"The United Nations’ main internet governance body will host its next international forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In 2025, the UN may take its discussions on the future of an open internet to Russia."<p>The opening line reads like an Onion article.
Between blatant authoritarian regimes wanting full access and control, the US data hoovering which is definitely greater than a decade old, and the EU trying to push through a measure to get around encryption for the purpose of finding CSAM, there will be no bastions of privacy or anonymity within the decade.
I understand the concern, but why we act like this sort of stuff isn't just at the worst case a strongly worded letter just everyone knows an UN General Assembly resolution is? What can the IGF or the ITO actually do?
> between censorship-minded countries and those who support an open internet<p>The problem is that there really aren’t countries who are pro speech and support an open internet. The countries are all just pro-speech that they support.
The irony is that speech restrictions are most likely to harm the common people that are advocating for them, over the long term.<p>If they are advocating for them because and while they are vulnerable, then it stands to reason that less vulnerable people will eventually dictate how the laws are applied.<p>The same officials who think that "whataboutism", aka the call to ignore unequal application of the law, is a positive argument are the same officials that want censorship. That isn't a coincidence, and the same resultant risk to the population is shared between the two strategies.
Wired journalists also probably thought that <i>homophobia</i> was going to bring about the end of the world when Qatar hosted last year's World Cup.