The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism • Hacker News Board

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#51

Post by lampiaio » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

schoen wrote: post #19

I was a great admirer (and later friend) of Barlow, and I'm still very deeply influenced by the Declaration and many adjacent phenomena. I agree with some fraction of this post in terms of seeing many people shelving these principles when it gets inconvenient for them. In the past few months, I've been troubled by one specific part of the Declaration, in the final paragraph: > We will create a civilization of the Min…

The article was interesting to read not necessarily as a generative spark but as a datapoint, a symptom of how effective, in the long run, the response from those who saw the internet as a threat was.

Only someone who's lost the plot (or arrived late) would summarily conflate Barlow's 1996 Declaration with "one of those sovereign citizen TikToks where someone in traffic court is claiming diplomatic immunity under maritime law". The article itself has fallen victim to the weaponized co-optation whose framework it describes.

The author says "I remember thinking it was genius when I first read it. I was young enough [...]", believing it was due to being impressionable, but it's more likely that it was due to having lost something along the way. Or rather, it was stolen from them and they didn't even realize.

The Declaration was right, it was just naively optimistic and severely underestimated its opponent + incorrectly presumed digital natives would automatically be on the "right" side. Now we are where we are. And it's just the beginning of the pendulum's counterswing.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#52

Post by skinfaxi » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

bayleev wrote: post #32

A good example of this is the mythological way people think often about cryptography imo, as a guarantor of an individual's privacy against the prying eyes of the state, etc. But the reality is that your usual cryptographic circuit (TLS connection) is just that, a circuit, a cordoning of space off for an interaction between two or more parties. The interaction inside that circuit can be very highly exploitative indee…

The ability to keep secrets is a fundamental human right. Encryption is a technical protection against that violation, separate from legal consequences. Encryption means I can keep my secrets even if the government locks me up until I reveal the password. I don't see how it is a key driver of militarization and enhanced financialization.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#53

Post by igor47 » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #4

Dunno man, those things you say were “horrible” before the advent of mobile phones, media players and gps (not even the internet; usable incarnations of those inventions were entirely independent from the internet) - I was also there and it was _fine_.

Strong agree. That passage seems to me to be decrying the friction of the real world, whereas it's become increasingly clear to me just how valuable friction is in the world, and how inextricably tied the tech companies war on friction to the bad outcomes technology seems to engender.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#54

Post by Forgeties79 » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

schoen wrote: post #19

I was a great admirer (and later friend) of Barlow, and I'm still very deeply influenced by the Declaration and many adjacent phenomena. I agree with some fraction of this post in terms of seeing many people shelving these principles when it gets inconvenient for them. In the past few months, I've been troubled by one specific part of the Declaration, in the final paragraph: > We will create a civilization of the Min…

> I think there are lots of other things going on there over and above the moderation issue, but one is that the early Internet culture was very self-selected for people who thought that the ability to talk to people and the ability to access information were morally virtuous.

Honestly I think it mostly self selected based on who had the technical ability to participate, especially at that time.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#55

Post by slopinthebag » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:37 PM UTC

vrganj wrote: post #42

georgehotz wrote: post #29

Maybe it's just my contrarian nature, but this sells me on cyberlibertarianism. There's nothing preventing you from setting up a web server, downloading free software to run it, getting your friends to view it, building encrypted communication apps that no government can crack, pirating any piece of content in the world, etc... A libertarian society won't coddle you, and there's psychopaths like Meta who show up in t…

> Of course those people suck, but the solution isn't government. Why? That seems like a big assertion to make in a side sentence without any supporting argument.

Well, governments are coercive forces with a total monopoly on the legal system and the use of violence. Perhaps monopolies being bad is reason enough? There are the hundreds of millions (billions?) of people murdered by governments throughout history, including the many atrocities modern governments are committing today, which is almost surely reason enough. And then there are the philosophical arguments against political authority, called philosophical anarchism, which can be quite convincing.

It seems the onus is on the other side to justify the state, and that we should't be trying to find alternative solutions to the problems it attempts to solve.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#56

Post by bayleev » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

skinfaxi wrote: post #52

bayleev wrote: post #32

A good example of this is the mythological way people think often about cryptography imo, as a guarantor of an individual's privacy against the prying eyes of the state, etc. But the reality is that your usual cryptographic circuit (TLS connection) is just that, a circuit, a cordoning of space off for an interaction between two or more parties. The interaction inside that circuit can be very highly exploitative indee…

The ability to keep secrets is a fundamental human right. Encryption is a technical protection against that violation, separate from legal consequences. Encryption means I can keep my secrets even if the government locks me up until I reveal the password. I don't see how it is a key driver of militarization and enhanced financialization.

In the above conceptualization, the protection of the often trivial secrets of individuals is often used as a kind of moral and informational camouflage for the actual re-orientation of power around secrets that really matter, i.e., bank account balances, account numbers, insider trading tips, etc. Hence why Apple markets their devices as protecting a fairly nebulous notion of privacy, it's not wrong, but it's not the most interesting part of what happens.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#57

Post by HotGarbage » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #2

For more along this line of criticism, read Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech by Paulina Borsook

And Cyberlibertarianism by David Golumbia

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#58

Post by igor47 » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

georgehotz wrote: post #29

Maybe it's just my contrarian nature, but this sells me on cyberlibertarianism. There's nothing preventing you from setting up a web server, downloading free software to run it, getting your friends to view it, building encrypted communication apps that no government can crack, pirating any piece of content in the world, etc... A libertarian society won't coddle you, and there's psychopaths like Meta who show up in t…

On this side of the wall, you and your friends are strong and happy and free in your garden. On the other side, a hellscape filled with giant monsters debating how best to filet you. You will keep ceeding them ground, your garden gets ever smaller. The monsters ate Brian, oops, well that's the consequence of freedom! But you're next, isn't it completely obvious you're next? Why would you unilaterally disarm against the monsters? Why for the love of God why would you say "no the monsters are good actually!"

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#59

Post by killretards » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

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Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#60

Post by tclancy » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

igor47 wrote: post #53

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #4

Dunno man, those things you say were “horrible” before the advent of mobile phones, media players and gps (not even the internet; usable incarnations of those inventions were entirely independent from the internet) - I was also there and it was _fine_.

Strong agree. That passage seems to me to be decrying the friction of the real world, whereas it's become increasingly clear to me just how valuable friction is in the world, and how inextricably tied the tech companies war on friction to the bad outcomes technology seems to engender.

There's a great piece in the current New Yorker about that very thing: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/our-longing-for-inco...

"I have a CD player in my home, a VCR in a closet. But I’m also inclined to think about the work that older devices demand of a person compared with the frictionless present day, when we are told that any and all content is at our fingertips (a myth, but a myth that sells.) And I can’t help but think of the reality that there are many significantly larger and more consequential inconveniences that Americans, plainly, do not have the heart or stomach for. One example might be the inconvenience caused by a mass political uprising, one that risks the security, safety, and comfort of its participants. I have seen glimpses of people’s threshold for that level of friction. "