In 2017, when the US House of Representatives debated whether to allow ISP's to spy on their users, representative of Massachusetts Michael Capuano was so incensed that he shouted across the floor of the House, "What the heck are you thinking? ... Give me one good reason why Comcast should know what my mother’s medical problems are?… Just last week I bought underwear on the internet. Why should you know what size I take? Or the color, Or any of that information?”

Well, Michael, as you probably know well, one reason is that the government would be the first in line to buy the information the ISP's would collect. And the US government is very concerned about everything about you, right down to the size and color of your underwear.

As if governments have not been behaving badly enough, Corporations have taken nearly complete control of the Internet that was in its early days populated entirely by research institutions, military contractors, educational institutions, and technically-knowledgeable individuals who chose to erect their own websites.

Today, the Internet that most of us see has become little more than an electronic shopping mall that corporations have tricked us into entering. There, they have taken away most of our needed anonymity, and they control the content we see. We have been led by the millions into poorly-run social media ghettos, where we can say whatever we like, as long as it isn't significant enough for the companies that run them to object. A blogger named Mike Grindle wrote, "Gone, it seems, are the web rings and personal homepages.

Instead, in their place, we find the apps, endless scrolls, auto-playing videos, bloated scripts, walled gardens, bots and surveillance infrastructure of Web 2.0. ... Certainly, this new web seems sleeker, simpler, more convenient, and streamlined. It has been scrubbed of its tackiness and 'optimized' for maximum consumption."