Has the internet lost its way?

When I first became an entrepreneur and started SYNAQ, it was based on a decision to build a company that backed a movement that had the potential to change the world. It was 2004 and Linux and open source software was just starting to get the attention of businesses as a potential alternative to closed proprietary alternatives (like Microsoft).

At the time, Microsoft owned the PC Operating System market and the majority of the software market. Open source represented an alternative, a way to commoditize software access by making it more open, affordable and accessible to all. It felt like the future of the Internet depended on it, and a lot was at stake. I needed to be a part of that.

Microsoft fought open source software using every tactic they could, spreading fear about what would happen if you used this software that was developed by people around the world and who weren’t primarily interested in making money out of it, as opposed to one company ( Microsoft) that was driven by a profit motive. The scare tactics reached a pinnacle of absurdity when Microsoft’s CEO at the time, Steve Ballmer, famously compared Linux and open source software to communism. Ownership of the Internet was at stake, and Microsoft wasn’t going to just let it be taken.

Today, open source software powers the majority of the Internet and the world. You may not know it, but you’re interacting with open source software every day when you send an email, browse a website or use your phone. It’s the technology behind most of the technology that you use. Open source won, and the rest, as they say, is history... Not quite.

While open source software has won, we have lost what it was hoping to ensure: an open and accessible internet for all. The internet today is controlled by gatekeepers that decide what you see when you search, what news you get exposed to and what you can and can’t purchase.

A case in point.

I recently got involved in a startup that aims to provide reliable and affordable masks to people across the USA by selling them online. Masks have been shown to drastically reduce the risk of transmission and the spread of Covid, so you would think it would be in the public interest to make this easily accessible and available to anyone who was looking to acquire one for themselves or their businesses.

This startup got all the necessary FDA certifications, imported a range of masks, built an e-commerce site, found warehousing and did everything else needed to launch a new site, only to find out that Facebook and Google had banned advertising masks. Amazon, too, banned the sale of masks from new vendors as well.

The product banned here is a piece of cloth that protects your face. This cloth is shown to reduce the spread of transmission of a disease that is currently ravaging through the US and has many states closed and businesses shut down. The bans wouldn’t be such a problem if there was an alternative place to sell them, but we have reached the point where Facebook and Google control how you find anything online and Amazon makes up 50% of e-commerce sales (in the US). The decisions of these 3 companies determine the fate of your business. If you can’t advertise on Facebook or Google, and you can’t sell on Amazon, you’re dead.

As private companies, they have the full authority to make these decisions and set their own policies whether we agree with their reasoning or not. Today it’s masks that get banned. What will it be tomorrow?

When people ask why am I excited about, and invest in, blockchain, crypto and decentralization, it’s because we’ve allowed the Internet to lose its way, and decentralization may be the only force to bring it back.

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