Republicans, I hope you like rape.

[Jarhyn]

It has always been in the Repubs' power to destroy porn. You want to end porn, forever? Have Marjorie Taylor Greene do a bukkake video with Trump Sr. and Jr., Ted Cruz, J D Vance, Mattie Gaetz -- and Mitch McConnell, watching.

Why would that matter? There's stuff out there that most of us consider pretty yucky but it doesn't keep people from watching something else.

I could see this more as a methodology to accelerate their genocide TBH. All they have to do is show people a video of "Make America Sticky Again", and people (pretty much anyone exposed to it) would line up for the gas chambers... Unless they were into that. Which Republicans are.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So, I know this is going to be something folks would disagree with, but I don't think we should allow kids on the internet unsupervised at all.

I think that the Internet should be like liquor: you show your ID to get an account, and access should be strictly controlled to the same extent we expect control of liquor cabinets, and we should have class time dedicated to informing people how to use the internet safely, what the dangers are, as well as a discussion about how porn is illusory/inaccurate/misleading, and how any adult trying to distribute it to the likes of them has ulterior motives.

The problem is you can have child "safety" (hey, most of the threats aren't from the internet!) or you can have privacy on the internet. You can't have both.

I do believe we should be teaching internet safety. I think that would work a lot better than trying to make a "child-safe" environment. Especially since the Republicans want to make such "safety" include no mention of any sexuality they do not approve of.

I think that so long as it is not material that depicts someone who cannot or does not consent to be depicted, as long as it is not material that involves violating someone's consent to participate, all material ought be allowed and consumption of that material ought not be tracked publicly. I would model the burden of control almost identically to liquor, where the primary expectation is that kids stay out of the liquor cabinet and seeing that they do is a parent's responsibility/liability, though with the primary access burden designed to disallow tracking/monitoring.

If the Internet is for porn, the internet is NOT for children.

The problem is that if you have to show your ID to get on you inherently permit tracking of what people consume. See China for an example.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Republican Platform, Project 2025 Co-Author Admits Pornography Ban Will Be Done 'From the Back Door'

Former Donald Trump staffer and Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought told undercover reporters last month that the Heritage Foundation-led initiative has entered its second, more secretive phase with different tactics, including banning pornography “from the back door” through age verification...

www.xbiz.com

They're planning to ban porn. Legalizing porn cut the rape rate by about 85%. If it was actually removed there's no reason to think that wouldn't be reversed.

Are you sure about the 85% number? That seems high to me. While reducing rape is certainly a positive side effect of widespread porn, I suspect it has a lot to do also with declining marital (and birth rates), which is going to be causing pretty serious problems soon.

Followup--I realized I still had the tab open. Oops, to the .pdf on my hard drive. This appears to be the paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=913013

 

[Jarhyn]

So, I know this is going to be something folks would disagree with, but I don't think we should allow kids on the internet unsupervised at all.

I think that the Internet should be like liquor: you show your ID to get an account, and access should be strictly controlled to the same extent we expect control of liquor cabinets, and we should have class time dedicated to informing people how to use the internet safely, what the dangers are, as well as a discussion about how porn is illusory/inaccurate/misleading, and how any adult trying to distribute it to the likes of them has ulterior motives.

The problem is you can have child "safety" (hey, most of the threats aren't from the internet!) or you can have privacy on the internet. You can't have both.

I do believe we should be teaching internet safety. I think that would work a lot better than trying to make a "child-safe" environment. Especially since the Republicans want to make such "safety" include no mention of any sexuality they do not approve of.

I think that so long as it is not material that depicts someone who cannot or does not consent to be depicted, as long as it is not material that involves violating someone's consent to participate, all material ought be allowed and consumption of that material ought not be tracked publicly. I would model the burden of control almost identically to liquor, where the primary expectation is that kids stay out of the liquor cabinet and seeing that they do is a parent's responsibility/liability, though with the primary access burden designed to disallow tracking/monitoring.

If the Internet is for porn, the internet is NOT for children.

The problem is that if you have to show your ID to get on you inherently permit tracking of what people consume. See China for an example.

You can very much have both no children and privacy on the internet, to the extent we have either of those things even today.

This is done by a regime wherein primary email addresses are state controlled but secondary ones are not, wherein to get an account with an ISP valid for registration for porn requires a primary email address.

A child being discovered on a service is a reportable event, and only at that point does a warrant have force.

At that point the company that detects the child access reports to the company that holds the registered email account.

That company notifies the post office with the details of the event.

The post office notifies the police.

The police then fine/charge the parent who let their kids onto the internet.

The postal email being used for registering a more anonymous email means the post office has no lookup access of what the user is looking at or registering to.

The secondary email system needs have no visibility beyond the fact of registration.

The porn site has no reason nor access to who owns the secondary email, only the assurance that to register at all requires a real credential.

The reason every measure up until now, and even foreseeable recommended far into the future, has failed, will fail, and should fail? Those measures are designed with the intent to "accidentally" your private porn habits from the get-go.

The most useful of them is "charge parents with the same seriousness of crime when their children access and distribute pornography/internet access as when they access and distribute liquor".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So, I know this is going to be something folks would disagree with, but I don't think we should allow kids on the internet unsupervised at all.

I think that the Internet should be like liquor: you show your ID to get an account, and access should be strictly controlled to the same extent we expect control of liquor cabinets, and we should have class time dedicated to informing people how to use the internet safely, what the dangers are, as well as a discussion about how porn is illusory/inaccurate/misleading, and how any adult trying to distribute it to the likes of them has ulterior motives.

The problem is you can have child "safety" (hey, most of the threats aren't from the internet!) or you can have privacy on the internet. You can't have both.

I do believe we should be teaching internet safety. I think that would work a lot better than trying to make a "child-safe" environment. Especially since the Republicans want to make such "safety" include no mention of any sexuality they do not approve of.

I think that so long as it is not material that depicts someone who cannot or does not consent to be depicted, as long as it is not material that involves violating someone's consent to participate, all material ought be allowed and consumption of that material ought not be tracked publicly. I would model the burden of control almost identically to liquor, where the primary expectation is that kids stay out of the liquor cabinet and seeing that they do is a parent's responsibility/liability, though with the primary access burden designed to disallow tracking/monitoring.

If the Internet is for porn, the internet is NOT for children.

The problem is that if you have to show your ID to get on you inherently permit tracking of what people consume. See China for an example.

You can very much have both no children and privacy on the internet, to the extent we have either of those things even today.

This is done by a regime wherein primary email addresses are state controlled but secondary ones are not, wherein to get an account with an ISP valid for registration for porn requires a primary email address.

A child being discovered on a service is a reportable event, and only at that point does a warrant have force.

At that point the company that detects the child access reports to the company that holds the registered email account.

That company notifies the post office with the details of the event.

The post office notifies the police.

The police then fine/charge the parent who let their kids onto the internet.

The postal email being used for registering a more anonymous email means the post office has no lookup access of what the user is looking at or registering to.

The secondary email system needs have no visibility beyond the fact of registration.

The porn site has no reason nor access to who owns the secondary email, only the assurance that to register at all requires a real credential.

The reason every measure up until now, and even foreseeable recommended far into the future, has failed, will fail, and should fail? Those measures are designed with the intent to "accidentally" your private porn habits from the get-go.

The most useful of them is "charge parents with the same seriousness of crime when their children access and distribute pornography/internet access as when they access and distribute liquor".

And you think they won't track you back through that?

Look at the NPD data breach. Information is valuable, people will collect it. And it's nowhere near as secure as it should be.

 

[Jarhyn]

So, I know this is going to be something folks would disagree with, but I don't think we should allow kids on the internet unsupervised at all.

I think that the Internet should be like liquor: you show your ID to get an account, and access should be strictly controlled to the same extent we expect control of liquor cabinets, and we should have class time dedicated to informing people how to use the internet safely, what the dangers are, as well as a discussion about how porn is illusory/inaccurate/misleading, and how any adult trying to distribute it to the likes of them has ulterior motives.

The problem is you can have child "safety" (hey, most of the threats aren't from the internet!) or you can have privacy on the internet. You can't have both.

I do believe we should be teaching internet safety. I think that would work a lot better than trying to make a "child-safe" environment. Especially since the Republicans want to make such "safety" include no mention of any sexuality they do not approve of.

I think that so long as it is not material that depicts someone who cannot or does not consent to be depicted, as long as it is not material that involves violating someone's consent to participate, all material ought be allowed and consumption of that material ought not be tracked publicly. I would model the burden of control almost identically to liquor, where the primary expectation is that kids stay out of the liquor cabinet and seeing that they do is a parent's responsibility/liability, though with the primary access burden designed to disallow tracking/monitoring.

If the Internet is for porn, the internet is NOT for children.

The problem is that if you have to show your ID to get on you inherently permit tracking of what people consume. See China for an example.

You can very much have both no children and privacy on the internet, to the extent we have either of those things even today.

This is done by a regime wherein primary email addresses are state controlled but secondary ones are not, wherein to get an account with an ISP valid for registration for porn requires a primary email address.

A child being discovered on a service is a reportable event, and only at that point does a warrant have force.

At that point the company that detects the child access reports to the company that holds the registered email account.

That company notifies the post office with the details of the event.

The post office notifies the police.

The police then fine/charge the parent who let their kids onto the internet.

The postal email being used for registering a more anonymous email means the post office has no lookup access of what the user is looking at or registering to.

The secondary email system needs have no visibility beyond the fact of registration.

The porn site has no reason nor access to who owns the secondary email, only the assurance that to register at all requires a real credential.

The reason every measure up until now, and even foreseeable recommended far into the future, has failed, will fail, and should fail? Those measures are designed with the intent to "accidentally" your private porn habits from the get-go.

The most useful of them is "charge parents with the same seriousness of crime when their children access and distribute pornography/internet access as when they access and distribute liquor".

And you think they won't track you back through that?

Look at the NPD data breach. Information is valuable, people will collect it. And it's nowhere near as secure as it should be.

If they could, they already would.

The fact is, if I did something truly illegal, it would take more time and care to remain uncaught than I am willing to expend. This isn't the reason I don't do illegal shit, but it's a damn good reason.

Kids don't have anywhere near the sophistication to learn all that before they sneak onto their parents computer to get on Roblox with some random pedo.

They won't track you back through that any more than they already are. The real effect is that it gives a mandate to parents: treat the computer like the liquor cabinet.

Things have gotten "better" in terms of privacy with SDNS and HTTPS becoming more standard... But if you do something illegal today, wherever you do it (assuming you don't use proxies or a VPN, which still links back to your name/cc info and who will still release info with a warrant), your identity can and will be turned over to LEO.

My thought is just that there should be mandatory reporting up that same chain that results in restrictions on internet access, because children don't belong on the internet.

I'm not talking monitoring porn sites, or requiring something new to access porn.

I'm not talking about software or network nannies.

I'm talking specifically about the fact that there should be some manner of legal restrictions on children accessing the internet. It doesn't need to be very easy to enforce or even get oversight on.

Ironically, with 2 factor authentication finally making it's way around, it wouldn't be all that hard to disable an ISP connection on any child-available device when not in supervised use, but I'm not even saying that.

I'm saying something small, something that people are unlikely to fuck up if doing it properly (just register using your Google account that's linked to your postal email), something with low real risk, but with enough of a risk perceived by parents to make them think twice about letting kids use the internet unsupervised.

Much of the issue is that parents don't realize that letting kids on the internet is seriously dangerous.

Hell, I've told this story here, I think, but here goes again: some time in my mid-early 30's, I was on Twitter, and one day someone starts chatting me up about some of my kink related interests, and I figured out pretty quick it was a minor from their apparent maturity and looking at their profile, and I NOPED the fuck away from them. Then a few years later, I ran into that same person, now in their 20's, at a party. They were talking (bragging?) about how they spent their entire teen years trolling for and blackmailing pedos. They didn't even know I was there or that I was someone they tried to pick up (yuck!). I just recognized the name they dropped to someone else they were talking to. I collected my husband and we left the party ASAP.

I seriously worry that person is going to become a child predator some day, or a groomer, if they aren't already.

I warn my friends whenever I become aware of there being 3 or fewer degrees of separation.

I love the internet, but I am SO glad that I didn't have unsupervised access to it before I was 16, and I really think we should cover such topics in modern H&HD classes.

 

[Bronzeage]

Republican Platform, Project 2025 Co-Author Admits Pornography Ban Will Be Done 'From the Back Door'

Former Donald Trump staffer and Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought told undercover reporters last month that the Heritage Foundation-led initiative has entered its second, more secretive phase with different tactics, including banning pornography “from the back door” through age verification...

www.xbiz.com

They're planning to ban porn. Legalizing porn cut the rape rate by about 85%. If it was actually removed there's no reason to think that wouldn't be reversed.

I think this is a case of causation vs correlation.

 

[Patooka]

In order to ban porn, it would be necessary to switch off the internet.

That would have zero effect on the eradication of porn. Porn has been around since Zog the Neanderthal drew some cock and balls inside his cave. He then proceeded to rub one out, also showing sexuality is more of a spectrum than a binary thing.

I guess that kinda proves Neanderthals were more evolved than the typical Project 2025 proponent.

 

[bilby]

The problem is you can have child "safety" (hey, most of the threats aren't from the internet!) or you can have privacy on the internet. You can't have both.

You can't have either.

 

[bilby]

So, I know this is going to be something folks would disagree with, but I don't think we should allow kids on the internet unsupervised at all.

I think that the Internet should be like liquor: you show your ID to get an account, and access should be strictly controlled to the same extent we expect control of liquor cabinets, and we should have class time dedicated to informing people how to use the internet safely, what the dangers are, as well as a discussion about how porn is illusory/inaccurate/misleading, and how any adult trying to distribute it to the likes of them has ulterior motives.

The problem is you can have child "safety" (hey, most of the threats aren't from the internet!) or you can have privacy on the internet. You can't have both.

I do believe we should be teaching internet safety. I think that would work a lot better than trying to make a "child-safe" environment. Especially since the Republicans want to make such "safety" include no mention of any sexuality they do not approve of.

I think that so long as it is not material that depicts someone who cannot or does not consent to be depicted, as long as it is not material that involves violating someone's consent to participate, all material ought be allowed and consumption of that material ought not be tracked publicly. I would model the burden of control almost identically to liquor, where the primary expectation is that kids stay out of the liquor cabinet and seeing that they do is a parent's responsibility/liability, though with the primary access burden designed to disallow tracking/monitoring.

If the Internet is for porn, the internet is NOT for children.

The problem is that if you have to show your ID to get on you inherently permit tracking of what people consume. See China for an example.

You can very much have both no children and privacy on the internet, to the extent we have either of those things even today.

This is done by a regime wherein primary email addresses are state controlled but secondary ones are not, wherein to get an account with an ISP valid for registration for porn requires a primary email address.

A child being discovered on a service is a reportable event, and only at that point does a warrant have force.

At that point the company that detects the child access reports to the company that holds the registered email account.

That company notifies the post office with the details of the event.

The post office notifies the police.

The police then fine/charge the parent who let their kids onto the internet.

The postal email being used for registering a more anonymous email means the post office has no lookup access of what the user is looking at or registering to.

The secondary email system needs have no visibility beyond the fact of registration.

The porn site has no reason nor access to who owns the secondary email, only the assurance that to register at all requires a real credential.

The reason every measure up until now, and even foreseeable recommended far into the future, has failed, will fail, and should fail? Those measures are designed with the intent to "accidentally" your private porn habits from the get-go.

The most useful of them is "charge parents with the same seriousness of crime when their children access and distribute pornography/internet access as when they access and distribute liquor".

"A regime in which primary email adresses are state controlled"? By which state? The USA? The USA is not the only place that the internet is used. How do you prevent an American minor from simply getting an email address from or in another country?

My longest lived email address is at the .com TLD; It makes me appear sufficiently American as to attract phishing attacks based on my use of American banks, government offices, etc., with whom I have had zero interaction.

"The Post Office" does nobody any good here, either. I have zero interaction of any kind with any US post office.

Are you expecting American children plus anyone who cannot prove via an American institution that they are not an American child to be blocked from viewing Internet porn?

Or are you expecting the FBI, or some other US police force, to pick through the billions of porn site hits by people who are not registered as US adults, to separate the foreigners from the US children?

The only way to stop any child from accessing Internet sites that they ought not access, is for their parent or guardian to directly supervise 100% of their access to the Internet. Even then, they might well see stuff that they oughtn't, for the few seconds it takes for the supervising adult to realise what they are seeing, and react to it.

 

[bilby]

The real effect is that it gives a mandate to parents: treat the computer like the liquor cabinet.

In what way do parents currently lack that mandate??

 

[bilby]

In order to ban porn, it would be necessary to switch off the internet.

That would have zero effect on the eradication of porn.

I said "necessary". I did not say "sufficient".

 

[Swammerdami]

Speaking of porn . . .
I don't know if my libido is twisted, or if I'm just overly tame, but my porn activity revolves mainly around Google queries like "Show me the most beautiful fully-clothed woman on the planet." Many pictures of beautiful women do appear, but these days they're almost all computer-generated. Fantasy girls who can never be more than fantasies. (Some times body parts are even attached incorrectly!)

Is this the way of the future? When my grandson is chatting with a cute waitress, will he have to worry she's just a cute robot? Cute, but not so very cute as to be obvious the cuteness was factory-made? Was it in Terminator 2 that the hero's holographic AI-lover buys him a date with a real woman for his birthday? In Terminator 3, the date will be with a voluptuous robot.

Toto, I don't think we're on the ordinary Planet Earth anymore.
Scotty? If you can still hear me, beam us back to the 20th century.

 

[Toni]

In order to ban porn, it would be necessary to switch off the internet.

Of course, the majority of GOP voters would be happy with a total ban on pornographic magazines and videocassettes, which would also be of minimal impact to modern consumers or producers of porn.

It would contravene the first amendment, but it would be very popular with the angry old evangelical demographic (who could then fap to the idea that they have finally ended porn), and would harm almost nobody.

Porn existed long before the internet and before print, as a matter of fact. Someone I used to know once worked collecting hog semen. He told me they’d line up the boars( with attached collection apparatus) and then walk a sow in heat past the boars. Worked like a charm.

 

[bilby]

Porn existed long before the internet and before print, as a matter of fact.

You are not the first person here to respond to my post as though it somehow implied that I was not aware of that fact.

What was it that I said, that in any way hints that I am unaware that porn has existed for longer than recorded history?

Is everyone conflating "necessary" with "sufficient"?

 

[Toni]

The real effect is that it gives a mandate to parents: treat the computer like the liquor cabinet.

In what way do parents currently lack that mandate??

A lot of today's parents live by the "survive the moment" mandate which over-rides all other mandates.

On a more serious note: a lot of young parents read a lot of stuff about parenting, childhood development, etc. They want to be the best possible parent for their child(ren). When screen time or an excess of screen time is condemned in respected sources, it does have an impact. True, not every parent will require that and many will limit screen time the same way that they might limit sweets or other treats. But parents today are expected to simultaneously have thriving careers, at least one home which is kept immaculately clean and decorated in the latest trends, but timeless, maintain healthy adult friendships, relationships with their extended families and each other while volunteering and enrolling their child(ren) in the very best possible schools and programs and after school and before school activities that they can possibly find. It's a lot of pressure and parents often will quiet an unhappy child with whatever easy means is available. Most adults are glued to screens and it's not hard to see why kids emulate that as much as possible.

Of course I'm speaking about middle/upper middle/upper income parents, the later of which hand off those responsibilities to their nannies which they expect to impart whatever the native language the nanny speaks to their beloved offspring. Lower income parents are trying even more desperately to survive and have been sold on the idea that if their kids don't get enough familiarity with screens, they will be left behind in still other ways than their parents' limited income.

And at all levels of income and socioeconomic strata, some people, including parents, are lazy.

For parents just 15 years or so younger than me, screens were simply considered the modern thing to use. No young parent wants to be an old fogey, like their parents.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And you think they won't track you back through that?

Look at the NPD data breach. Information is valuable, people will collect it. And it's nowhere near as secure as it should be.

If they could, they already would.

The fact is, if I did something truly illegal, it would take more time and care to remain uncaught than I am willing to expend. This isn't the reason I don't do illegal shit, but it's a damn good reason.

Kids don't have anywhere near the sophistication to learn all that before they sneak onto their parents computer to get on Roblox with some random pedo.

I'm not talking about the effect it would have on kids. It would certainly keep the younger ones off. I'm talking about what it would do to adults. Look at what we have been seeing--AGs in abortion-ban states attempting to get information on women who went out of state to get an abortion.

They won't track you back through that any more than they already are. The real effect is that it gives a mandate to parents: treat the computer like the liquor cabinet.

You're naive.

Things have gotten "better" in terms of privacy with SDNS and HTTPS becoming more standard... But if you do something illegal today, wherever you do it (assuming you don't use proxies or a VPN, which still links back to your name/cc info and who will still release info with a warrant), your identity can and will be turned over to LEO.

Warrant? Why would a VPN provider who was based outside the US pay any attention to a US warrant? And what could they do, anyway? Any VPN provider who takes security seriously only tracks customer access to the system, not where the communications go once they have gotten past the gate. The only thing they can possibly track is ongoing access. (Tell us the customer who is currently accessing server XYZ)

My thought is just that there should be mandatory reporting up that same chain that results in restrictions on internet access, because children don't belong on the internet.

I'm not talking monitoring porn sites, or requiring something new to access porn.

If your access to the internet is authenticated then they can trace it. What are you going to do when they come for you? Project 2025 considers you worthy of the death penalty.

Hell, I've told this story here, I think, but here goes again: some time in my mid-early 30's, I was on Twitter, and one day someone starts chatting me up about some of my kink related interests, and I figured out pretty quick it was a minor from their apparent maturity and looking at their profile, and I NOPED the fuck away from them. Then a few years later, I ran into that same person, now in their 20's, at a party. They were talking (bragging?) about how they spent their entire teen years trolling for and blackmailing pedos. They didn't even know I was there or that I was someone they tried to pick up (yuck!). I just recognized the name they dropped to someone else they were talking to. I collected my husband and we left the party ASAP.

I seriously worry that person is going to become a child predator some day, or a groomer, if they aren't already.

I warn my friends whenever I become aware of there being 3 or fewer degrees of separation.

I love the internet, but I am SO glad that I didn't have unsupervised access to it before I was 16, and I really think we should cover such topics in modern H&HD classes.

Why do you think they would be a pedo or a groomer? Sounds like they just had fun with the blackmail aspect.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Republican Platform, Project 2025 Co-Author Admits Pornography Ban Will Be Done 'From the Back Door'

Former Donald Trump staffer and Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought told undercover reporters last month that the Heritage Foundation-led initiative has entered its second, more secretive phase with different tactics, including banning pornography “from the back door” through age verification...

www.xbiz.com

They're planning to ban porn. Legalizing porn cut the rape rate by about 85%. If it was actually removed there's no reason to think that wouldn't be reversed.

I think this is a case of causation vs correlation.

Why? The same general thing has been found across many countries. Availability of sexual media correlates with a big drop in rapes.

We have three possible cases:

1) Porn lower rape.
2) Rape declines for unrelated reasons, causing availability of porn. Huh, this one makes no sense.
3) Something else causes both increased access to porn and lower rates of rape. What?!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem is you can have child "safety" (hey, most of the threats aren't from the internet!) or you can have privacy on the internet. You can't have both.

You can't have either.

I meant it in the context of the internet as that is what we were discussing. Note my comment about where most of the threats are from--nothing you do with filtering the internet can abate the offline threats. (But the internet can help abate them. Grooming is normally a process and if someone things something might not be right they can look it up.)

 

[Swammerdami]

So, I know this is going to be something folks would disagree with, but I don't think we should allow kids on the internet unsupervised at all.

I think that the Internet should be like liquor: you show your ID to get an account, and access should be strictly controlled to the same extent we expect control of liquor cabinets, and we should have class time dedicated to informing people how to use the internet safely, what the dangers are, as well as a discussion about how porn is illusory/inaccurate/misleading, and how any adult trying to distribute it to the likes of them has ulterior motives.

I will go further and wonder if the whole 'World Wide Web' is a net negative.

It started as a wonderful dream; and in many ways the first decade or so of the 'Web was a paradise compared with what we have now.

Porn is the least of my worries. What about shaming teenagers, identity theft and other frauds? Search engines used to find brilliant little websites. Now they're just tuned to point to paywalls and other revenue generation. (I searched for an ordinary but slightly uncommon uncapitalized English word yesterday and the first page of results had NOTHING but links to a company using that as a brand-name.)

I thought Wikipedia was wonderful when it first appeared: Much larger and easier to edit than the Encyclopedia Brittanica. IMHO it's now a dismal caricature of its past promise ... and yet is STILL one of the best sites around! I've been searching the Internet off and on for a while, and the changes for the worse are palpable. Dissatisfied with a Wikipedia answer and want to explore a topic further? Most of the "relevant" Google hits will be pages which simply copied the Wiki article word-for-word, mistakes and all.

And do let us not get started on "Social Media."

Call me a Luddite; call me a reactionary; but I think when The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization is written (sooner than you think), the 'Net (especially social media) will get much blame.