The next digital divide may not be internet access, but AI fluency

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.rappler.com/brandrap/national-ai-and-skills-summit-2026/

Seville. @icann 86. Next week. Tech Day and DNS.

Find me if you run a DNS resolver and wonder who speaks for you.

I can also talk about Whisper.... internet infrastructure intelligence across DNS, BGP and routing at scale, and @stardotlondon where 530 carriers, LINX, and three decades of internet history share the same postcode.

Come say hello on Monday 8th June.

#ICANN86 #DNS #Resolvers #DROP #Security #Datacentres #InternetInfrastructure

Seville. @icann 86. Next week. Tech Day and DNS.

Find me if you run a DNS resolver and wonder who speaks for you.

I can also talk about Whisper.... internet infrastructure intelligence across DNS, BGP and routing at scale, and @stardotlondon where 530 carriers, LINX, and three decades of internet history share the same postcode.

Come say hello on Monday 8th June.

#ICANN86 #DNS #Resolvers #DROP #Security #Datacentres #InternetInfrastructure

GoDaddy Is Not a Service Provider — It’s an Internet Toll Booth

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Hiawatha, Iowa, USA
Published June 4, 2026

GoDaddy Controls Access, Not Outcomes

GoDaddy is routinely described as a “service provider.” That description is false — and the distinction matters.

GoDaddy does not primarily provide services. It controls access.

At the core of its business is domain registration: an administrative choke point embedded into the basic architecture of the internet. Domains are not optional. They are not a premium feature. They are the address system. If you want to exist online in any meaningful way, you must pass through a registrar. GoDaddy positioned itself early at that gate and never left.

This is not innovation. It is rent collection.

The Toll-Booth Model of the Modern Internet

Once positioned at the choke point, GoDaddy layered revenue extraction on top of dependency — hosting, email, SSL certificates, “website builders,” SEO packages, security add-ons.

None of these offerings are inherently fraudulent. What matters is how they are framed and sold: not as tools with measurable outcomes, but as implied necessities justified by fear and confusion.

The pitch is simple: if something breaks, you will be blamed.
The solution is always another subscription.

This is toll-booth logic. You do not pay because value is created. You pay because passage is required.

Scale Without Accountability

The early internet rewarded first movers not with accountability, but with insulation. GoDaddy learned this lesson quickly.

Scale did not produce excellence. It produced inertia.

Once millions of domains sit inside a single system, failure becomes survivable. Customers may suffer, but they rarely leave. Migration is complex. Fear is effective. Confusion is profitable.

In this environment, performance stops mattering. Control does not.

Monetizing Dependence, Not Success

GoDaddy’s public identity — cheerful branding, small-business language, “we help you succeed” rhetoric — exists to obscure a more basic reality: the company monetizes dependence, not outcomes.

Most customers will never generate meaningful revenue from their websites. That is not a side effect. It is built into the funnel. Hope scales better than success stories, and disappointment does not disrupt recurring billing.

Calling this a service relationship misleads both customers and regulators. Services are evaluated by performance. Toll booths are evaluated by traffic volume. GoDaddy optimizes for the latter.

Why Complaints Rarely Change Anything

This distinction explains why complaints rarely produce reform.

When failure occurs inside a service model, it is a defect.
When failure occurs inside a toll model, it is noise.

The system is functioning exactly as designed: extracting recurring payment from locked-in users while externalizing frustration, confusion, and risk.

The modern internet did not become expensive because it became sophisticated. It became expensive because intermediaries learned exactly where to stand — and once embedded, they could charge for standing still.

GoDaddy is not broken.
It is functioning precisely as an internet toll booth should.

That is the problem.

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

References (APA)

Kende, M. (2017). Internet governance, intermediaries, and the role of gatekeepers. Internet Society.

Khan, L. M. (2017). Amazon’s antitrust paradox. Yale Law Journal, 126(3), 710–805.

Varian, H. R., Shapiro, C., & Carl, S. (1999). Information rules: A strategic guide to the network economy. Harvard Business School Press.

Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism. PublicAffairs.

Nueva edición de Internet Tour, turismo de infraestructuras en Barcelona
prox 6 Junio  
Entradas disponibles en:
internetour.com

#internetinfrastructure #internettour #bcntourism #thecloud #infrastructour #infrastructures

Cable Retriever (GB) confirmed on dynamic positioning hold off Tamsui, Taiwan, 8h+ on station as of 5:34 UTC today.

Coordinating with Ile d'Aix (FR), reported on station since May 9, per open sources.

Both repairing the Taiwan-Matsu No.3 cable, damaged in April by a Chinese salvage barge.

This is what the infrastructure war looks like.

Of course, one can safely assume there is nothing strategically noteworthy about repeated disruptions to critical communications infrastructure in one of the world’s most contested theatres. Merely an unfortunate sequence of maritime coincidences.

#OSINT #Taiwan #China #Geopolitics #MaritimeSecurity #SubmarineCables #CriticalInfrastructure #GrayZone #IndoPacific #InternetInfrastructure #Security

Globe expands data centers as PLDT maintains lead in capacity

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.rappler.com/technology/globe-pldt-data-centers-growth-q1-2026-report/

Amazon reports cloud outage at North Virginia data center; CME, Coinbase face trading issues

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.rappler.com/technology/amazon-web-services-cloud-outage-north-virginia-data-center/