The internet is splintering:
The splinternet (also referred to as cyber-balkanization or internet balkanization) is a characterization of the Internet as splintering and dividing due to various factors, such as technology, commerce, politics, nationalism, religion, and divergent national interests. "Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it", writes the Economist weekly, and it may soon splinter along geographic and commercial boundaries.[1] Countries such as China have erected what is termed a "Great Firewall", for political reasons, and Russia has enacted the Sovereign Internet Law that allows it to partition itself from the rest of the Internet,[2][3] while other nations, such as the US and Australia, discuss plans to create a similar firewall to block child pornography or weapon-making instructions.[1]Clyde Wayne Crews, a researcher at the Cato Institute, first used the term in 2001 to describe his concept of "parallel Internets that would be run as distinct, private, and autonomous universes."[4]
This is from September last year:
Splinter-net? Is the internet fracturing along geopolitical lines? - YouTube
There have been a lot of articles about this over the last month or so:
The rise of 'splinternet' amid heightened nationalism - TechHQ
The ‘splinternet’ pervades both the East and West - Tech Wire Asia
The worldwide web as we know it may be ending - CNN
Back in 2019, writing in Computerworld, there was a different opinion:
How I learned to stop worrying and love the splinternetThe web was never going to be worldwide. The idea of one single global internet is an obsolete fantasy.
By Mike Elgan Contributing Columnist, Computerworld
Have you heard the one about the “splinternet”? It’s the idea that the internet could someday be split into different national or regional mini-internets.
It’s usually talked about as something that could happen someday, or that is beginning to happen.
I’ve got news for you: It’s already happened. The splinternet is here.
It’s time to stop pretending that the ever-increasing “cyber-balkanization” of the internet will ever be reversed.
Who and what is splintering the internet?
In 1996, John Perry Barlow penned “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.”
This naive and now-cringeworthy screed said, in part, “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.” He continued: “We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.”
The response by Governments of the Industrial World: “Challenge accepted.”
Barlow’s free-speech utopia never happened, and never will. Since Barlow’s declaration, the division of the global internet into separate, incompatible and walled-off mini-internets has increased, and it will continue to do so.
Here are the actors and forces that have already splintered the internet into many internets.
How I learned to stop worrying and love the splinternet | Computerworld
This phenomenon is not just being discussed in the English-speaking world:
Splinternet: Wenn digitale Grenzen wachsen – Sicherheit & Datenschutz – Funkschau
Hotet om ett förbud mot Tiktok bortblåst – öppnat kontor i Norden | SvD
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