It is a time of revolution on the Internet, as people all around the globe are revolting against the tyranny of the digital silos in larger and larger numbers. But a lot of those people are experiencing a free and open Internet for the first time. They’ve lived their entire online lives thus far under the megacorps’ thumbs and don’t know how to react to their newfound freedom because they’ve never had to know that before.

What younger folks may not realize is that the Internet, as it was intended to be, is not safe. It is anything but safe. The Internet is just a tool to facilitate free, open, and (I believe) secure communication between people regardless of race, religion, creed, or nation. And when that tool is made available to everyone, the breadth of human diversity is revealed - from the most noble, lofty ideals to the most depraved aberrations that the human mind can devise. But in order to have the Internet which we were promised, that means that absolutely everyone should have access to the tool.

In light of these revolutionary times, I think it’s time to have “the talk”. It’s time to talk about personal responsibility on a free and open Internet. I hope that by the time you finish reading this article, the following thought is foremost in your mind:

My Internet experience is what I, and I alone, make of it.

Responsibility To Ourselves

Out in the real world, we’ve learned that there are some places that we shouldn’t go if we want to stay out of trouble. We’ve learned how to handle bullies and weirdos, which usually involves either walking away or sticking around and engaging. And the Internet is no different - anything that happens out there in meatspace happens in cyberspace too. Somewhere along the line, a large portion of netizens bought into the idea that the Internet is (or should be) safe.

Let me say it one more time for those in the cheap seats: the Internet is not safe, and it is not safe by design. The only person that can keep you moderately safe is YOU, and that comes through awareness, knowledge, and experience.

You, the individual, have to take responsibility for the things you read, post, say, hear, and download from the Internet. You need to keep up with news of exploits and shifts in the ways that the software that you use everyday - especially that software that makes you feel “safe” - could be or has been compromised, and continually keep all that stuff up to date. Learn how to mute, block, or filter out content that you don’t want to see or hear in any applications that you use to interact on the Internet. Curate your own lists of video, music, followers, websites, or anything else you like to visit online.

Responsibility to Others

In discussion or discourse scenarios (i.e. “social media”), take responsibility for what you say, when you say it, and what information you post. Wil Wheaton once famously said that his philosophy is “Don’t be a dick.” This is the easiest way I can describe the necessary mindset for a positive Internet experience. But since an open Internet means that you’re going to hear distasteful opinions just as often as you hear ones with which you want to engage, you’re going to need to learn how to quell that unwanted noise.

But in cases of constant harassment, or if you run into someone that’s not just a danger to you but also your specific online community, then enlist the help of moderators or admins to help deal with that problematic person. Deal with individuals first on your own terms and leave the decision to block entire groups/instances or IP ranges up to the admins for the good of the community. A big part of one’s personal responsibility is to learn how to determine if something is offensive only to themselves, or generally offensive to everybody. I believe that one of the biggest threats to a free and open Internet is large-scale censorship where a small group of individuals makes decisions to block entire groups of users from being heard. This is, unfortunately, sometimes warranted but I believe it should be the exception rather than the rule.

I’m betting that you’ve already guessed the subtext of what I’m talking about, but I’m just going to come out and say it: I’m talking about gatekeeping. If you’re not familiar with that term, it’s a (usually pejorative) term for someone that tells others what they should and should not say or do on the Internet, and ends up effectively becoming a censor by determining for other people what they see and hear. I’m not going to get into specifics, but unless that sort of activity is a responsibility that you personally have been given by being conferred with moderator or admin privileges for your community, just don’t do it. Nobody likes a tattletale, and we all know what happened to the boy who cried wolf just one too many times.

The corollary to my premise above is this: Other people’s online experience is what they, and they alone, make of it. We, as individuals, shouldn’t be deciding what other people see or hear; otherwise, we’re no better than the silos with their algorithms of control. We need to let other people curate their own experience, even if that means that it may expose them to ideas and characters that they find offensive. That’s where their personal responsibility comes into play.

A Zombie Apocalypse

Look, I wish that human beings would be nice to and considerate of each other all the time. And I know that managing and curating one’s own interface to the firehose to the face that is the Internet can seem unbelievably tedious sometimes, and it always feels easier to push that curation off on somebody (or something) else. But that’s how we were tricked into giving control of our Internet to these silos in the first place - they told us to trust them for security and moderation, and we did. And now they’ve turned on us and used those promises to turn us into nothing more than product.

The inherent duality of freedom is that everybody gets to have it, whether we like what they’re doing with it or not. And since we might encounter things we don’t like, we must learn to protect ourselves first and take responsibility for our own protection. If enough people are having to protect themselves in the same ways from the same person or groups, then collective protection (e.g. social conventions, mutually agreed upon guidelines, ordinances, laws) can be enacted on a wider scale because enough people in a community say, “hey, this person/group is bothering me”.

If it helps, think of the Internet as a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland where an individual has to fend for themselves until they meet up with enough people that they can trust to travel or settle down with, and everyone else outside that group needs to earn the trust required to stay. Being online requires a mindset of constant vigilance and a liberal amount of “trust, but verify” skepticism (even more so with the proliferation of “hallucinating” “AI”s these days).

In Conclusion…

My intent with this post was not to scare you away from experiencing all that the Internet has to offer you, or frighten you into returning to some walled garden that you left for “protection”. My goal here is to shed light on the fact that this wonderful tool that we have for communication requires a lot of individual work to maintain, and even though it has been usurped by those who seek to profit from it, we can take it back with a bit of effort.

So to wrap things up a bit, if you remember anything from this article, remember this: