Why we need shared private internets

Once upon a time all conversations were private.Two people in dialogue. A small group in a debate. What was said only left the room if someone decided it should.For all of human history until two decades ago, private communication was the default. Words traveled as far as our voices could carry them. Or, if we chose, we wrote them down in formats with the intention of distribution.The internet changed this. What was shared between two people could now be observed and reshared by the world. Our feelings, personal information, and who we talked to became data distributed to corporations, governments, and agencies beyond our control. With our explicit-ish consent on social media, and without it through widespread surveillance in support of ad-based models and suspicious states.We've gone from a world that's default private to a world that's default public. Lured by the ever-present promise of infinite scale, human interaction shifted from private exchange to public arena. Even when we…