qybaz

Were roads legislated before they existed?

Did they serve the public interest (as in, did everybody benefit from them) when they were starting to get built?

That's precisely what will happen with what I proposed.

You could ask yourself the same question about all the public infrastructure that exists. I mean why even have roads, legally or morally??

In this day and age of censorship, I feel the same about web hosting. The American government should provide their citizens with a small space of hosting to share their thoughts.

You should learn that this is what would have happened to you if you had not worked hard during your education years. Now you can pass that lesson on to your children. :P

Imagine the amount of disease, death and suffering we could prevent if we lived in pods like in The Matrix.

The "unfree" participants could choose not to visit the websites, thus not receiving the content/services they want.

Why should I care? Market changes, adapt or disappear.

This is not the market changing, it's a law crushing a free market that already existed.

Given that the sites wouldn't exist at all if it wasn't for the ad networks they use to feed their editors, it seems justifiable to me!

I don't have a problem with accepting some ToS when I sign up to a service. My problem is this new law where you have to accept the ToS of every single website on the internet before you can use it, then the ad networks, the analytics services, etc. It would be like having to sign a ream of papers every time I enter a store.

Thank the Lord reality (still) does not have cookie banners.

The average Joe in the West doesn't get absolutely any news directly from China, so I'm not sure of what you mean.

Also, some high end hotels did provide unfettered access to the Internet for some reason, so I guess anyone could go there and browse Facebook for the price of an expensive coffee.

Practically everybody who is knowledgeable with computers uses a VPN - restrictions are only for "the plebs"

You should be sceptical of all the news about China that come from the West.

I hadn't watched it and it was on my TODO list, but whatever.

I think Opera also had a mail and blog service, and a quite lively community. They are trying to replicate it, I assume.