Catacomb Resident Blog

The Death of Internet Evangelism

12 November 2021

If things continue on the same path they are now on...

The Internet isn't going anywhere for a while yet, but it will soon cease to be a means of public address. Public participation will be so tightly restricted that it will not be worth the trouble. The public won't be cut off completely, but the message of the Covenant will be among the things censored. The restriction will not be purely technological, but public access will be forced underground. And when it's underground, it won't be public any more.

We've already seen how the big service providers have aggressively censored the voice of users. This is partly a conditioning exercise; they want you to believe that you cannot afford to leave their provided outlets. They want you to be a fragile and highly dependent publicity hound, and they have created a system that pays well for such air-head pursuits. They've pressured the infrastructure providers to close the door on anything that isn't under the control of the big providers. Meanwhile, the rising dominance of closed garden access via device and OS providers further limits the public access.

How many of you are capable of running a Unix server and connecting to the Net? Have you ever tried to build your own software from source and make it work your way? Have you ever tried to communicate using obscure protocols, like IRC, for example? How about the various means of encryption directly from your device, requiring folks on the other end to have installed and configured decryption measures? How many of you are ready to DIY and work around the exclusionary boundaries to stay in touch with friends and family on the Internet? This channel will remain open, but you will find yourself unable to participate easily in the majority of social media. You won't lose the Internet; you will lose the means of public address and participation.

Already, access to government services is increasingly restricted to those very popular social media platforms. So if you start down the DIY path of computer technology, you'll still be excluded. Ever try getting tech support from a government agency website while running Linux? They won't even talk to you.

Some may find it worthwhile, but if you invest that much time and resources into the DIY computer technology arena, you won't have time for all the other stuff. The DIY route will demand a rising investment, so that you risk being isolated from all the other things you really care about. By the time you can get and keep a pipeline open, you might not have so much to put through it.

This is the problem with a stand-alone ministry. Taken altogether, the utility of the Internet is dropping quickly as a means of outreach for the gospel of the Covenant. In that sense, this is a "Last Days" situation. The only way around this limitation is to build a covenant community of faith that includes the gifted hackers to enable those gifted in the message. Pray for more body parts to join your covenant community.

You'll end up being able to keep in touch with those already in your community, but the opportunity to share outside will be reduced to what you can do in the real world, not online. The day of Internet evangelism is already gone. That is, if your evangelism is the full Covenant message, then you'll be mostly ignored online. Right now, I'm only able to reach just a few folks who are already primed to hear this message. I've already been censored by the common public accommodations. Part of the reason for anonymity is that it reduces the attack surface, but it also reduces the community connection.

Even without direct censorship, in just a few years at the longest, this blog will become a waste of time and effort. Your servant is capable of the high tech approach, but then, the audience will be highly restricted to those who can maintain matching technology on their end. I'm not suggesting the Open Source world is somehow more righteous and holy, but it certainly is more amenable to carrying the Covenant message. It's not the money they plan to charge with subscription models to run Windows or Mac, but the way they can so easily restrict what you have to say by investing "woke" censorship directly in the software.

Meanwhile, keep working with what you have while the doors are open. The wrath of God is going to fall on the non-Covenant world, and it will be time to shift to other ways of serving His glory.


This document is public domain; spread the message.