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The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

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Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#111

Post by pdonis »

bluegatty wrote: post #106
iamnothere wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacking in its original sense is not about rule breaking (except maybe implied rules). It’s about finding ways around limitations. This could be finding unusual routes through a campus, as when the term was invented, or altering software to work the way you wanted it to. Often the only limits to using a tool the way you want to use it are in your mind. Hacking was distinct from phreaking (illegal use of the phone sys…

Thoughtful. Yes 'hack and 'hacking' [1] (Google Ngram Viewer) The traditional use of 'hack' was meant to imply 'half baked' or 'not good' and often used as an insult 'that guy is a hack' etc. 'Hack' as in 'tinkering and improvisation' is relatively new - and it came about at roughly the same time as the 'Phreak' version of 'hack'. Yes - of course norms can simply benefit those with power, I hinted at that, but on the…

> the libertarian creed -the churlish assumption that 'rules are the arbitrary imposition of those with power' and that somehow breaking them is more likely good than not

This is certainly churlish, but it's not at all "the libertarian creed". People who break rules just for the sake of breaking them aren't libertarians, they're idiots. I agree there are lots of those around, and that many, if not most, people who crow about "breaking rules" are doing it for selfish or irresponsible or self-aggrandizing reasons. But those people aren't libertarians.

The libertarian creed is that there are different kinds of rules, and you treat them in different ways. And one key part of that is precisely the "moral concern" that you talk about. Libertarianism includes the non-aggression principle: don't violate other people's rights. (Some, including me, would say that's a bedrock tenet of libertarianism.) If breaking a rule would do that, you don't break the rule. And indeed lots of the rules we have in place in our society are there for that very reason--because breaking them would mean violating someone's rights. That doesn't just include obvious cases like the laws against things like murder. It includes rules about fiduciary responsibility when you're taking care of other people's money (someone mentioned Paypal upthread). And it includes norms that aren't codified into rules, like "don't take your users' data without their consent or even knowledge, and then sell it for profit". Doing it at scale to billions of people, as tech giants do, doesn't change that, and "libertarian creed" isn't a get out of jail free card.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#113

Post by AlexandrB »

bluegatty wrote: post #80
wiseowise wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I’ll gladly take CDs and DVDs over modern streaming platforms. Before all of this streaming crap music and taste had weight. You find people with the same interests and you share physical medium. No corporation in the world had a power to stop me from giving my copy to another person. Now you either like and pay forever like a good cattle or you hide like a rat from the watchful copyright gods on torrents.

I used to be with you on that ... but getting of my lazy bum to actually pay for Spotify - and looking past all the fair/unfair issues bad/good corporate stuff ... The ability to browse music is very powerful. I lost my 1 Soundgarden CD 20 years ago. Now I can listen to all their albums. You can do the entire Beatles catalogue Discover artists I would never have otherwise heard of. It has it's downsides, but I dont t…

And the biggest part of the money you pay the streaming platform goes to neither Soundgarden, nor the remaining Beatles, nor to those artists you discovered but to Taylor Swift[1]. This is in stark contrast to how CD economics worked.

As someone who spent a lot of his youth carefully avoiding big label acts and trying to support small artists, this is what bothers me the most: there is no way to do that anymore if you use streaming.

[1] https://mertbulan.com/2025/08/10/why-paying-for-spotify-most...

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#114

Post by pdonis »

tolerance wrote: post #33

I get that the information produced and consumed online does has a profound effect on how we think. But right now I need to point out a steady gripe of mine that may or may not be tangential to the author's points depending on how you view things. There is something unsettling about how the disjunctive experience that digital media environments produce is romantically portrayed. I think we need to get over the concep…

> Media/information environments shouldn't be thought of in the same way that physical ones are. I don't know why I feel this way.

Maybe because media/information environments aren't the same as physical environments?

The word "environment" might be the root issue here. Using digital tools to connect with other people isn't the same thing as treating your digital tools as an "environment" that takes the place of the physical world. The former is very useful and can often be vital. The latter, I think, is where problems can occur.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#115

Post by smitty1e »

> Cassettes are the worst way to listen to music ever invented.

Sea Story:

- Background: US Navy ships go alonside an oiler to refuel and hold a course/speed at restricted maneuvering for a while. Hours, even.

After this nerve-wracking time period, when breaks away from the oiler, then she comes up to flank three and plays a breakaway song over loudspeakers, the 1MC. Totally not meant for music, but that's not the point.

- Story: the CO always wanted "Lowrider", by War, which is an excellent cut, but was well past cliché after so many iterations. The Messenger of the Watch had a boom box, a tape, and the 1MC microphone for the task.

Only, this time, the tape was flipped. Dude hit PLAY on the "Dazed and Confused" soundtrack, and Ted Nugent announced that he had everyone in a stranglehold.

The Old Man was apoplectic, and the cassette was quickly flipped and we got on with life.

Worst way to listen to music, indeed.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#116

Post by jancsika »

chasd00 wrote: post #101
jancsika wrote: post #99

> Once when driving from Michigan to Florida I got so lost in the middle of the night in Kentucky that I had to pull over to sleep and wait for the sun so I could figure out where I was. Not sure what's going on here, but this reads like 90s cosplay. First off, GPS-guided trips had not yet eroded people's sense of direction because they did not yet exist. Second of all, the (odd-numbered) interstate(s) that flow from…

Also, you have a compass. Just drive South until you reach the Gulf of Mexico, then drive East until you reach the Atlantic ocean, then drive South until you reach where you're going ( it will be daylight by then ). /edit i guess it could be possible to drive South and end up in key west but it will be daylight long before you run out of road.

I can understand getting turned around and not wanting to blithely drive Southward on a random Kentucky highway using one's compass. Using that method OP could have potentially drifted away from the interstate they were trying to get back on.

What I'm saying is that a) 90s-era OP would definitely have been using the interstate and b) if they drove more than 30 minutes off the interstate then they ignored so much data and common sense that it's unlikely tech would have helped them here. (E.g., if you want Iphone directions to L.A. but it gives you Louisiana, you still have to interpret the data the phone is giving you to notice you're not going to the correct destination.)

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#117

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

bilbo0s wrote: post #100
bethekidyouwant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was democracy good? was it was it in the 50s when we were all immune to propaganda?

Isn't the old adage that democracy was never good, it was always just better than all the other forms of government. It got more done. It advanced economies more. Etc etc etc. Then we torched it at just about the same time as the Chinese came along with a new form of government that I'm not sure the world has as yet even given a proper name. (I guess we can call it Communism? But everyone kind of knows that it's noth…

China’s ‘new’ form of government is basically their old form of government with some communist rhetoric sprinkled over it.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#118

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

ajewhere2 wrote: post #49
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #9

> Democracy will flourish. The gap between rich and poor will close. The lion will lie down with the lamb, and the lamb will have a Pentium II. We also have the advantage of hindsight and know, without question, that all of these predicted outcomes were wrong. Not 'directionally wrong' or 'wrong in the details.' Wrong the way it would be wrong to predict that if you set your kitchen on fire, the result will be a reno…

[dead]

If you’re going to throw out childish insults, at least have the guts to write them in full as if your mother wasn’t watching over your shoulder.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#119

Post by Animats »

jancsika wrote: post #99

> Once when driving from Michigan to Florida I got so lost in the middle of the night in Kentucky that I had to pull over to sleep and wait for the sun so I could figure out where I was. Not sure what's going on here, but this reads like 90s cosplay. First off, GPS-guided trips had not yet eroded people's sense of direction because they did not yet exist. Second of all, the (odd-numbered) interstate(s) that flow from…

> In short, OP had an impressive lack of situational awareness/direction and is trying to play it off as a common burden of the olden times. It wasn't.

Right. In the early days of Etak, the company that invented car navigation systems, I got a tour from Stan Honey. Honey remarked that they originally displayed the map with north at the top, and a car arrow that rotated with the direction the vehicle was facing, like a compass. Honey is into sailing, and sailors do not rotate maps as the ship turns. But they discovered that about 10% of the population cannot cope with a map that always has north at the top. So they had to make the map rotate. That became standard in GPS displays.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#120

Post by igor47 »

kortilla wrote: post #79
igor47 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in a democracy, you at least have input! Google is also a coercive force with no real checks on its power, but it doesn't care about anything you have to say. That's the difference, that's it, right there. The answer to abuse of power is not to just unleash raw power, its to subordinate and restrict it. That's what government is for. When you find yourself arguing that power you participate in is bad and shouldn'…

But you don’t have to use Google. That’s the critical difference and why people should be so much more skeptical of using the monopoly on violence to enforce things. Millions of people live in the US and don’t use Google products or pay Google a dime. Try not paying taxes because you don’t want to support the actions of the federal government and see how that works out.

Life without a smartphone increasingly challenging. You have to use either Google or Apple. I use a de googled Android lineage phone but this is always getting harder, as numerous threads on this site will attest. Plus literally every employer I've ever had has used Google services, plus lots of other sites I might have to use implement recaptcha or otherwise invisibly to me share my data or data about me with Google. Also, even if I do figure out a way to stay off Google's radar, they're a powerful force which shapes my world. They hire lobbyists to influence policy which affects me, build data centers which raise my cost of electricity, or sell killer robots to evil people.

I think where people go wrong is treating Google the way they treat their weird neighbor Bob. Bob's damage is limited. Google is an immense, powerful, alien entity, far beyond the control of any person, and with its own inscrutable goals which are the not goals of literally any person alive or dead.

I genuinely don't understand the desire to leave this entity unmoored to wreck what havoc it may.

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