To get a clear answer you need to go back in time.

In the 90's Technology was progressing to the point where stopping the internet from organically developing was long past. Back in the late 80's early 90's the 'internet' was made up of stand along dial up Bulletin Board Systems. They were hard to track, hard to monitor, and people could easily see that the number dialing in was an odd one, and shut the operation down. Information traveled across phone lines, but also physically on disks from one BBS'er to another. Back then the people involved were largely anti-government, anti-social, hackers, crackers, and other 'undesirables'. (source : having been there)

The internet becomes public and things change. From day 1 there were conspiracy, anti-government sites, alien tech discussions, and all of the other things that you see here on r/conspiracy, but early days of the net meant that people weren't as horribly skeptical about everything and opened their minds a bit. They quickly fixed that problem by flooding the net with disinformation while also opening up wide area's of distraction to get more people on the net to focus on single areas, ebay, yahoo, porn sites, etc.

Now we're to the point where they've managed to link most people into the database, whether it's here, linked in, facebook, twitter, steam, or any of the other ways they can build a profile of you. Yes, there's potential that people can do things they don't like, and a great example is the Arab Spring using technology to protest the government publicly but without them seeing who is doing it directly, but the western governments solved that problem a while back with 9/11. The Patriot Act, and the various other governments legislation that does the same thing is very intentionally vague about it's extent. It gives governments who feel threatened plenty of room to invade anyone's privacy.

So while you may think that the internet is a free flowing place of collaboration that could be a threat to them, it's not their best tool of defence. You could have direct clear evidence of government complicity in 9/11 (which actually, I think there is already) but they easily discredit that by flooding the discussion with disinformation and mistruths so that the entire conversation is derailed and you are now no longer trusted within that 'community', not to mention, they now know you've got information they don't want getting out and can follow you a lot easier online.

So the answer is, while it seems that they've given you a great place to collaborate, conspire and work against the government, they've actually created a perfect 'net' to catch all of their flies in, and the younger generation seems very interested in handing over massive amounts of their information to anyone who's watching.

Boy, that is really such an excellent comment.

Something to consider: while the NSA and the FBI might have a field day with the information gleaned from the services you mention, like twitter, facebook, this place, steam, etc. foreign governments do not enjoy the benefits of the vacuum cleaner -like slurping up of information that U.S.-based sites provide to U.S.-based governments.

So twitter, facebook, et al are to them opaque communication channels for the masses, while to .gov Stateside, they are telescopes peering into the lives of those masses. The asymmetric nature of this relationship should be apparent, and it should explain why repressive regimes like China hobbles Google, by hampering the user experience though random and arbitrary blocks of Google content, manifested as annoyingly tedious gateway timeouts, while completely blocking sites like twitter and facebook. And why "freedom fighters" in Egypt, Tunisia, and other part yon and hither, could successfully launch a revolution using those technologies.

The idea that there is any anonymity at all on the web should be quickly demolished. In countries like Iran, all Internet traffic is routed through one route, which Iran has used to completely block access to whatever site they deem too threatening. If you can choke all traffic off at one point, then you can monitor all the traffic through that same point. Connections between clients and hosts can be logged, and packet contents can certainly be sniffed. Unless you do everything encrypted, then most of what you send and receive across the wire is as public as the back of a postcard.

This is what anonymizing networks like Tor and I2P are all about.

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Exposing the secrets of your enemies in order to discredit them has always been a tactic used by elites to acquire more power. The Internet makes that easier. What is revealed is still very insignificant, compared to the hundreds of millions of actual "conspiracies" being engaged in around the planet - between businessmen and leaders of foreign governments, insiders, spies, etc.

Although agreed, people are less in the dark than before the internet age emerged. But to say that there is no longer darkness is to spread a dangerous misconception.

But couldn't they have built the censoring embedded within the Internet from day one?

ARPAnet was a research project that succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. It was effectively a purely academic network until end-1980s. It did not became a public communication medium before mid-1990s.

So this was not planned, and censorship is expensive. Which is why it is only being bolted on after the fact, and it can be readily circumvented via encryption and P2P. Obviously, they're trying to tar P2P with the brush of piracy, to discredit it and to attempt to outlaw it. As soon as some protocols are illegal, many users will avoid using "criminal" technology. The very few who dare will be very visible, and many of them likely to wind up in the global persons of interest database.

The shortest answer to your question is "they are not actually all-powerful"

The internet has only recently become a hub for activism and idea spreading. The true power of the internet lies in unfiltered, anonymous ideas and genuine opinions. It also provides the means to communicate these ideas and muster support, cheap and easy. They've noticed.

The internet has only recently become a hub for activism and idea spreading

huh?

Maybe you've just found out about it, but activism, and the spreading of ideas are virtually the foundations of the internet.

That, and porn.

but activism, and the spreading of ideas are virtually the foundations

I've been online since about 1990, and, no, activism is a phenomenon which did not exist before end 1990s.

Sorry, but you weren't in the right places then. Or you're not understanding the full breadth of activism.

Hacking can be considered a form of activism and they were some of the first adopters of the internet.

Hacking can be considered a form of activism

Early hackers had no clear political agenda. CCC still actively avoids the association with the Pirate Party.

and they were some of the first adopters of the internet.

I don't know what the internet is. You probably mean the Internet.

Most of the hacking culture came from phreakers and the organisation form was typically BBS. Few hackers had access to the Internet in 1980s.

Early hackers had no clear political agenda.

No clear political agenda, yes, but still a political agenda even if it was being anti-social.

My experience starting from the BBS's introduced me to plenty of activists and people looking to change the system, they migrated to the ~I~nternet as soon as it was available.

I stand by my statement that you must not have known they were there if you think it's a recent phenomenon.

My experience starting from the BBS's introduced me to plenty of activists

Can you narrate a little? Where geographically, and which kind of activism? Color me interested.

I'm up in Canada, Niagara region specifically. The activism was certainly not as large spread or organized as it is, or is possible today. But what people were doing was spreading information and ideas about how to 'take the system down' which seemed to be a big topic for the teenagers that were largely involved back then.

Personally I was involved with a group of 8 or so people organizing a protest at our school in response to the bombing of Iraq in the first Gulf war.

Another group I'm aware of organized a counter protest to a football game being played (nerds vs jocks type attitude).

People were sharing the School Busters book and the Anarchist Cookbook (I may have an old ascii based copy from back in the day somewhere).

And while our activism wasn't far reaching or very big, people elsewhere were already organizing into like minded groups and using the backbone of the network to get around the other controlled media areas.

Thanks.

It has been somewhat messy in Germany http://einestages.spiegel.de/static/topicalbumbackground/23185/mit_dem_hacken_davongekommen.html

(CCC founded 1981, fell into disrepair for about 8 years).

And that's to be expected. There's few if any organizations started in the backwaters of the early internet that would still be in existence.

Back then the people were far too few, with far too scattered of ideas. 20 years later it was a lot easier to gather like minded, local masses to your cause.

I will not disagree that activism is far more rampant now, and people are using the medium better, I'm just saying it was there in it's infant forms.

Jay Rockefeller: Internet should have never existed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY

It got information out of their hands for the first time in a long time. They messed up and are being exposed now. The Genie got out of the bottle. Now there is r/conspiracy lol.

That's the exact thing I was going to bring up, but I figured some smart person had already done it, so I control + f searched for Rockefeller, low and behold...

Now there is r/conspiracy lol.

Reddit is just a single site. If you want this community to be robust, it needs to exist on decentral systems, owned by end users.

Nobody knew what would happen with the internet when it came out in the early 90's. There's even a famous quote from Bill Gates where he says the internet is just a fad. Not only that but, the internet wasn't really used for political activism until after Bush took power. By then the rules of the free internet were already deeply ingrained.

Bread and circus

Bread and Circuses are food stamps-welfare, and UFC and Reality TV.

The poor will eat cheap bread(tv), the educated middle class likes to have its cheap bread in an elaborate wrapper(net). They maintain control by giving us the illusion of choice, two party political system and voiting, freedom of religion, and msm vs alternative media.......it's the same old controlled opposition.

Elites can't perceive and understand everything that's an impossibility. For example the internet of its time the Gutenberg printing press helped to free the minds of men in its early inception. However, slowly these tools were co-opted by publishers, editors, and newspaper to exclude the common man and recapture and shape his perception. Similarly, I think if we don't jealously guard the internet these same forces will use the exclusive newspaper models of editors, mods, and censors to destroy the liberating quality of the internet. An example of this is HuffingtonPost, which only approves comments that are not "conspiracy theories", essentially they control the broad structure of the information and segregate and marginalize the readers into a passive entity. This is the same unaccountable, top down management style of old media, no wonder AOL Time Warner bought them up. Eventually, I can see pages like YouTube following the same model, unaccountable top down structure that favors traditional entries to the detriment of liberty and the common man.

If it did get out of their hands, then how powerful are they really?

I would say they aren't all powerful yet. Trying desperately, but not quite there yet. The internet was not expected. It just showed up and changed everything. They also probably underestimated it when it was in its infancy..

They thought they could capture it and use it to surveil and control us, like they did radio, cinema, and TV; but it turned out to be much more difficult to do. While the surveillance part is slowly-but-steadily moving forward, the control part is not, and in fact may be moving backward; in that sense, their MIC created a monster, which they struggle even now to subdue under the guise of IP and cyber-security litigation.

http://religion.lilithezine.com/images/Ophiuchus-Sculpture.jpg

It's a double-edged sword. They also use it to track everything we do. It's required to integrate their cashless society where they just turn your money off. It's a net positive overall for the elite. They have let it get out of control in terms of how much information we get from it. Way too many people are waking up for their liking, imho.

Perhaps the white hat Illuminati were able to convince the dark hats that it would be to their advantage to implement the internet for monitoring purposes, knowing full well, that after a time, the dark ones would be exposed, and the genie would be out of the bottle, and the entirety of humanity would get to witness the demise of the dark ones...sort of a collective initiation for humanity into a new golden age....huh?...Huh?...pretty good one....huh?

i enjoy your reality, i think ill substitute it for my own

Exactly. When "everyone wakes up" and the "cover is blown" on a worldwide scale on the major conspiracies (NWO, elite, 9/11 fraud, etc), even this will be a deception to make everyone think that true good is on the way. Remember that the secret elite provide both the problem, and the solution. Massive suffering will come from what is brewing right now, and after that, they will bring about the solution. And everyone will be crying out for peace more than ever. This will be the perfect time to usher in the utopian society.

"No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation."

-David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations

If you examine the pyramidal structure, you will see that it appears to have great strength, Though it seems very strong, it is also equally as weak. If one stone falls from its place. it becomes a house of cards. I believe their plan is falling apart and they have made contingency plans for this event......they are preparing to leave the planet and they are only in the final stages of looting resources before doing so.

Our thoughts on this topic just became vastly different.

It's good for selling things.

LOL!!! What makes you think it's out of hand?! It's called the WEB. It's grown organically but will ultimately be the net that catches us all :)

Because they're not actually all powerful. We outnumber them 15 million to one, and if we wake up and move against them as one, they would have no chance of winning . . . and they know it. This is why they proceed with cautioun and can't be too overt about their manipulation.

My theory is that they were caught by surprise, and they are now trying to put a lid on it. Here is Rockefeller's take on it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY

'First one is always free.'

They* might not have realized the implications of an open, global communication system in everybody's desk when it went public/commercial, but they do now. We've become addicted to media, entertainment, easy communication and the tools the interwebs provide.

Next stage: control of the web. Slowly, walled gardens, net-based registration, net-dependent OSes will keep regaining some type of control and monitoring of this channel.

Then: ubiquity. Pretty soon the web will be in our damn clothes, let alone every gizmo and gadgets in our pockets.

Later: Mandatory usage. Unless you have a net presence, you won't be a citizen. E-Money, monitoring of consumption habits, and scouring of all your social activities and contacts by private and governmental agencies.

Panopticon here we come.

*By 'them' I mean all public and private actors with power, from government and industry to extra-national entities. There is no single 'they'.

Because everything we do and say on the internet is recorded. You think the internet has been able to "progress." But you are fooling yourself.

What you say on the internet can and will be used against you. You've been warned.

www - world wide wiretap

I've been on reddit for over 2 years, maybe 3. Can't remember. Anyhow. If you saw reddit when I first started coming here, you would see many links which almost never appear on the front page.
Examples include: Any link about evidence or supposition related to 9-11, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding the whole day.

The Israeli atrocities against Palestine is also censured. Climate change links almost never make it to the front page. (All these kinds of links were on reddit every day a few years ago). Now you have to go to obscure subreddits to see links like this. This is, (in my opinion) their aim; to censure and obfuscate information that most people will see) They don't care if the censure is complete, because if the majority believe a falsehood, then it doesn't matter what a "crazy" minority believe. This is a pattern which I've noticed.

The Israeli atrocities against Palestine is also censured.

The masses censor themselves via a Marshall McLuhan mechanism.

Cause, business.

It makes absolutely no sense to me that the global elites (who supposedly control the whole world) would allow this.

Absolute control does not exist. Notice that the powerful have been aware that the Internet routes around media propaganda, and they're trying to address that by increasingly ratcheting up surveillance and introducing censorship. However, the Internet is global, and the technologies are open, and hence are out of control. In order to kill Internet as a grassroot communication medium you'd have to outlaw generic computers and introduce mandatory authentication, which would be very expensive and largely break the network. As the Internet has become a vital part of world's infrastructure that's not in the cards.

So we're getting a little arms race, with an uncertain outcome long-term.

SOPA, PIPA, CISPA? etc.. After realising the net is actually making people more concious, congress is trying to control it just now under the guise of 'piracy' and 'cyber security'. Just like they can attain anyone under the guise of being a 'terrorrist'. 'Piracy' is online what the 'Terrorrist' is in RL. Just a word that while it means nothing can justify everything.

poor foresight. no question.

As long as you give people something to keep busy with, an outlet, then nobody cares.

Cuz whitehats and gov't underestimated its socially progressive influence at first then it was too late.

it keeps idiot like you busy.

Has it occurred to anyone that they HAVE absolute control? And that it was the internet that gave them that control? The internet has turned us all into unthinking, mindless zombies just ripe for brainwashing.

We won't 'wake up and move against them because we're content to sit in a chair and spend our every waking moment absorbing the crap off the internet. Think about it: are people more focused on the thievery and deception the government is perpetuating, or on what Rhianna wore the other day?

Don't think for a minute that all the drivel that you ingest online is not in some way being manufactured to keep you complacent. If you really want to wake up and smell the coffee, make your only internet usage a good, underground news site that reports on what the mainstream media doesn't. Stop consuming the celebrity gossip and the CNN news that we all know is manufactured by the government.

The internet was developed by the government and has done exactly what they wanted it to do: made us into sheep.

Boy, that is really such an excellent comment.

Something to consider: while the NSA and the FBI might have a field day with the information gleaned from the services you mention, like twitter, facebook, this place, steam, etc. foreign governments do not enjoy the benefits of the vacuum cleaner -like slurping up of information that U.S.-based sites provide to U.S.-based governments.

So twitter, facebook, et al are to them opaque communication channels for the masses, while to .gov Stateside, they are telescopes peering into the lives of those masses. The asymmetric nature of this relationship should be apparent, and it should explain why repressive regimes like China hobbles Google, by hampering the user experience though random and arbitrary blocks of Google content, manifested as annoyingly tedious gateway timeouts, while completely blocking sites like twitter and facebook. And why "freedom fighters" in Egypt, Tunisia, and other part yon and hither, could successfully launch a revolution using those technologies.

The idea that there is any anonymity at all on the web should be quickly demolished. In countries like Iran, all Internet traffic is routed through one route, which Iran has used to completely block access to whatever site they deem too threatening. If you can choke all traffic off at one point, then you can monitor all the traffic through that same point. Connections between clients and hosts can be logged, and packet contents can certainly be sniffed. Unless you do everything encrypted, then most of what you send and receive across the wire is as public as the back of a postcard.

Now there is r/conspiracy lol.

Reddit is just a single site. If you want this community to be robust, it needs to exist on decentral systems, owned by end users.

That's the exact thing I was going to bring up, but I figured some smart person had already done it, so I control + f searched for Rockefeller, low and behold...

And that's to be expected. There's few if any organizations started in the backwaters of the early internet that would still be in existence.

Back then the people were far too few, with far too scattered of ideas. 20 years later it was a lot easier to gather like minded, local masses to your cause.

I will not disagree that activism is far more rampant now, and people are using the medium better, I'm just saying it was there in it's infant forms.