There’s just one thing businesses can do about the ‘splinternet’ — adapt
In ancient times (before COVID-19) I grandly announced that the long-feared “splinternet” had arrived. And I made peace with the fact.
The splinternet idea is simple: instead of the single, global, open internet that early network pioneers intended, we actually now have multiple unconnected internets.
Exhibit A in my argument was the successful isolation of China by the Chinese government’s so called “Great Firewall of China,” along with aggressive internet censorship. The Chinese government not only censors domestically, but also takes advantage of the lack of controls abroad to censor globally, and to spread pro-Beijing propaganda and disinformation. For example, during the Bejing Olympics, thousands of super active fake accounts and bots flooded the comments of any prominent Twitter user (including myself) criticizing the Olympics or the Chinese government’s human rights record. Twitter later deleted the accounts.