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Fearful Americans Stockpiling Facts Before Federal Government Comes To Take Them Away (theonion.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/theonion@midwest.social
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[–] 36 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Yo, I literally did this because I think they're going to shut down the internet soon.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

    I don't think that the fed will shut down the Internet. Not just because it's effectively impossible to do for a timeframe that's anything less than a month, but because it would literally destroy the entire country and the regime's ability to do anything.

    There's a reason China still has the Internet, and why VPNs are still kind of tolerated. The U.S. nor any industry in it cannot survive without it. We are dozens of much less serious (but still serious) steps away from an internet shutdown, and I genuinely think that we won't reach internet shutdown at all.

    Without the Internet it's not just credit cards that stop working, it's literally the capability for any store to order stuff to sell. Or the capability for every federally regulated employer (nearly all of them) to pay employees. Third world countries can get away with it because their economy isn't anywhere near as modernized as that of western countries.

    Additionally, the way that the U.S. government is organized makes attacks on the Internet very difficult without Congress.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    I hope you're right.

    I'm still going to have my local archives of Wikipedia and the like.

    And I'm also going to have my meshtastic and software defined radio

    Edit: what stops the USA from cutting all fiber and just using Nazi starlink?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    They likely can't do it overnight, but they can do it the same way they've been stripping everything else: Joke about it, hint at it, do it a little bit, do it some more in secret, blame liberals for it, do it in Texas or Florida, and then do it completely. They can get exactly the Internet they want us to have if we let them.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    The US hosts a lot of critical infrastructure for the rest of the Internet, still. There have been a lot of projects to decouple from the US for this exact reason. If you also look at Cable maps, the connectivity between Europe and Asia relies on those high capacity links going through the US. There have been more connections constructed between Europe and Asia to eliminate the US as the only path over the years, but some of those cable routes also tend to venture through contested / not-so-friendly territories. Thus, transit over those paths is also more expensive!

    We also have to consider that Starlink can only do so much. I believe they have trialed or have even activated Inter-satellite connectivity. But that is still a US-based company, and other countries like China are working to launch their own constellations out of fear that US and Europe-based Satellite companies can just come in someday and turn off service.

    Also, cutting that Fiber will break the Public Telephone Network, which is essential for any business. I don't know how many Telcos maintain Satellite uplinks between continents these days for the PSTN, but the end result won't be pretty for anyone. Total economic collapse, especially for the US!

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