Expert: The internet will soon bifurcate into Chinese-led and US-led versions - Sensationalist Headlines

Former Google CEO predicts the internet will split in two by 2028 — and one part will be led by China https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/224422/66e1abb8-270c-4b45-b937-a617632c8065/ericschmidt.jpg Speaking at a private event hosted by Village Global VC yesterday night, tech luminary and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicted that the internet will bifurcate into Chinese-led and US-led versions within the next decade. Under Sundar Pichai's leadership, Google has explored the potential to launch a censored version of its search engine in China, stirring up controversy internally and outside the company. I was hoping it would never come down to this but China's ever-growing technological dystopia will soon be at complete odds with the rest of the world.

China recently blocked Twitch, no one knows exactly why they did it now.

Nah. It'll just be China vs the rest of the world because who wants to limit themselves to the heavily-moderated version. Besides, I can't even think of a single service that is exclusive to China that the rest of the world couldn't do better (except maybe regional ecommerce).

It won't happen, no one will want to use shitty censored Chinese internet unless forced to

I think that's the point

The same reason China blocks any foreign website. They want tighter control and growth of the Chinese web sector. This has been a running theme of how China handles foreign tech companies, they allow them in long enough for local competition to start up, then they shut the door. The Chinese government does not view the internet as an international construct. China's already bifurcated the internet quite effectively to anyone without VPN services.

Probably because it's harder to censor it. Sure, you can ban people after the fact, but you can still have someone decide to suddenly yell "BTW TIENANMEN SQUARE" and have a few thousand hear it.

Schmidt: "If you think of China as like 'Oh yeah, they're good with the Internet,' you're missing the point. Globalization means that they get to play too. I think you're going to see fantastic leadership in products and services from China. There's a real danger that along with those products and services comes a different leadership regime from government, with censorship, controls, etc." Schmidt: "Look at the way BRI works – their Belt and Road Initiative, which involves 60-ish countries – it's perfectly possible those countries will begin to take on the infrastructure that China has with some loss of freedom." The Belt and Road is a massive initiative by Beijing to increase China's political and economic influence by connecting and facilitating all kinds of trade, including digital trade, between China and countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

With the directions the US have been taking towards internet usage I'm not even sure Europe will follow with it for too long. The US has been digging itself a hole with this net neutrality stuff. Deplatforming has also begun on the private sector which is a potentially very dangerous thing to do, we have good intentions now but it can be used to silence all sorts of people in the future.

Chinese internet companies are often heralded as these big innovative behemoths that popped up and are a symbol of china's rising economy and how the size of them is bigger than American equivalents in terms of userbase, but the only reason they exist is because the Chinese government allows them to exist and tries to crush any kind of foreign equivalents or dissenting competitors. It's easy to be on top when you write the rules. As to whether or not it'll be a "US-led" vs "Chinese-led", it won't be: it will simply be US-led. The top social media sites in the world are American, and Chinese competition only appeals to Chinese consumers. Other countries have regional equivalents but they rarely leave their own borders. Building a big wall around your internet and forcing your 1 billion + citizens to use only the ones you allow them to doesn't make you a "leader", it makes you what you've always been: a 3rd rate communist shithole with more money than brains

I agree with you on the first part, but I'm not so sure about the second. All that Chinese government assistance has paid major dividends in their phone market, companies like Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Oneplus have all become international successes purely because of the unfair advantage they were given at home. Also as is pointed out, a major target market for China's new industry is the developing world, their Belt and Road Initiative is economic imperialism aimed at the countries who haven't yet gotten as deeply embedded into the international internet, and thus are prime targets for China's "alternative" especially when it comes cheap.

Samsung also owes its market share due to its unfair advantage, but selling hardware and selling social media sites is a different thing entirely. Chinese website are simply known as "the chinese [insert american site here]". Tencent is the Chinese facebook, Alibaba/Aliexpress is the Chinese Amazon, Baidu is the Chinese Google, etc. etc. etc. Because Chinese is still pretty much pop-culturally irrelevant in most of the world.

Too late? This has been ongoing for a while. My roommate is chinese and literally every single one of the services and applications that he uses are Chinese versions with the governments fingers in them because absolutely everything that's popular in the west is completely blocked in China .

Hell the Chinese even cheat at memes https://www.reddit.com/r/scriptedasiangifs/

I gotta agree with proboardslol here. I made a similar point in a polidicks thread about their movie industry. Creative and tech industries need room to breathe and grow. They can't be hampered by narrow minded bureaucrats if they want to gain any sort of universal following.

China's practice of allowing international business only long enough to start local competition is well established by now, it happened to Facebook, Gmail, Netflix, Uber, PayPal, and plenty more. China's goal is to have a separate internet from the American sphere of influence, they let foreigners in only long enough to spark the creation of local knockoffs. Again though, their primary target is people who don't have access to those American services in the first place, either due to a genocidal totalitarian government like in China itself, or due to weak and limited infrastructure like the developing world, and China is offering to develop that world on the condition that they get similarly lovked into using Chibese services. It's internet imperialism.

I guess I can get the developing world argument, but do they even represent that large enough of a demographic to lead to a cultural shift? I mean they've got part of Africa, but afaik most of latin America either has a regional equivalent of American Social media, or just uses American social media. Same goes for Southeast Asia, which I think opposes Chinese cultural influence even more than the United States does because it represents an existential threat to them. I'm not really sure what India uses for social media and I'm pretty sure Eastern Europe is more culturally influenced by Russia than it would be by China

Considering their sphere of influence includes well over, what, 1/3 of the world's population? Yeah, I think we should worry about it.

unfiltered, uncensored live streaming from another country was probably the reason.

No need to be soon, how about right now? Right now, Chinese nationals uses local social media and apps that only they use instead of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. Its pretty much a completely different internet scene in China right now, I'm not surprised they would suddenly decide to split one day from the rest of the world like North Korea.

from what I've seen through sources, china is pushing everything into one app, WeChat which is like a digital wallet, amazon, facebook twitter and more built into one social media platform that is completely state controlled.

Yeah but we already aren't even interacting with that population in a major way because they're completely walled off. The only influence that 1/3rd of the world can have is if they adopt western technologies. If they continue to not use it who gives a shit

Quoted the wrong post, still can't delete on mobile, Garry pls fix. Similarly Alibaba covers services like web browsers and internet providers in addition to having equivalents of eBay, Amazon, YouTube, PayPal, and Google. They're going for full integration.

man I love going on alibaba and finding like giant sized equipment or hundreds of gallons of possibly hazardous chemicals that you can just buy right now.

It's pretty much the best place to go for knockoffs, recasts, and dodgy pocket emulators.

If this happens, I'll never be able to get my lepin bricks for a third of the cost of lego

Just two internets? I count at least three: America and most of the world, China and whoever else is dumb enough to chose their internet over America's - and finally, Post Article 11/13 EU internet, where vast swaths of websites will be blocked, and eventually replaced with inferior EU compliant versions (if they are at all).