@lispi314@udongein.xyz @Farbs@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social I think it's fair to say that rapacious capitalism is the real culprit. But there's no question that morons and extremists joining the internet made it worse. In the 1980s, France had a different vision of what the internet could have been that was not rapaciously capitalistic, but still made room for business: the Minitel. Here's a previous podcast w/transcript on the topic fwiw: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2023/01/richard-barbrook-californian-ideology-libertarianism-neoliberalism/#:~:text=SHEFFIELD%3A%20But%20at%20the%20same%20time%20though%2C%20I%20mean%20in%20the%20eighties%2C%20I%20mean%20there%20was%2C%20especially%20in%20France%2C%20there%20was%20this%20a%20different%20idea%20for%20the%20network%20society.