Today Microsoft shut down Skype, a company that helped revolutionize phone calls online. To commemorate the death of Skype, we’re running a recent “Pessimist’s Archive” article on the history of internet calls, and how it almost wasn’t allowed. If you’re not already, you should subscribe to the Pessimist’s Archive.

It used to cost money to call someone, and if that someone was in another country – you would pay a premium: in the mid-90s a prime time call to Paris from New York cost around $113 an hour (in 2025 dollars)

Then came the internet, paving the way for cheap and free calls to and from anywhere in the world… Guess what? Traditional long-distance telephone companies felt threatened.

In 1995, the internet had just 16 million users — but it was enough to make online phone calls useful. That year, startup VocalTec launched the first commercial internet phone software, amusingly named ‘i-phone’ (short for internet phone.) It quickly caught on with early web users, offering cheap long-distance calls – partly thanks to being exempt from FCC tariffs like local access charges. This prompted action from incumbents, who deemed it unfair.

In 1996 America’s Carriers Telecommunications Association (ACTA) – representing over 300 of them – filed a petition with the FCC that sought to ban the sale of long distance internet telephone services until they were regulated as ‘common carriers.’ The internet friendly Clinton Administration would oppose the petition – but it was up to the FCC to make a final ruling.

The Backlash

This is when the nerds stepped in: web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen told The San Francisco Examiner that his browser – Netscape – would build online calling into a future software update seemingly in protest (the feature never materialized.)

“Are we hurting their ability to charge you $10 for a long-distance phone call? Tough bananas” – Harvey Kaufman, vice president of NetSpeak Corp.

Jeff Pulver – an early i-phone user, who’d started a popular mailing list for online phone enthusiasts, would take it upon himself to lead the resistance. Prior to the FCC petition he launched the first online telephone network called ‘Free World Dialup’ (using the VocalTec system.) His mailing list turned into the ‘Voice on the Net coalition’: a group of internet phone enthusiasts and tech startups building out the technology.

This rag tag bunch of innovators would cobble together a lobbying effort to fight incumbents and allow this nascent technology to flourish…

In the following 8 years the VON coalition would fend off various attempts to rein in the technology, while the FCC would hold off ruling on the ACTA petition (VON is still operating today.)

1998 would see the FCC make a number of statements sympathetic to online phone services – meanwhile iphone.com would host an effort to petition lawmakers against online phone services. It isn’t clear if this was a real grassroots effort, or an astroturfed one by traditional phone providers…

In 2000 a bill passed the US house of representatives preventing phone companies charging by the minute for internet access – but it excluded internet telephony services. This prompted Jeff Pulver and his VON coalition to organize the ‘Internet Freedom Rally’ in Washington DC. It would feature the chairman of the FCC and classic rock performances.

In 2004 the FCC would finally rule on the ACTA petition after 8 years – but not before the Justice Department asked for a delay on a decisions until online phones call could be as easily wire tapped as regular calls. The FCC would make its final ruling dubbed the ‘Pulver Order’ allowing for cheap and free online phone calls to anywhere in the world we take for granted today.

This is a good example of how incumbents will try to use old rules to thwart competition enabled by new technologies – had the long distance telecoms companies succeeded, services like Facebook and Google might not be able to offer free voice and video calls globally.

The following is republished from the excellent Pessimist’s Archive, with permission.

The Oxford Dictionary just added “brainrot” as its newest official word—a cynical, but tongue-in-cheek term for consuming too much short-form social media content.

However, the word isn’t actually new – in the archives we found examples going back as far as a century and a half of ‘brainrot’ being used in the context of unhealthy consumption of (new) media.

125 years ago – In 1899 – journalist Julian Ralph warned of a “BRAIN-ROT CONTAGION” that would be accelerated by an increase of magazines in the US – after witnessing their popularity in England. He posited that:

“The number of people who think like birds, in little broken thoughts, will be greatly enlarged.”

The writer feared “millions upon millions of American boys and girls and men and women” would suffer the same fate as the English who were supposedly “unable to learn anything, to know anything well and to concentrate their minds upon anything.”

Concerns about the psychological influence of ‘new media’ by those in the ‘old media’ are nothing new, and reactions to the rise of magazines and the ‘yellow press’ were no different.

The term ‘brainrot’ can be found used even earlier with regards to cheap periodicals – in 1866, a Vermont paper called a number of New York publications “soul destroying and brain rotting” and in 1883 ‘The Press’ of Stafford Springs, Connecticut lamented the rise of “vile ‘Illustrated’ weekly story-papers” that it said was “polluting the country”, continuing…

“The best of them are brain-rotting trash and twaddle, and the worst of them are deadly poison. And the infection is spreading day by day, week by week, and thousands of brave, honest lads all over the country are in moral peril from it.”

The real brainrot happening seems to be in media elites convincing themselves new mediums can have such powerful psychological impacts – postive or negative. We explored this dynamic in our previous two posts about the fictitious ‘War of the Worlds’ panic, cooked up by newspapers hostile to radio, and the literary elites of 17th century Europe who insisted a popular new novel triggered a suicide epidemic among the young:

The ‘War of the Worlds’ Panic was Anti-Radio Propaganda

Remembered as history’s most infamous radio broadcast, a 1938 dramatization of H.G. Wells “The War of the Worlds” reportedly caused widespread panic when listeners thought a fictional news broadcast of an alien invasion was real…

Read full story

The 1774 Novel Blamed for Youth Suicide

Two hundred and fifty years ago – in 1774 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Read full story

Can you say new media derangement syndrome?

In recent weeks there has been a flurry of laws, regulatory proposals, and lawsuits regarding “deepfakes,” along with the usual rising levels of concern in the media about how the world won’t be able to handle this. For some perspective, the Pessimist’s Archive just published a story highlighting how a nearly identical fear gripped the world in 1912 regarding “fake” photos. We’ve republished it here, with permission, though you really should subscribe to the Pessimist’s Archive as well.

Concern about deceptively edited photos feels like a very modern anxiety, yet a century ago similar worries were being litigated…

Portrait photography gave rise to an industry of photo ‘retouching’ – analog ‘beauty filters’ – to flatter subjects in a way portrait painters once did. This trend lead to questions about technology distorting our perceptions of beauty, reality and truth:

An 1897 issue of the New-York Tribune would declare the assumption “Photographs Do Not Lie” an “exploded notion”, saying:

“…at the present time photographs may be and are made to lie with great frequency and facility.”

Other commercial applications of photo retouching emerged: in 1911 tourists visiting Washington D.C. could acquire fake photographs of themselves posing with then President of the United States William Taft. This troubled government officials. Upon discovering the practice in 1911, a United States Attorney ordered it stopped:

One (literal) photo-shop offering the novel souvenirs appealed to the White House for its blessing to continue the trade, but was denied. (the practice was not against the law, but pressure from the White House appeared effective if only temporarily — in the capital)

Photographic Crimes

The following year a fugitive – wanted for people trafficking – was found in possession of a fake photo posing with President Taft, it was reported he’d used it to buy the trust of his victims:

That this seemingly benign practice had been weaponized prompted some to demand it be regulated against abuse. The Justice Department prepared a law, that was introduced by then Senator Henry Cabot Lodge — who’d similarly been troubled after reportedly finding a photograph of himself with someone he’d never met.

On July 29, 1912 the bill was introduced to the Senate: “to prohibit the making, showing or distributing of fraudulent photographs”:

The law would make it illegal “to make, sell, publish, or show” any “fraudulent or untrue photograph, or picture purporting to be a photograph” of anyone who had not first given permission. Violation would see punishment of up to 6-months in jail or up to a $1000 fine ($31,797 adjusted for inflation.)

The proposed rules made headlines across the US, bringing the topic of fake photographs to wider attention:

The Intelligencer Journal of Pennsylvania applauded Senator Lodge’s efforts to combat the “miserable business of creating fake photographs”, saying while the technology of photography was a “wonderful art”, it was “manifestly in need of control against abuse.”

The piece emphasized the need for “national and state laws” to address negatives “artfully combined to tell pictorial lies” something the author called “photographic crimes”, warning that anyone was now vulnerable to slander from fake photos “apparently faithful and exhibited as the testimony of the innocent sun.”

Not everyone was a fan of the proposed law however. Some representing the photography community worried about unintended consequences of the bill: a 1912 edition of the publication ‘American Photography’ called the bill ‘indefensible’, saying that the law would make photographers and publishers “continually liable to blackmailing suits” – we assume by those claiming to have never given permission.

It appears the bill was never voted on and died in the Senate. The following year – President Taft would lose an election to Woodrow Wilson – reports of a renewed trade in fake photos of President Wilson in the capital would soon appear.

What if…

Had the law passed it would have been very relevant in the 21st Century, with the rise of digital photography, photoshop and more recently AI enabled image editing.

It would have made a federal crime of removing an object from a photo for instagram – without permission of everyone in it. On the other hand, recent efforts to legislate against fake nude images would be unneeded – those would be illegal already.

Surprisingly, this latter issue was also present in prior centuries: unmentioned in defense of the proposed law, were real cases of ‘photographic slander’ against women: in 1905 a gang was using the threat of “the circulation of indecent trick photographs for the purposes of blackmail.” A 1891 report out of Chicago noted the arrest of a “gang of scamps” selling fake nude images of high society women. (1936 would see a blackmail plot against opera stars)

Fake nudes could have been banned over a century ago – but the law was too broad, focusing on more speculative, rather than specific proven harms. A similar critique is made of some AI regulation proposed today – making this, a good possible lesson for the best way to approach AI regulation.

Side Note: Hypocrisy

A year after the law was proposed – in 1913 – a photo would appear of President Taft atop a Carabao – the national animal of the Philippines. It was thought to have been part of an effort to buy goodwill with a nation seeking independence from the United States:

It turns out, it was the very kind of fake photo the Taft administration was railing against. In 2018 history researcher Bob Couttie discovered a 1908 photo of President Taft astride a horse, in an identical pose: comparing the images it seems undeniable Taft had been cut and pasted onto a different image: literally.

We had a post earlier this week about the silliness of the Surgeon General’s idea for a warning on social media, and that linked to a longer piece Mike wrote about it at The Daily Beast, which talked about a similar push by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop getting upset about video games. The excellent Pessimist’s Archive put up a whole article about that historical farce, and has given us permission to repost it here. We also recommend subscribing to the Pessimist’s Archive for a regular dose of lessons of moral panics from years past.

🗞️ News: U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy published an op-ed in The New York Times advocating for a ‘Warning Label on Social Media Platforms’ to address possible risks to adolescent mental health. Despite the nation’s top doctor suggesting harm, the causative effects of social media on teen mental health is still uncertain, the science is not in.

🕰️ This isn’t the first time a Surgeon General jumped the gun in response to concerns about technology and children.

In 1982 then Surgeon General Dr. Everett Koop would sound a warning about the risks of video-games to youth and resulting “aberrations in childhood behavior.” He would note the risks weren’t proven, but ensured scientific proof would inevitably emerge:

“Koop said he had no scientific evidence on the effect of video games on children, but he predicted statistical evidence will be forthcoming soon.” – Associated Press report, 1982

PAC-MAN PANIC

The Surgeon General’s comments came amidst a boom in arcade machines and the first of many panics about video-games. Children would swarm the machines, feeding them coins obtained from parents: sometimes covertly. Where comic books and television were blamed for corrupting the youth in prior decades, video-games were the new boogeyman. The Surgeon General’s comments only added fuel to the fire:

Age limit laws would be proposed, one police department blamed burglaries on the rapacious demand for quarters and one Massachusetts town even outlawed the commercialization of arcade machines. Dr. Everett Koop’s implication that his opinions would soon be proven scientific fact were quickly denounced by psychologists and the burgeoning video game industry.

One industry rep. wrote to the Surgeon General saying: “Respectfully, we must remind you that your only official mandate and authority is to develop scientific evidence.” Another said emphasis should be on proven harms to kids – like cigarettes – not speculative harms. Dr. Everett Koop would in turn issue a statement that made clear these were opinions only:

“My off-the-cuff comment was not part of any prepared remarks. Nothing in my remarks should be interpreted as implying that videos are per se violent in natures, or harmful to children”

It turned out the scientific evidence didn’t emerge. In retrospect it seems clear Dr. Everett Koop – as a medical authority – had the opportunity to quell unsubstantiated panic that distracted from more empirical threats to kids – like smoking. A few years later Dr. Koop would wade into the TV violence debate, citing the 1972 Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee coming to a unanimous conclusion that violence and TV increased aggression.

That correlation is now long debunked.

Louis Anslow runs the Pessimist’s Archive, which is well worth subscribing to.