The Splinternet — Mankind’s Battle for Internet Control

Is the splin­ter­net com­ing — or is it already upon us?

The splin­ter­net is the idea that the inter­net “splin­ters” into sev­er­al dif­fer­ent inter­nets that aren’t con­nec­ted in any mean­ing­ful way.

“The splin­ter­net (also referred to as cyber-balkan­isa­tion or inter­net balkan­isa­tion) is a char­ac­ter­isa­tion of the Internet as splin­ter­ing and divid­ing due to vari­ous factors, such as tech­no­logy, com­merce, polit­ics, nation­al­ism, reli­gion, and diver­gent nation­al interests.”
Source: Wikipedia ¹Splinternet. (2022, December 12). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​S​p​l​i​n​t​e​r​net

The idea of the splin­ter­net is by no means a new concept.

“Early tech blog­gers like Doc Searls and Stephen Lewis began the­or­ising about a splin­ter­net as early as 2008, not­ing that the free and open ideals that built the world wide web are increas­ingly at odds with the polit­ic­al agen­das of gov­ern­ments across the globe.”
Source: Business Insider ²Holmes, A. (2020, August 6). The “splin­ter­net”: How US-China ten­sion could end the world wide web. Business Insider. … Continue read­ing

‌Some sug­gest that this splin­ter­ing is now becom­ing worse and worse. 

In Western media, China is often named as one of the main cul­prits on the glob­al stage when it comes to the splin­ter­net — and also the biggest win­ner of such a Balkanisation.

“A frac­tured inter­net means coun­tries that can col­lect large amounts of data with­in their own bor­ders will have an advant­age in devel­op­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and oth­er tech­no­lo­gies. Nowhere more so than China, with 900 mil­lion people on the inter­net. There are already signs that pop­u­la­tion is becom­ing a key driver in innov­a­tion and eco­nom­ic growth. China’s share in the top 10% of most-cited papers on AI came to 26.5% in 2018, accord­ing to the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, fast approach­ing the American share of 29%. Allen Institute seni­or pro­gram man­ager Carissa Schoenick pre­dicted in 2019 that China was poised to unseat the US as the world’s lead­er in the com­ing years. […] China now accounts for 23% of cross-bor­der data flows, nearly twice the share of the US, which ranks a dis­tant second with 12%.”
Source: Nikkei Asia ³Tsunashima, T. (2020, November 25). China rises as world’s data super­power as inter­net frac­tures. Nikkei Asia. … Continue read­ing

‌This is a prob­lem­at­ic situ­ation with far-reach­ing implications. 

While the US inter­net, rel­at­ive to China, seems to be in free fall, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion attemp­ted to strike back against China by tar­get­ing the Chinese social media app TikTok.

“On one hand, with 100 mil­lion Americans using the app reg­u­larly, TikTok rep­res­ents a vibrant hub of all kinds of speech — some that’s polit­ic­al, and much that isn’t — and to kill it off would rep­res­ent a dire sup­pres­sion of speech. That Trump’s decision appears to have been influ­enced by a recent stunt in which TikTok users registered en masse for one of his ral­lies and then no-showed only under­scores the dangers of hav­ing nation­al tech policy set by a thin-skinned strong­man.”
Source: The Verge ⁴Newton, C. (2020, August 18). How the forced sale of TikTok could splinter the inter­net. The Verge. … Continue read­ing

‌It’s import­ant to note that the inter­net might not be as stable as some think:

“Over 99 per cent of all glob­al inter­net com­mu­nic­a­tions are facil­it­ated by an impress­ive web of under­sea cables, con­nect­ing all corners of the world. A sub­mar­ine delib­er­ately des­troy­ing one of these under­sea cables at a hard to reach place could bring down parts of the inter­net for weeks, and so all the sys­tems that rely upon it.”
Source: Nesta ⁵Bego, K. (2016). The Splinternet. Nesta. https://​www​.nesta​.org​.uk/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​/​1​0​-​p​r​e​d​i​c​t​i​o​n​s​-​2​0​1​7​/​t​h​e​-​s​p​l​i​n​t​e​r​n​et/

And it would be a mis­take to think that China and the U.S. are the only key play­ers in this glob­al power struggle.

Russia is reportedly exper­i­ment­ing with isol­at­ing its inter­net from the rest of the world.

“Many Russians fear that the Russian author­it­ies will use the pan­dem­ic to increase cyber-sur­veil­lance of the pop­u­la­tion. QR-codes already restrict free­dom of move­ment. Russia has been work­ing on the pos­sib­il­ity to close the coun­try off by cre­at­ing a ‘sov­er­eign Ru-net’, look­ing at the Chinese example.”
Source: Raam op Rusland ⁶Epifanova, A. (2020, May 18). Is tight­en­ing con­trol via “Sovereign Splinternet” in Russia pos­sible? Raam op Rusland. … Continue read­ing

As an extreme example, North Korea is already oper­at­ing their own fully state-con­trolled splinternet.

“Twenty years ago, North Korea built, based on the same inter­net pro­to­cols, its nation­al intranet, known as Kwangmyong, or bright light: like the inter­net as we know it, its con­tent is access­ible via web browsers, has an intern­al search engine, and offers e‑mail and news­group ser­vices. Only for­eign­ers and a small num­ber of gov­ern­ment offi­cials, aca­dem­ics, and elites are allowed to use the glob­al inter­net in North Korea, mak­ing Kwangmyong, a free ser­vice for pub­lic use, the only net­work avail­able to the vast major­ity of North Korean cit­izens… which is mon­itored by the gov­ern­ment.”
Source: Medium; Enrique Dans ⁷Dans, E. (2020, July 22). Understanding the splin­ter­net: can the world ever be truly glob­al? Medium; Enrique Dans. … Continue read­ing

Europe is by no means mak­ing itself more inclus­ive, either. Forcing GDPR upon the inter­na­tion­al com­munity might encour­age more nations and regions to enact far-reach­ing legis­la­tion affect­ing the internet.

“The European Union’s sweep­ing data pri­vacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), sent many com­pan­ies scram­bling to come into com­pli­ance (or at least attempt to) pri­or to its imple­ment­a­tion in May 2018. The EU law covered EU cit­izens’ data any­where in the world, mean­ing com­pan­ies glob­ally would have to com­ply or face fines up to 20 mil­lion euro or 2% of their annu­al glob­al turnover (or rev­en­ue) per viol­a­tion, whichever is the great­er amount.”
Source: Business News Daily ⁸Uzialko, A. (2020, February 4). How GDPR Is Impacting Business and What to Expect in 2023. Business News Daily. https://​www​.busi​ness​news​daily​.com/​1​5​5​1​0​-​g​d​p​r​-​i​n​-​r​e​v​i​e​w​-​d​a​t​a​-​p​r​i​v​a​c​y​.​h​tml

And Europe isn’t pre­cisely doing itself any favours, either. The approv­al of the con­tro­ver­sial Copyright Directive has since been described as a “dark day for the internet”.

“Despite set­backs, the most con­tro­ver­sial clauses in the Copyright Directive — Article 11 or the ‘link tax’ and Article 13 or the ‘upload fil­ter’ — have remained largely intact. Article 11 lets pub­lish­ers charge plat­forms like Google News when they dis­play snip­pets of news stor­ies, while Article 13 (renamed Article 17 in the most recent draft of the legis­la­tion) gives sites like YouTube new duties to stop users from upload­ing copy­righted con­tent. In both cases, crit­ics say these well-inten­tioned laws will cre­ate trouble. Article 13, for example, could lead to the intro­duc­tion of “upload fil­ters” that will scan all user con­tent before it’s uploaded to sites to remove copy­righted mater­i­al. The law does not expli­citly call for such fil­ters, but crit­ics say it will be an inev­it­ab­il­ity as sites seek to avoid pen­al­ties.”
Source: The Verge ⁹Vincent, J. (2019, March 26). Europe’s con­tro­ver­sial over­haul of online copy­right receives final approv­al. The Verge. https://​www​.theverge​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​3​/​2​6​/​1​8​2​8​0​7​2​6​/​e​u​r​o​p​e​-​c​o​p​y​r​i​g​h​t​-​d​i​r​e​c​t​ive

In many ways, it makes sense to argue that the splin­ter­net is already upon us — and that we, if we still believe in the idea of one inter­net, must act now to sal­vage whatever we can of what remains of net neut­ral­ity and the idea of free­dom of speech for everyone.

“As the web becomes more splintered and inform­a­tion more con­trolled across the globe, we risk the deteri­or­a­tion of demo­crat­ic sys­tems, the cor­rup­tion of free mar­kets and fur­ther cyber mis­in­form­a­tion cam­paigns. We must act now to save a free and open inter­net from cen­sor­ship and inter­na­tion­al man­oeuv­ring before his­tory is bound to repeat itself.”
Source: TechCrunch ¹⁰Wright, K. (2019, March 13). The “splin­ter­net” is already here | TechCrunch. https://​tech​crunch​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​3​/​1​3​/​t​h​e​-​s​p​l​i​n​t​e​r​n​e​t​-​i​s​-​a​l​r​e​a​d​y​-​h​e​re/

One might reas­on­ably argue that the inter­net has always been splintered; the inter­net has nev­er been one inter­net.

One could even go so far as to make the case that striv­ing for one inter­net is cul­tur­al imper­i­al­ism.

“It’s an unpop­u­lar opin­ion, but the US and British tech­no­lo­gists who cre­ated the inter­net and the web, respect­ively — as well as the hip­pies who artic­u­lated the early “inform­a­tion wants to be free” eth­os — were cul­tur­al imper­i­al­ists and free-speech fun­da­ment­al­ists.”
Source: Computerworld ¹¹Elgan, M. (2019, July 27). How I learned to stop wor­ry­ing and love the splin­ter­net. Computerworld. … Continue read­ing

Is the dream of a single inter­net con­nect­ing the glob­al com­munity on fair and open grounds a naïve pipe dream?

Or are we just mani­fest­ing a breed­ing ground for social divi­sion and crim­in­al activ­ity? Is the inter­net merely an amp­li­fic­a­tion cham­ber for the tycoons of mass reach and the silent miners?

“[…] everything we do on the net­work is mon­itored and sur­veilled by both gov­ern­ments and the huge cor­por­a­tions that now dom­in­ate cyber­space. (If you want to see the com­mer­cial side of this in action, install Ghostery in your browser and see who’s snoop­ing on you as you surf.) Internet users are assailed by spam, phish­ing, mal­ware, fraud and iden­tity theft. Corporate and gov­ern­ment data­bases are routinely hacked and huge troves of per­son­al data, cred­it card and bank account details are stolen and offered for sale in the shad­ows of the so-called “dark web”. Companies – and pub­lic insti­tu­tions such as hos­pit­als – are increas­ingly black­mailed by ransom­ware attacks, which make their essen­tial IT sys­tems unus­able unless they pay a ransom. Cybercrime has already reached alarm­ing levels and, because it largely goes unpun­ished, will con­tin­ue to grow – which is why in some soci­et­ies old-style phys­ic­al crime is redu­cing as prac­ti­tion­ers move to the much safer and more luc­rat­ive online vari­ety.”
Source: The Guardian ¹²Naughton, J. (2016, November 27). Has the inter­net become a failed state? The Guardian. https://​www​.the​guard​i​an​.com/​t​e​c​h​n​o​l​o​g​y​/​2​0​1​6​/​n​o​v​/​2​7​/​h​a​s​-​i​n​t​e​r​n​e​t​-​b​e​c​o​m​e​-​f​a​i​l​e​d​-​s​t​a​t​e​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​c​y​b​e​r​s​p​ace

And we still haven’t scratched the sur­face of the poten­tial chal­lenges we face regard­ing big data and integrity.

“Google could be buy­ing your med­ic­al data without your know­ledge to sell it on to insur­ance com­pan­ies. Perhaps you’ve restric­ted your Facebook pri­vacy set­tings, but Facebook can still track you across oth­er web­sites. Maybe you identi­fy as a gender or eth­nic group that is served dif­fer­ent adverts because an algorithm determ­ines that you’re not appro­pri­ate for cer­tain jobs or hous­ing and cred­it options. Even the news you read online may be delib­er­ately mis­lead­ing or dis­hon­est, in the hope of manip­u­lat­ing your polit­ic­al opin­ions.”
Source: The Conversation ¹³Benjamin, G. (2019, November 27). Tim Berners-Lee: web inventor’s plan to save the inter­net is admir­able, but doomed to fail. The Conversation. … Continue read­ing

The crit­ics and pess­im­ists can’t just be flag­rantly ignored; they make a wide range of sol­id points that must be taken seriously.

“The ori­gin­al idea, as described by its many evan­gel­ists, was that the inter­net would demo­crat­ise the good and dis­rupt the bad. It would get rid of the gate­keep­ers, do away with nation­al bound­ar­ies — and all this would rad­ic­ally change soci­ety for the bet­ter. […] Rather than pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic fair­ness, it is the cent­ral reas­on for the grow­ing gulf between rich and poor and the hol­low­ing out of the middle class. Rather than mak­ing us wealth­i­er, the so-called shar­ing eco­nomy is mak­ing us poorer. Rather than cre­at­ing more jobs, auto­ma­tion is des­troy­ing jobs. And rather than increas­ing com­pet­i­tion, it has cre­ated immensely power­ful new glob­al mono­pol­ies like Google
and Facebook.”
Source: Saturday Evening Post ¹⁴Slon, S. (2015, July 27). The Internet Has Failed Us. The Saturday Evening Post. https://​www​.sat​urdayeven​ing​post​.com/​2​0​1​5​/​0​7​/​i​n​t​e​r​n​e​t​-​f​a​i​l​e​d​-​us/

We can­not know wheth­er the idea of a single inter­net — or the lack there­of — holds the keys to a bet­ter tomorrow.

Still, while the inter­net might nev­er have been “one inter­net”, there has been some open­ness, free­dom, and matur­ity. If noth­ing else, this is some­thing that we still stand to lose.

“The oper­a­tion of the inter­net depends on the coördin­a­tion of infra­struc­ture like cables, pro­tocol suites, and actu­al applic­a­tions in people’s daily lives. The main goal of inter­net gov­ernance is to keep the coördin­a­tion of these three divi­sions. Although there are dif­fer­ences among coun­tries in regard of stand­ards and man­age­ment of infra­struc­ture and pro­tocol suites, a gen­er­ally mature gov­ernance sys­tem has been formed.”
Source: Global Times ¹⁵Kai, J. (2020, August 11). Washington inflames cyber-Balkanization and splin­ter­net with politi­cized moves — Global Times. Global Times. https://​www​.glob​al​times​.cn/​p​a​g​e​/​2​0​2​0​0​8​/​1​1​9​7​4​2​6​.​s​h​tml

Should we con­tin­ue to fight for a glob­al web? Should we con­tin­ue to fight for an open and neut­ral web? Or was it just a naïve idea to begin with?

I think of Jan Stenbeck (1942 – 2002), the legendary Swedish entre­pren­eur. His busi­ness philo­sophy, as described by bio­graphy author Per Andersson, can be summed up: ¹⁶Jan Stenbeck. (2023, December 26). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​J​a​n​_​S​t​e​n​b​eck ¹⁷Per Andersson (journ­al­ist). (2024, January 10). In Wikipedia. https://​sv​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​P​e​r​_​A​n​d​e​r​s​s​o​n​_​(​j​o​u​r​n​a​l​ist)

PR Resource: PR Must Adapt (Or Die)

PR Must Adapt — Or Die

The biggest chal­lenge in mod­ern pub­lic rela­tions is the con­stantly chan­ging media land­scape. With the pro­lif­er­a­tion of social media, the rise of fake news, and the decline of tra­di­tion­al journ­al­ism, it can be dif­fi­cult for organ­isa­tions to con­trol the spread of inform­a­tion and pro­tect their reputations.

When Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge pub­lished Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR in 2009, it pro­posed how PR should embrace the digit­al-first media land­scape and elev­ate our pro­fes­sion to new heights. ¹⁸Solis, B. & D. Breakenridge (2009, February 1). Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR. Amazon​.com: Books. … Continue read­ing

As we choose our future as pub­lic rela­tions pro­fes­sion­als, we must real­ise that the inter­net and its algorithms are more power­ful than a few (barely sur­viv­ing) newspapers.

The era of tra­di­tion­al print media is over:

Digital-first is no longer a mat­ter of per­spect­ive — it’s a promise.

PR pro­fes­sion­als must be stra­tegic and pro­act­ive in their approach and able to adapt to new tech­no­lo­gies and plat­forms to com­mu­nic­ate effect­ively with their publics.

“The authors argue that earli­er paradigms are mostly inad­equate in address­ing the needs of a 21^st Century in which com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­logy is cre­at­ing rap­id glob­al­iz­a­tion while it is dan­ger­ously exacer­bat­ing the ten­sions of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. Through a crit­ic­al dis­cus­sion of pri­or assump­tions and paradigms in pub­lic rela­tions schol­ar­ship, the authors under­line the need for pub­lic rela­tions to revital­ize and bring its body of know­ledge into the 21^st Century.”
Source: Public Relations Review ¹⁹Valentini, C., Kruckeberg, D., & Starck, K. (2012). Public rela­tions and com­munity: A per­sist­ent cov­en­ant. Public Relations Review, 38(5), 873 – 879. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​1​6​/​j​.​p​u​b​r​e​v​.​2​0​1​2​.​0​6​.​001

The biggest chal­lenge in PR is ensur­ing that our pro­fes­sion keeps up with new com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­logy and stays valu­able and rel­ev­ant as a busi­ness function.

Learn more: PR Must Adapt (Or Die)