During its popular infancy, we were certain it would be governments that would kill the Internet. Remember Barlow's A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace? That's the sort of lofty hubris we embraced for it.

But it's not really normies and corporations killing it now, much as it might seem. And Barlow wasn't so far off in his threat estimation either. After all, it's authoritarian statists who are behind the Internet's twisting, and they're doing it for a literal ploy at world domination. What a bunch of catiffs!

Barlow's declaration, looking back at it now, reads as grossly naive. At least it looks that way across the smoldering cultural war zone that the Internet, hell the whole world, has become. We knew something terrible was probably coming, even back then, but having the US President fighting for the good guys is not part of what most imagined, I'm pretty sure.