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The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

matduggan.com

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Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#361

Post by mindslight »

js8 wrote: post #151
mindslight wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please keep going? Maybe I'm just old, tired, and have other responsibilities, but things are feeling pretty bleak these days. Google is back to pushing remote attestation (ie WEI), Apple has already had it for quite some time. "AI" is a great Schelling point excuse for capital structures to collude rather than compete, whether it's demanding identification / "system integrity" (aka computational disenfranc…

In many countries, people have already won a similar fight with printing press, press censorship and encryption. I think there is a reason for optimism (of the will). If AI can code, and empower individuals to do it on a local device, it is already smart enough to educate masses on the matters of their self-interest, such as freedom and solidarity. I don't think the powers will be able to gatekeep it. There might be…

> If AI can code, and empower individuals to do it on a local device, it is already smart enough to educate masses on the matters of their self-interest, such as freedom and solidarity.

oof. I do not see that this follows, at all. For starters, describing "AI" as "smart" is falling into the trap of anthropomorphization. But the core dynamic of LLMs I see is a reflection of context - both training and the data sources that are presented, but also the questions you ask. On its own it's not going to lead someone to ask about self-empowering approaches to problems or freedom in general.

So sure, genAI seems to be greatly helping my own locally-hosted infrastructure approaches (it changes projects from needing a clear head over the course of a day or two, to something I casually push forward on for an hour or two at night). But I don't see that there is a huge pent up demand of people determined to do homeprod/homeautomation/etc projects but unable to find the time.

Also keep in mind we're not even near the enshittification stage of "AI" yet. Existing businesses are enshittifying using genAI, yes. But that's much different from when the genAI providers themselves start trying to extract wealth.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#362

Post by sucrosesucrose »

js8 wrote: post #151
mindslight wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please keep going? Maybe I'm just old, tired, and have other responsibilities, but things are feeling pretty bleak these days. Google is back to pushing remote attestation (ie WEI), Apple has already had it for quite some time. "AI" is a great Schelling point excuse for capital structures to collude rather than compete, whether it's demanding identification / "system integrity" (aka computational disenfranc…

In many countries, people have already won a similar fight with printing press, press censorship and encryption. I think there is a reason for optimism (of the will). If AI can code, and empower individuals to do it on a local device, it is already smart enough to educate masses on the matters of their self-interest, such as freedom and solidarity. I don't think the powers will be able to gatekeep it. There might be…

You are severy underestimating the stupidity of the masses.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#363

Post by patrec »

expedition32 wrote: post #346
patrec wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course the reason that there is a lot VC capital in Europe has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you'd be crazy to do a startup in e.g. Denmark (because doing so will likely be personally ruinous even in the unlikely case that you get some traction, due to unrealized gains tax) or to directly invest in one in e.g. Germany (where you'd be expected to physically sit through, on location, a few hours of…

Europeans are aware of this but they do not want to engage in a race to the bottom. Socialism was a conscious political decision in response to the oligarchy. It is incomprehensible to Americans but not everyone wants to be like them. It would actually be a capitulation.

The policies I mentioned (just as nepo-baby Mamdani's programs to abolish programs for gifted children) have, of course, precisely and deliberately the effect of cementing an existing parasitic elite and screwing over talented and hardworking people from a non-privileged background.

Which part of this do you fail to understand? Who do you think will be more inconvenienced by the removal of gifted programs, some intellectual mediocrity who goes to a $70'000/year private school anyway, or a smart child from a family with a yearly total income that's a fraction of that schooling cost? Who do you think is going to be more likely to find themselves financially ruined by being hit with enormous taxes on illiquid assets (such as equity in a pre-IPO startup they founded or where an early employee in) -- someone entirely self-made or your "oligarch"?

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#364

Post by AnthonyMouse »

TFNA wrote: post #336
dgellow wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would fall apart if their real names were shown I don’t think that’s true, unfortunately. You have lots of cases of major propaganda accounts found to be foreign actors and pretty much nothing happened to them

I am talking about the psychological effect, not the accounts being banned. Accounts pretending to be e.g. bona-fide Red State MAGA Americans are not going to successfully manipulate the American populace or move MAGA merchandise if the name "Ramesh Sharma" or "Goodluck Ngozi" or whatever is shown on every one of the account's posts.

Wouldn't "Ramesh Sharma" just file a name change form with the government and hence be known as "John Smith" when they create their account?

And even that is assuming they need the same person to be writing the posts as lending their name. They could also pay a homeless person or food service worker in Kentucky to sign up for the account and still have a troll farm in another country writing the posts.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#365

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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.

How is that supposed to work? The average person is not going to read 1000000 separate posts. They want someone to go on Reddit and see that 10 of the 13 replies to a post about their subject are favorable. They don't need 1000000 accounts for that, they need 10, and getting 10 IDs is elementary for anyone with a corporate or government budget.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#366

Post by bentley »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #233
yw3410 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I think you're lucky; I live in a major city (London) and can attest that there are parking spaces where the kiosk and booths are gone and the app the only way to pay.

Interesting. Perhaps it's a European thing?

I encountered it at Pearl Harbor.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#367

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dgellow wrote: post #307
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.

The astroturfing relies mostly on anonymous users. The vast majority of trolling and shilling on Twitter and similar platforms is done with fake identities. So you have a few open shills who are using their real names, with massive campaigns enabled by anonymous/fake users

What part of that requires anonymity? You pay some broke college students or unemployed dog washers to shill (or let someone else shill) for the big accounts under their name.

There is not only a massive supply of such people, they have high turnover as the seniors graduate but the new freshmen are broke again and the unemployment rate is fairly stable but the specific people distressed enough to sign their name for a buck are constantly in flux, so it doesn't even matter if they get banned.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#368

Post by chairmansteve »

AlexandrB wrote: post #113
bluegatty wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

If there was a way to support smaller artists outside of spotify, that would be great.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#369

Post by lovich »

_0ffh wrote: post #351
lovich wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The corporation (that runs internally as a planned economy) will get more and more inefficient the larger it gets, because that is what planning an economy does. Which in turn means it will loose market share and be forced to lean up until it is competitive again.

Or it just uses its power to influence government regulations and suppress or buy out competition.

Like what one of the current crop of mega corps has an internal market for how its capital is allocated. The closest example I could think of in history was IBM and its blue dollars.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#370

Post by Anamon »

chairmansteve wrote: post #368
AlexandrB wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

If there was a way to support smaller artists outside of spotify, that would be great.

There's Bandcamp. I'm sure it's more difficult the more mainstream music is, but in my areas of interest, I'd estimate that at least 80% is available from Bandcamp. And for those who really want to optimise on where their money goes, you can save you cart for Bandcamp Friday where the store forgoes its cut (if I understood it correctly).
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