Remember the Internet.org and FreeBasics movement which was used to muddy the Net Neutrality waters? Guess which startup was excited about Internet.org
> Onavo’s founders, Guy Rosen (CEO) and Roi Tiger (CTO), are on board with the plan. “We’re excited to join their team,” the two wrote, “and hope to play a critical role in reaching one of Internet.org’s most significant goals – using data more efficiently, so that more people around the world can connect and share. When the transaction closes, we plan to continue running the Onavo mobile utility apps as a standalone brand. As always, we remain committed to the privacy of people who use our application and that commitment will not change.”
I'd date it to around then, too, but for a different reason. Whether you think it was a good or bad thing, I don't think it's incorrect to characterize the pre-2010s web as "socially progressive libertarian". 2013 was the first time I (we?) saw unabashedly extremist right-wing sentiments break Stormfront/4chan containment (and as a deathly serious matter, rather than the ambiguously sardonic nature of the latter's meme-ing). Specifically, with the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman murder trial, and the way that that incident picked up a thread of America's deepest divide and dragged it into cyberspace. I had never heard people saying the things they were saying around that topic, things that would make an Xbox Live edgelord go, "Bro, dial it back," and certainly never from the people who were saying them. My parents never saw the need to give me "the talk", and that was my introduction to the fact that America was very much not "post-racial", in a real way, and often proudly so.
At the point, everything was on the table, and everyone was "welcome" into the everlasting flame war.
