The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism • Hacker News Board

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#241

Post by bentley » Sun, May 10, 2026, 3:09 AM UTC

a_victorp wrote: post #228

nozzlegear wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USian American. Please avoid the childish term "USian" unless you're going to commit to calling people from South Africa "SAian" too.

To be fair, "american" could refer to anything made in the American continent (North, Central and South America)

In some languages, but not really in English. Convention in the cultures of the Anglosphere is that the world comprises seven continents, and the Americas comprise two of them, not one. And in English, both formal and informal, “American” is generally considered the demonym of the United States of America, not the Americas. Although I call myself estadounidense in Spanish (an odd term—why don’t people from Estados Unidos Mexicanos count?), the equivalent English term is “American,” not “United Statesian.”

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#242

Post by chickensong » Sun, May 10, 2026, 3:10 AM UTC

It's a nice rant I guess, but it's mostly just whinging with a focus on the negatives and a vague appeal to regulation. Maybe cyberlibertarianism hasn't manifested in the way of JPB's Declaration, but it was a tall order and most things don't go as planned. Boomer hippies in particular were often unrealistic.

The spirit of the Declaration is still viable however, even if the shape of the implementation is different from the original idea. Humans are far too chaotic to ever find a singular utopia, online or off, but information technology is still a great enabler for everyone.

There's an increasing trend of articles and blog posts like this one, and unfortunately they share a common theme of complaints about big tech with a call for regulation. Naming and shaming bad actors is good, and not all regulation is bad, but you can't regulate everything to make everyone happy, and eventually you end up in an authoritarian dystopia.

Instead of complaining and waiting around for everyone's preferred flavor of regulation to appear, I suggest we instead embrace the spirit of cyberlibertarianism and DIY solutions that work at a smaller scale. The world is a dangerous place, but we've never had better tools to carve out your own niche and develop solutions to the things that matter to you.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#243

Post by Nasrudith » Sun, May 10, 2026, 3:16 AM UTC

nephihaha wrote: post #122

mystraline wrote: post #90

Libertarianism sounded great. Its all about freedom, and the right to do with yourself what you want. And who doesnt want that? But they also wanted that freedom for their property and money. And if youre willing to skirt or plainly violate the laws, you can make bank. And then as a company, you can basically bribe politicians and do all these horrible things. The end result of libertarianism is simple: He who has th…

Is technofeudalism even a thing? Yanis Varoufakis goes on about it (despite being a keen WEF collaborator)... But it seems to me that in mediaeval feudalism that the lords needed the peasants downstream to produce food and military units. In the technocratic system we are heading towards, the lower classes (us) will be needed for labour and military purposes even less, thanks to automation etc. They will have less an…

Technofeudalism always has been a complete inanity of a term, really and worthy of eyerolls that shows no understanding of either tech nor feudalism. You might as well call your relationship your grocery store 'inverted feudalism' because you depended upon them as the vector for food.

Generally anybody conflating corporations with feudalism shows a complete lack of understanding of the latter. Nobility and monarchs hated merchants for one and ruled by force of arms. Being rich didn't make you a king, having an army obeying you did which was what made you rich. But that sort of utterly concussed understanding and rhetoric is woefully common.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#244

Post by flomo » Sun, May 10, 2026, 3:16 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #168

malwrar wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. My point in short is that we seem to reflexively frame right and wrong on an axis defined by copyright, and somehow we’ve lost sight of the fact that the law itself is used much differently than we might otherwise want. Technolibertarians confuse free market capitalism via copyright-enabled businesses as a viable strategy for individual freedom, and we find with time that only bastards win in a competition w…

I think it's more that we see copyright as a necessary evil that can be used to defend our rights, but will be abused by the powerful, regardless. To me, the biggest sin of cyberlibertarianism is the assumption that "cyberspace" is de facto another universe, separate from material reality, that doesn't need to be affected by the mundane and vulgar rules of "meatspace." John Barlow refers to "your governments" as if u…

The whole thing just shows a huge lack of imagination, at least for something which is supposedly a 'founding document'. Barlow's "cyberspace" is for irrelevant shit like furry larping or talking about the latest Deep Space 9. Its not a place where you do banking (or even watch DS9).

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#245

Post by matheusmoreira » Sun, May 10, 2026, 3:19 AM UTC

> This is how "don't tread on me" becomes "Meta should be allowed to do whatever it wants."

> This is how the rights of the lone hacker working in their garage become indistinguishable from the rights of a multinational with a market cap larger than most countries' GDP.

This is the strongest point in the article, in my opinion. The cyberlibertarian ideals make more sense when you look at then from the perspective of the lone hacker. They are fundamentally different from trillion dollar corporations and should not be treated the same way.

> Once the platforms got large enough to be unstoppable, once they captured enough of the regulatory apparatus to write their own rules, the libertarian rhetoric got quietly shelved like a college poster you took down before your in-laws came over.

> Cyberlibertarianism was the ladder. Once they were on the roof, they kicked it away and started charging admission to look at the view.

Agreed. This is a real hypocrisy.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#246

Post by pstuart » Sun, May 10, 2026, 3:21 AM UTC

Lerc wrote: post #225

pstuart wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm using Web3 as an argument against "tech solutions" and named Curtis Yarvin, a figurehead of technofeudalism, as a representative of technofeudalism.

Perhaps I should rephase then. I think Curtis Yarvin(And indeed Davis) are not a representative example of any particular idea. Pathologies perhaps, but while the symptoms of such things have enough similarities to identify them, they do not manifest in a way that can characterise a typical expression of the phenomenon. To do so can be dangerous, and result in management of a set of symptoms rather than the cause. Pu…

I was commenting about "cyberlibertarianism" -- which is actively embraced and promoted by SV technocrats. Yarvin very much is a public figure in this area, but it's not about him specifically, it's the Web3 gang that wants to replace democracy with their shiny toys. Put it on the blockchain, problem solved!

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#247

Post by lovich » Sun, May 10, 2026, 3:22 AM UTC

The title could have dropped the prefix “cyber” and still have been accurate.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#248

Post by bluefirebrand » Sun, May 10, 2026, 3:22 AM 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…

> People were mean to each other on the early Internet, but ... some kind of "but" belongs here. Maybe "but it was surprising, it wasn't what they expected"? "But it wasn't what they thought it was about"?

For me, the "but" is that I would rather have someone be mean to me than have a corporation collecting all of my data and using it to try and advertise at me

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#249

Post by flomo » Sun, May 10, 2026, 3:22 AM UTC

scuff3d wrote: post #177

armchairhacker wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples of bad comments and how do they contradict the article?

Three out of four of the top comments don't even directly engage with the point of the article. They're focusing on nitpicking elements of it or just going off on a tangent only somewhat related.

Karmawhore strategy. F5 on /new. Scan the article and then race to object to some minor sentence. Upvotes mean you are a smart lil guy. Happens frequently.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#250

Post by saghm » Sun, May 10, 2026, 3:24 AM UTC

schoen wrote: post #226

vrganj wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see this playing out right now, with X spreading holocaust denial and all sorts of corrosive messages in Europe, with it's owner being actively hostile to European institutions and the US government actively guarding it from consequences.

Which part of my comment do you relate this to?

Usage of the internet to sow dissent among citizens of a government by a power that's at odds with said government, presumably