What’s the biggest threat to the Internet of the next 20 years? According to Pew’s Internet and American Life Project, it’s not criminal hackers. It’s not sextortion. It’s not cyber bullies. According to this study, it’s governments and major corporations.
This project includes top technological leaders, workers and teachers. There’s a great concern in this community about government surveillance, censorship, and corporate greed. There’s a concern these aspects could cripple or evil kill freedom on the Internet. And it doesn’t even have to be dictators, like what you saw in Iran back in 2009, or Turkey’s attempt to block online freedom to protect it’s prime minister from scandal. And here in the US, we’ve had controversies from the NSA revelations to net neutrality. Some say the biggest threat is social media, with their major banks of user information.
When it comes to social media, I think it’s a wonderful tool, when used for the right reasons. When you start discriminating against people for jobs, education and housing just because of their social media posts, that can be a threat and lead to trouble. The Internet has been a great tool for good over the past 20 years. But when high ranking people and institutions use it for spying or close it up to competitors, that can be a threat. Our nation was founded on free market enterprise. Shouldn’t everyone be given that chance? So yes, I see their concern. But I think criminal hackers and other less desirable elements pose just as big as a threat. Remember Target last December?