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: Splinternet (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: Tech lead­ers have long pre­dicted a ‘splin­ter­net’ future where the web is divided between the US and China

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: China rises as world’s data super­power as inter­net fractures

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: How the forced sale of TikTok could splinter the internet

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: The splin­ter­net

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 find­ing ways to isol­ate 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: Is tight­en­ing con­trol via ‘Sovereign Splinternet’ in Russia possible?

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: Understanding the splin­ter­net: Can the world ever be truly global?

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: How GDPR Is Impacting Business and What to Expect in 2020

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: Europe’s con­tro­ver­sial over­haul of online copy­right receives final approval

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: The ‘splin­ter­net’ is already here

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: How I learned to stop wor­ry­ing and love the splinternet

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: Has the inter­net become a failed state?

And we still haven’t even 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: Tim Berners-Lee’s plan to save the inter­net is admir­able, but doomed to fail

The crit­ics, the pess­im­ists, can’t just be ignored; they make a wide range of sol­id points that need to 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: The Internet Has Failed Us

Whether the idea of a single inter­net — or the lack there­of — holds the keys to a bet­ter tomor­row, we can­not know. 

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: Washington inflames cyber-balkan­isa­tion and splin­ter­net with politi­cised moves

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