Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 82 posts

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#71

Post by Dracophoenix »

hkt wrote: post #22
developer93 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg didn't force anyone to join Facebook, this was all voluntary, we did it to ourselves

FOMO and network effects are a powerful coupling though. And the social media companies have worked hard to ensure they're very hard to quit, too.

Society as whole, interest groups, governments, banks, retailers and their discounts, forums, HN, itself relies on FOMO and network effects. The only thing making it hard to quit is that value provided by FB as a address book to the individuals who use it is worth the trouble it causes. That's just economics. There's always a choice.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#72

Post by Dracophoenix »

freeflight wrote: post #17
fouc wrote: post #5

It's a sad reminder of the optimism for the power of the internet we had in the 90's. This sort of reality only becomes true if we all use cryptographic measures all the time perhaps.

> This sort of reality only becomes true if we all use cryptographic measures all the time perhaps. Not necessarily, I can imagine a post-privacy scenario were absolute transparency turns private information commercially worthless by making it a good readily and freely accessible to everybody. I admit it would be a rather radical paradigm change and difficult to actually implement but actually fits perfectly fine wit…

"[All] information should be free" is Zuckerberg's view in its entirety. But even if privacy was no longer an important value how that information is collected is still going to be important distinguishing factor. Information is not and cannot be monopolized. Facebook does not have special powers to extract information directly from individuals. Facebook's "monopoly", if that's what you want to call it, is in employing the best statisticians and data scientists to draw abstractions and correlations to pack and sell to advertisers. It's not about the data taken, but the metadata that's created and the secondary and tertiary observations about your life that can worked back from what you do on the website or any website with a Facebook Pixel.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#73

Post by nickelcitymario »

gonehome wrote: post #65
nickelcitymario wrote: post #63

In some ways, we got this future. We wanted total freedom. We got total freedom. "No we don't! What about Facebook and Google and and an..." ...listen: Freedom means the ability to choose NOT to be free. (This is the challenge that faces anarchists: How do you enforce freedom? It's a contradiction in terms. I say this as someone who would desperately like to be wrong about this, but in all my years I've yet to see an…

I mostly agree, but many of these choices are constrained by problems. We use gmail (or fastmail) because of the spam problem and your own email server getting blacklisted. Also the complexity and know-how necessary to be a linux admin. Many use FB (or other centralized social media) now because of network effects, but also because of how easy they are to use. Things don't have to be this way - in theory you can have…

I agree with everything you said.

Only two comments:

(1) I only want to emphasize that at every stage, we had choices. Network effects are powerful, perhaps even irresistible, but still subject to free choice.

(2) Spam and blacklists... that's a tougher thing. But there are plenty of options (like fastmail, I think) that never violated anyone's privacy. Most of us still use gmail.

I should clarify, because I kinda took the coward's way out with all the "we" stuff: I use Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and even use an iPhone and MacBook despite all the limitations and lack of freedoms that come with every single one of them. I choose them freely, which says a lot about how much I think I value freedom versus how much I actually do in practice.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#74

Post by nickelcitymario »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #66
nickelcitymario wrote: post #63

In some ways, we got this future. We wanted total freedom. We got total freedom. "No we don't! What about Facebook and Google and and an..." ...listen: Freedom means the ability to choose NOT to be free. (This is the challenge that faces anarchists: How do you enforce freedom? It's a contradiction in terms. I say this as someone who would desperately like to be wrong about this, but in all my years I've yet to see an…

I completely agree with your assessment. Everyone from the 1990s to the 2010s chose their poison and the strings that came attached. I myself will even admit to it as I seek to correct my own course. However, a dangerous trend (likely one that's always existed but is now rearing its ugly head) is the imposition of multiple, contradictory views from cultures, governments, interest groups onto those who don't wish to b…

There's literally nothing stopping us from using them again. Usenet is still a thing. Forum software still exists and continues to be maintained. I never used BBS, but I can't see why it can't be brought back.

The problem is that dreaded network effect. We can choose differently, but if all your friends choose the walled garden, you're left out in the cold. No one's forcing you to do anything, but it sure gets lonely, doesn't it? So we follow the crowd.

But we can start the exodus any time we want, and maybe others will follow. Maybe when enough of us do so, we'll reach a tipping point and the network effects can work to our benefit.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#75

Post by gonehome »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #73
gonehome wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree, but many of these choices are constrained by problems. We use gmail (or fastmail) because of the spam problem and your own email server getting blacklisted. Also the complexity and know-how necessary to be a linux admin. Many use FB (or other centralized social media) now because of network effects, but also because of how easy they are to use. Things don't have to be this way - in theory you can have…

I agree with everything you said. Only two comments: (1) I only want to emphasize that at every stage, we had choices. Network effects are powerful, perhaps even irresistible, but still subject to free choice. (2) Spam and blacklists... that's a tougher thing. But there are plenty of options (like fastmail, I think) that never violated anyone's privacy. Most of us still use gmail. I should clarify, because I kinda to…

Even fastmail is still using a centralized service.

I use fastmail (with my own domain) and hardest part about the switch from gmail was going through all the crappy website account flows to change email (some of which are impossible).

I dropped FB last year after painstakingly deleting every post/like/photo, but I still use twitter (though I do delete old stuff after a retention period around 1yr - this is easy to do for tweets, but hard to do for likes so I stopped liking stuff).

I think Amazon is really great and still use them, same for Netflix. YouTube I use because there's no real alternative, but I pay for premium to at least avoid ads (though can't avoid the tracking).

Apple hardware is arguably the best available option for aligned incentives/privacy. In theory you could throw ubuntu on a thinkpad (I did this for college years among others like Arch), but the experience is bad and the security is likely worse.

I play around with Urbit and it's surprisingly usable - it also feels like old school internet from when I was young. Strangers hanging out on forums or chat and enjoying the shared experience of being online. The nature of people interested in Urbit brings some of that back.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#76

Post by enriquto »

chip-8 wrote: post #25
belorn wrote: post #15

A common hope back then was that we would enter a new world by giving every child access to every book every written, with technology and knowledge being the gateway to a better future. The censorship of knowledge and culture would be forever be broken. In 2004 there was en excellent talk by Eben Moglen on the subject called "Die Gedanken Sind Frei". It focused heavily on the struggle for freedom of thought. The talk…

I remember that hope for a future where all knowledge would be available at the click of a button, where the internet would be used to enlighten and enrich ordinary people. The internet of today is truly tragic in contrast. A future where all human knowledge is at one’s fingertips is still a possibility. The problem is that our society is based on the profit motive. This means corporations will subsume everything the…

> the internet would be used to enlighten and enrich ordinary people. The internet of today is truly tragic in contrast.

Are you sure? There's certainly lots of "tragic" stuff in the internet today. But I don't think that, even in their wildest dreams, the first users of the internet who hoped for a fantastic future could fathom the current enormity of sci-hub, library genesis and wikipedia.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#77

Post by rayiner »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #68
rayiner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never a cyber anarchist—I always thought the Internet should be more like the open road of the 1950s than the Wild West of the 1850s. More Democratic libertarian than anarchist. I never imagined it would devolve into basically the feudalism of the 1350s, with dueling warlords not answerable to either the serfs or to any government.

No one is a serf on the internet. You can always choose another website. For all the problems Facebook has, hoarding the secret sauce building the world's largest phone book isn't one of them. After all isn't the point being of being free, whether in life or one the internet, having to answer to no one?

Likewise in the Middle Ages you were always free to go off into the forest and fend for yourself.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#78

Post by Dracophoenix »

rayiner wrote: post #77
Dracophoenix wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is a serf on the internet. You can always choose another website. For all the problems Facebook has, hoarding the secret sauce building the world's largest phone book isn't one of them. After all isn't the point being of being free, whether in life or one the internet, having to answer to no one?

Likewise in the Middle Ages you were always free to go off into the forest and fend for yourself.

You're also free to voluntarily associate with individuals who share your views and do so on your own terms. Something made more prevalent thanks to personal freedom. On the Internet, there's no limit to the ways and choices one can make to achieve that. There's no bind on your legs or whip to your back. That can't really be said for the serfs of the Middle Ages.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#79

Post by mango7283 »

toyg wrote: post #43
bobcostas55 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All human knowledge _is_ at one's fingertips. Virtually all books are available through gutenberg or libgen. The vast majority of academic research through sci-hub. The truth is that people are simply not interested.

And some people are simply overwhelmed. In many ways, it was easier to follow cultural development when it was more limited in scope and availability: "this month you'll read this book, listen to this album, watch this movie, and that's it." If you wanted more, you had to work for it, or even travel. Now there are millions of choices to be made every single day, all at one's fingertips, and it's just so much. Should…

Reflecting on the past I think there was something of a benefit to the limitations imposed by scarcity - in childhood the limitations on what books, games, toys and tv I could find forced me to explore topics and genres I would ignore today, and in my young adulthood there was still something magical about traveling specifically to go hunting for .

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#80

Post by toyg »

mango7283 wrote: post #79
toyg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And some people are simply overwhelmed. In many ways, it was easier to follow cultural development when it was more limited in scope and availability: "this month you'll read this book, listen to this album, watch this movie, and that's it." If you wanted more, you had to work for it, or even travel. Now there are millions of choices to be made every single day, all at one's fingertips, and it's just so much. Should…

Reflecting on the past I think there was something of a benefit to the limitations imposed by scarcity - in childhood the limitations on what books, games, toys and tv I could find forced me to explore topics and genres I would ignore today, and in my young adulthood there was still something magical about traveling specifically to go hunting for .

There were definitely some advanced dynamics that are now very hard to replicate. Some of the businesses that have been wiped out (the record store, the book store, the blockbuster joint...) often acted as cultural nexus in very distinctive ways that websites don't really replicate.
Post reply on HN