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The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

matduggan.com

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Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#291

Post by vga1 »

txrx0000 wrote: post #230
lampiaio wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mar…

I will add, for those that lost the plot: the goal was, and still is, to build a world where anyone can communicate with anyone else without exposing their physical identity and location, and therefore people cannot be physically persecuted for what they think and say. We're far from achieving this goal, and we underestimated our opponents by a lot. But it would be foolish to blame the Barlows of the world instead of…

It was probably a bad goal anyway. Anonymity turned out to be a great tool for fascists, and privacy is not going to save anyone if the fascist shit properly hits the fan.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#292

Post by [deleted] »

vga1 wrote: post #290
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shills don't need anonymity. They can troll and astroturf just fine under their real names, or the names of the people they're paying to shill for them, because there is no one who comes in the night to put a bag over your head for shilling for the establishment. The people who need anonymity are the people who would be punished for saying things people in power don't like.

With anonymity, they can 1000000x their presence and thus the effectiviness of their message.

[deleted]

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#293

Post by vga1 »

harimau777 wrote: post #76
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…

That would be great if any of it worked. However, we tried that and now find ourselves living (I use that term loosely) in a capitalist hellscape.

We do?

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#294

Post by trhway »

vga1 wrote: post #291
txrx0000 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will add, for those that lost the plot: the goal was, and still is, to build a world where anyone can communicate with anyone else without exposing their physical identity and location, and therefore people cannot be physically persecuted for what they think and say. We're far from achieving this goal, and we underestimated our opponents by a lot. But it would be foolish to blame the Barlows of the world instead of…

It was probably a bad goal anyway. Anonymity turned out to be a great tool for fascists, and privacy is not going to save anyone if the fascist shit properly hits the fan.

The opposing voices is what stops fascism. Without anonymity there are no opposing voices.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#295

Post by vga1 »

trhway wrote: post #294
vga1 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was probably a bad goal anyway. Anonymity turned out to be a great tool for fascists, and privacy is not going to save anyone if the fascist shit properly hits the fan.

The opposing voices is what stops fascism. Without anonymity there are no opposing voices.

My point is that once we reach fascism, the opposing voices stop mattering. I think it's naive to think that anything happening in the digital world can properly fight that.

And since technological anonymity and privacy are clearly moving us towards fascism, it's not a net good anymore.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#296

Post by trhway »

vga1 wrote: post #295
trhway wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposing voices is what stops fascism. Without anonymity there are no opposing voices.

My point is that once we reach fascism, the opposing voices stop mattering. I think it's naive to think that anything happening in the digital world can properly fight that. And since technological anonymity and privacy are clearly moving us towards fascism, it's not a net good anymore.

>technological anonymity and privacy are clearly moving us towards fascism

looks like we're talking different fascisms.

I don't want to offend you, it is just that your phrase is like straight from "1984" (or from Russia today) - "war is peace" and the likes.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#297

Post by jongjong »

Any human movement at scale is bound to become corrupt really quickly. I say that as someone who was both de-banked and de-cryptoed for noticing the corruption and doing everything by the book.

My belief is that any centralized, collective attempt to fix anything related to politics will only ever create more problems.

The only thing that works is chaos. We should embrace chaos and disobedience.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#298

Post by stkdump »

nozzlegear wrote: post #210
pocksuppet wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU seems to have a different take. As I understand it, regulations are much more malleable in Europe. When problems arise, regulations are put in place. When regulations are problems... it takes a lot longer to remove them, but can still happen eventually. Nothing like the USian deadlock system. And when they do write them, it's always about general principles. The GDPR doesn't speak of cookie consent banners, in…

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

Who are you to make rules for others to follow?

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#299

Post by cycomanic »

lampiaio wrote: post #51
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 mar…

> 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.

I think you're completely ignoring the premise of the articles argument (as I understand it). The failure of the declaration was a feature not a flaw. In otherw words it was never about the freedom of the individual but the freedom of large corporations.

In the end governments (even totalitarian ones in a limited sense), are vehicles of the people. Unregulated spaces will favor the person with the most resources and thus lead to more concentration of power. It's essentially a information centric continuation of Reaganomics. The article argues that this could have been (and was, e.g. by Winner) anticipated in the 90s, and that in fact this was the intention of Barlow and co.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#300

Post by omnimus »

lovich wrote: post #266
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 hadn’t heard of Barlow or these articles prior to this post but after reading them all I am left with the same question I have for every libertarian, cyber or otherwise. When the corporation that runs as a planned economy with only a few unaccountable leaders at the top has as much power as any other existing government, what makes them any different in terms of morality or “goodness”? I have never gotten a coheren…

To me it seems that in the end main measure is how deep/powerful are hierarchies in a system. How much power has one individual over the other.

Many libertarians and liberals believe that it's the freedoms one has that make system anti hierarchical.

But as you point out when you have absolute freedom in market based society then you eventually end up with intensely deep hierarchies.

In other words you are free to do everything but there is no guarantee you can do anything - even the most basic things like get food or shelter. And most end up with the short side of the stick.

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