The year we are starting appears to be the first of the post-pandemic. Whether for biological reasons (The natural evolution of the virus), marketing (No "expert" is going to want to appear on TV warning of the dangers of the theta variant) or sociological (As the theologians who spent it well know centuries threatening hell to those who did not obey them, at some point people stop being afraid). However, other threats that appeared this year and that came from human beings will persist.
This is my balance for 2021
In no way am I downplaying the Coronavirus. What I am saying is that this serious illness was the perfect excuse for the formal and non-formal powers to regain control over the society that they were losing.
In recent years, political and economic power saw its influence decline rapidly. An unpopular measure agreed by officialdom, opposition and trade unions ran the risk of being overthrown by a protest coordinated by social networks. Unlike the times when only 5 or 6 experts approved by the media told society what to think, anyone with the necessary knowledge was able to expose falsehoods in official speech.
The betrayal of social media
The "founders" those dynamic and innovative characters who revolutionized the world of technology by getting rich (and in many cases hurting the unwary who bought their shares) they are getting old and still millionaires. That makes them conservative, although to silence criticism of the working conditions of their employees they adopt a progressive discourse and finance progressive parties.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, social networks decided to act like traditional media, they chose a speech, empowered it and eliminated almost any trace of the opposing speech. It did not matter that in many cases they were informed opinions of experts. And, this is how they gave the conspiracy theorists a foothold by preventing their falsehoods from being disproved in open discussions. Their problem was that they did not choose a position based on the facts and the scientific method, they chose to buy the discourse of fear endorsed by government experts.
One of the first articles that i wrote Last year he was warning about the politically correct censorship of social networks supported by entities such as the Mozilla Foundation. I was not alone, uAn irreproachable right-wing entity such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation manifested itself in a similar way
The decision by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others to suspend and / or block President Trump's communications through their platforms is a simple exercise of their rights, under the First Amendment and Section 230, to commissary their sites. We support those rights. But nevertheless, We are always concerned when platforms take on the role of censors, so we continue to ask them to apply a human rights framework to those decisions.. We also note that those same platforms have chosen, for years, to privilege some speakers - particularly government officials - over others, not only in the United States, but in other countries as well. A platform should not apply a set of rules to the majority of its users, and then apply a more permissive set of rules to politicians and world leaders who are already immensely powerful. Rather, they should be just as judicious in removing content from ordinary users as they have been to date with heads of state.
More betrayals
For a long time I was a harsh critic of Richard Stallman. I'm not saying this because I think you care (he sure doesn't) but because I have to admit that I was wrong.
My criticism was that I was spending more time demonizing proprietary software and services than developing competitive free software products that people wanted to use.. At that time I believed that Big Tech contributions to free and open source software were going to be good for the community.
The 2021 showed me, with slaps, my mistake.
I am referring to the unfortunate fact of boycott of Richard Stallman's return to the steering committee of the Free Software Foundation by members of free software entities that involved their projects in it. I have no proof, but I also have no doubts that behind were some companies that sponsor such projects. The attempt failed because the community, including other members of the aforementioned entities, gave their massive support
2021 showed that free and open source software has a very serious problem. Companies invest in those projects that contribute to the profitability of their business and benefit from others without contributing anything. We also saw some cases of code hijacking without acknowledging the original source or respecting the license terms.
In the next articles I will do a more orderly review. But, my conclusion is that of the title. It could have been worse. At least we are still here to continue fighting.