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

[BraLoD]

SvennoJ said:

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.

I think currently it produce a rather similar ratio of negatives and positives, but I don't think the negative aspect had outweighted or even come close to do it yet in general, the sheer amount of years of positives and what it still allow us to do..., yeah, not there yet.

It is clearly headed to disaster tho, as the consequences are already real and things keep getting worse, but it's not really yet in a point of no return state, and I don't think it'll be either in just a few years, but it is capable of pretty much shifting to some of the worst outcomes pretty quickly.

When some of the bilionaries directly involved stopped acting alone and fell in line around the figure of one of the leaders of the world most influential countries, it changed from being a distant fear to a palpable one.

But even so, even as the people supporting it are in line, and its reach has achieved a pretty big division of a big country and is influencing some of the world, the lack of inteligence and prepare of some of them is a unexpected blessing. There was already some break ups and even infighting too, it's clear they are only in line for their own personal gain, as expected from bilionaries.

It is already really bad, people will feed themselves with whatever fit their current mindset (which can contradict itself on a hourly basis) and always pretend they are right and they are not part of a huge problem, or even that there is no problem at all.

That people they don't know suffer because they deserve to, and even be happy with their suffering; or that when they don't want a particular person to be accountable for their actions, always including themselves, anything is justifiable; or that when they can't bring themselves to accept reality everything is questionable and there is always a conspiracy behind it to justify the perpretator to actually be the victim.

We are already at a point where self brainwashing routine is so widespread that is literally fruitless to try to have actual discussions, people become literally vicious and full of bloodlust for things they don't even understand, yeah, it's really that bad, and the internet is the medium for all of that to be possible and keep spreading, but the actual full blown destroy society functionality is still quite far from being real, because the people in control are still just mostly acting by personal greed, there is definitely acting by lunacy too, but control to achieve more money, not disruption, is still the imperative individual motivation.