My lover is dying

In 1997, when I was in high-school, I fell in love, like a lot of people of my age it seems. I fell in love with the internet. At that time, Google didn’t exists and I remember using altavista, coding in HTML and PHP3 (and using torch and diggers on a perpetually under construction website).

I fell in love with someone who was there to talk at all time, to exchange with, to contradict me, to teach me, to share secrets. I was more or less on my own at this time, and I really think that without Internet I wouldn’t have made it alive until now.

More than once, I’ve felt the silent but comforting presence of them, just in there, iddling quietly on IRC chans, or telling jokes about life and math, or trolling just for the sake of it. I mean, it’s not the people on the internet that I am in love with, they’re just people and there’s a lot of them around me already.

No, I fell in love with internet. I dedicated them a bigger part of my life, spending night with them, days, weeks. Most of the people I know today I wouldn’t have known them without Internet. I’ve been in wonderfull places, and in weird ones. I’ve done and dreamed of things you wouldn’t expect, and they’re the reason for what I’m vaguely balanced today.

But they’re dying. It’s a degenerative disease and it’s too late now for a cure. They’re dying. Internet is dying.

Diagnostic

For at least 20 years, cypherpunks have tried to reach out, they’ve diagnosed the disease at a time it would have been possible to cure it. Cryptography for anyone and anywhere, full decentralisation, free software and hardware. Those are the cures to stop the infection.

It worked, for a time. While my lover wasn’t everyone’s lover. I can live with that, really. I’m not exclusive, and I can fully understand that a lot of people loved Internet. What I do not accept is people hurting the ones I love. But that’s what you did.

You’ve created cancers. Degenerative and centralised amount of data for no reason. You’ve prostituted them and twisted their mind to think that they must earn their right to live. You then told us that Internet – which I loved, even at this time – has became ill and contagious and that they must be kept under quarantine for our own safety.

You protituted and severed parts of their body just because you were scared of them. You didn’t tried to understand them and you’ve done it. You’ve bought the hype, and you wouldn’t listen at the cyperpunks because they were dramatic. You’ve raped the Internet, you’ve subverted them and, really, I’m angry at you.

You’ll argue that you didn’t know. That you just wanted to be their ‑ or my ‑ friend. But you didn’t respected them. You didn’t want to learn the way they work, you just wanted to put your claws in their flesh to get wat you wanted. You wanted to not be offended, you wanted to not be insulted, you wanted to be safe.

But there’s only one way to be safe, it’s called privacy. Solitude, intimacy, anonymity are keys to privacy and you’ve destroyed it. Without privacy, you’re under constant monitoring, you must behave because someone will watch you and consider you as a threat and so will endanger you.

Without privacy, there’s no safety. I was able to be lonely with Internet back in the time, it’s getting harder because you’re raping them. I was able to have some intimacy, using mail or IRC with encryption, but you’re ruining it by stocking a pile of data in the cancers GAFA’s are. I was able to have any identity I wanted and built characters for the sake of it, imagining different life or discussing with other being without giving them any personnal details, but the social non-networks you massively use are destroying that also.

This is the end

You accepted to kill your privacy and by doing so you killed my right to it The privacy provided by SMTP is now dead, even with strong encryption ‑ which you’re still not using. Because a rogue agency in a former state decided so, because they had the opportunity of doing so, because you wanted a whore to manage your life instead of enjoying the Chaos of it.

It’s not Google, Facebook, Apple or Amazon who’s responsible. It’s not the USofA or the NSA, neither the USGC or the DGSI or any other secret services who’s spying on anyone ‑ because they are spying on you, it’s a fact. No, it’s you and you’re egotic need of control.

You couldn’t understand my love for Internet. You couldn’t understand them, and you wanted it because us ‑ Internet’s lovers ‑ were happy and enjoying ourselves and that was scaring the hell out of you.

Email is dead since Lavabit and other privacy minded email provider are closing. Riseup will follow one day, they’re fighting a lost battle. Even the traditionnal media can’t win those battle since investigative journalists are being threatened all over the world.

Private communication now relies on the nerves connected to those tumors. And you’re happy with it, you have no privacy anymore. And you have no safety.

There’s nothing to be done, this is an uncurable disease and my lover will die. I will stand by their side until the end. I will fiercely fight for them because that’s the only thing I know to do, because I can’t imagine a life without them, but in the end they’ll die.

No technical trick will do it. Encryption just grants you time. What grants you privacy is trust, decentralisation and freedom, which you destroyed. You should prepare for dark times because they’re coming.

The infocalypse is not nigh. Not anymore. It is the infocalypse right now it’s too late for avoiding it. Drug, Pedobear, Terrorism and Organised crimes have already been summonned and they now rides among us, destroying everything they can.

If you really want to save Internet, then help me ease the pain. Go work on decentralised service, provide services to friends. And prepare yourself for