Big picture here is this:<p>The oligarchy has taken over every form of media communication throughout history. The printing press, the telegraph, the radio, the television. The internet by design was resistent to centralization, the main method used on the other mediums, but the oligarchy fought a small fight in the form of the 90's cryptowars and then sorta let up. They recognize now though, that the last bastion of true, anarchistic freedom of thought is the internet, and globally will begin to attack it through many means, not just legislative.<p>Decentralization avoiding targeting in an age of mass surveillance is difficult, and this move towards centralization undermines the entire original purpose of the internet as a form of communication that could survive targeting. If we remember this, and build open source, encrypted, decentralized systems, we still might have a chance to keep the internet us older geeks remember.<p>I also have a theory that it is the technology of the internet that has artificially accelerated the oligarchy's attack time frame, because they are desperate to not let the cat out of the bag. Once the world gets a taste of intellectual freedom, they won't want to go back, and the cat is out of the bag so to speak. This is forcing their hand early and is a weakness.