The centrality of the Net is a theme that earns continuous quarter of an hour of notoriety, often in negative terms. The last, in chronological order, to have dusted off the problem is the former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorseywhich provided a digital mea culpa, speaking of the centrality of information.
A sort of nostalgia for the times of Web 1.0, when the centralization of the Net – at least as understood by the former CEO of Twitter – was still to come. “I realize I’m partly guilty and I regret it,” concludes Dorsey. However, it is necessary to understand what the centrality of the Net is, if there are alternatives and, last but not least, if it is as terrible as it is portrayed. To do this we used the opinion of the engineer Giuliano NociScientific Director of the Internet Media Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano.
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The centrality of the Internet is neither new nor something that falls entirely on the shoulders of Twitter, Meta, Alphabet and other large companies that centralize technologies and information in their own hands, but must be sought upstream: “Up to now we have lived a dynamic management of the Internet by definition centralized and integrated with an American registration authority, an architecture with an American orchestrator. On the one hand, the importance that data assume in business strategies and on the other the current geopolitical situation is starting to be a problem ”explains Noci.
The centrality of social media is not a new topic either and Dorsey himself has already re-launched it in the past.
It was the year 2019 and the former Twitter CEO, questioning himself, asked his followers to comment on the possible decentralization of social networks, assuming that Twitter itself could turn towards an Open source solution.
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However, considering that social media runs on the Web and that this is subject to a policy of centralization, Dorsey only partially has the right to sprinkle his head with ashes, especially since admitting guilt is an orphan action if it is not accompanied by viable solutions.
The dispersion of Diaspora and the Web3.0
In 2010, Diaspora was born, a decentralized social network designed to ensure that users were the only owners of their data. An Open source resource that allows the creation of servers (called Pods) towards which to direct traffic. The keywords of Diaspora are decentralization, freedom and confidentiality. It still exists but the revolution he announced did not take place.
The cryptointernet, the Web3.0 based on the blockchain is an object to be defined. Even Dorsey, in responding to a provocation from Elon Musk, implicitly admitted that he had unclear ideas.
Web3.0, says Dorsey, is “somewhere between A and Z”, alluding to venture capital Andreessen Horowitz, one of the leading exponents of the decentralized network. Decentralization has been talked about since time immemorial and, today, it is still something smoky.
But which ones viable alternatives to centrality? “First of all, we need a very difficult thing, a shared architecture of data management methods. The fact that these are subject to the regulations of the countries in which the servers hosting them reside makes it necessary to have uniform data management regulations and it is evident that this is very difficult. Secondly, less American-style internet governance would be needed. These two elements seem to me to be prerequisites for the management of a network that has a strategic, competitive and economic importance “.
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Dorsey appears to be confusing cause and effect. Twitter has exploited the centrality of the Net and was not the author of it and, above all, not even Dorsey could have imagined what the fate of her creature would have been. “Thirty years ago, continues Noci, it was all an experiment and it was not clear what the evolutionary trajectory was, now without the Internet nothing happens. Internet is a strategic infrastructure that would need unitary and integrated governance and governance mechanisms and, since this will probably not be possible, from centralization we will move towards decentralized structures ”.
The centrality of the Net ends up under accusation in hindsight. Internet penetration has been spasmodic and uncontrolled, and as centrality took root more and more, no one for a long time objected to the American centralization of governance. But there is room to remedy: “If we talked about a centralized and integrated network it would not be a bad thing, it is clear that if it is centralized exclusively on an American basis and there are heterogeneous regulations, it is a chaos that is no longer acceptable. China, for example, doesn’t like everything being handled by the Americans. Centralization is not bad in itself if governance works ”. The future seems to be marked by Splinternet: “We will go towards a split of the internet, decentralized systems that will communicate with each other”, concludes Noci.
In the case of Twitter, a medium declined to first-hand news, centrality is not bad at all, also because – net of some selective censorship – it guarantees plurality of voices. Under the aegis of different authorities and therefore of different norms, would this plurality still be guaranteed or would it fall under the logic of variable geometries of this or that country? We can only sketch out an answer by considering the areas of the world in which, today, freedom of speech is a more or less guaranteed principle. The fact remains that Twitter, like any other Web resource, has become what it is also thanks to the American direction of the Net.