Tech This Week | Banning TikTok is another nail on coffin of internet exceptionalism
This has been a busy week for the internet. Earlier this week, India banned TikTok (along with 58 other apps from China). This was followed by Airtel and Jio blocking access to DuckDuckGo (a privacy-first search engine). If we zoom out, there is a strong argument to be made that both of these developments are part of a larger pattern. That is, both these developments are detrimental to the special status we have afforded the internet for so long.
Let me put this into context. Since the early days of the internet, there has been a long-standing belief that it is an exceptional phenomenon. Jeff Koseff’s book, The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet, explains this beautifully. At the risk of obliterating all nuance, the book itself is about a law that makes it hard for people to sue internet companies.
Source: www.deccanchronicle.com
