Freedom of communication and information?
The technology of so-called information age is rather a pretext to restrict freedom of expression than a mean to develop and enhance it.
How much freedom of access and getting substantial information and of forming related independent individual opinions one enjoys, depends from resources, potentials and means of enforcement of the own opinion and of repression of free intellectual competition, independent from any sway from finance or else, of unlimited variety of different opinions and views, in such high a degree that reality is rather a feudal system of propitiously tolerated expression (resp. a kind of licenced privilege of uncensored expression) than a democratic system of free expression.
The feudal character and state of conditioning collective habits of determination of the content of communication and the manners, means and ways of expression manifests already just by reference to clauses and provisions of Terms of Service which absolutely do not care about principles of civil law, forget bill of rights, and by the totally partial manner the user regularly gets shanghaied, euchred resp. compelled to "accept".
Major portion of those Terms of Service are regularly unintelligible if not even absurd to the average user, the user normally having no funds to pay for defense of his rights in case of dissent about the absurdity of the clause in case.
Just appointing a lawyer to review the content of such ToS simply cost several hundred USD, forget the costs of a lawsuit.
The average user is compelled to comply with the contempt of his basic rights by the author of the ToS, he is totally at the mercy of the provider.
What else than feudalism is this?
And You know what? The authors of the ToS justify the bias and incomprehensibility of their texts with technical difficulties and marketing requirements.
The former feudal masters referred to divine necessities as described in the bible, which was not understandable to illiterates, even was forbidden to subjects to read by themselves, under penalty of death.
Feudal systems always and mainly are based on advance in - real or just pretended - knowledge of the masters as against the subjects (common people).
And it still works - not only and mainly but even in ToS as well, what samples and reveals how much modern societies are controlled, on many levels and in many ways, by feudal systems rather than democracy.
How much freedom of access and getting substantial information and of forming related independent individual opinions one enjoys, depends from resources, potentials and means of enforcement of the own opinion and of repression of free intellectual competition, independent from any sway from finance or else, of unlimited variety of different opinions and views, in such high a degree that reality is rather a feudal system of propitiously tolerated expression (resp. a kind of licenced privilege of uncensored expression) than a democratic system of free expression.
The feudal character and state of conditioning collective habits of determination of the content of communication and the manners, means and ways of expression manifests already just by reference to clauses and provisions of Terms of Service which absolutely do not care about principles of civil law, forget bill of rights, and by the totally partial manner the user regularly gets shanghaied, euchred resp. compelled to "accept".
Major portion of those Terms of Service are regularly unintelligible if not even absurd to the average user, the user normally having no funds to pay for defense of his rights in case of dissent about the absurdity of the clause in case.
Just appointing a lawyer to review the content of such ToS simply cost several hundred USD, forget the costs of a lawsuit.
The average user is compelled to comply with the contempt of his basic rights by the author of the ToS, he is totally at the mercy of the provider.
What else than feudalism is this?
And You know what? The authors of the ToS justify the bias and incomprehensibility of their texts with technical difficulties and marketing requirements.
The former feudal masters referred to divine necessities as described in the bible, which was not understandable to illiterates, even was forbidden to subjects to read by themselves, under penalty of death.
Feudal systems always and mainly are based on advance in - real or just pretended - knowledge of the masters as against the subjects (common people).
And it still works - not only and mainly but even in ToS as well, what samples and reveals how much modern societies are controlled, on many levels and in many ways, by feudal systems rather than democracy.