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arXiv · 2112.05199

This internet, on the ground

Nick Merrill
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Abstract

The internet's key points of global control lie in the hands of a few people, primarily private organizations based in the United States. These control points, as they exist today, raise structural risks to the global internet's long-term stability. I argue: the problem isn't that these control points exist, it's that there is no popular governance over them. I advocate for a localist approach to internet governance: small internets deployed on municipal scales, interoperating selectively, carefully, with this internet and one another.

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Nick Merrill. 2021-12-09. This internet, on the ground. https://doi.org/10.25350/b5201j

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