Silicon Valley’s Titans Are Realizing a Lot of People Don’t Like Them

We don't have to move in these directions, but people who work at these companies, people who are paid by these companies, people who are applying to these companies are all choosing to make these decisions and drive us to these outcomes. Every step of the way they have had the chance to say "no". They have had the chance to champion for a different outcome. They have been a piece of a broader machine that they could have collectively grouped together and said that we can be better.

Do not try to wave this away as "well it's capitalism, too bad, so sad". These are real people making these choices, and at the end of the day this is what they've chosen. And, the out come is incredibly sad.

Libertarianism is ultimately rooted in individualism, which I think is a great basis for political understanding. The ability to "exit" and go one's own way is a powerful dynamic, even though it is impractical for most people to do so and impractical for anyone to do so for most things. Personally I can't understand how one can even determine what's right and wrong in this world without the starting point of individualism (eg human rights). But from that starting point, it's critically necessary to go in a positive direction - viewing things from others' perspective and extending them the same freedoms you expect, rather than the domination and hierarchy of short-sighted self interest.

But yes, back to the larger Surveillance Valley culture? My thoughts are summarized right there in that name. Web 2.0 is just today's version of proprietary software, with the "innovations" of telemetry and centralized control. So is every corporate operating system / platform / etc, not wanting to be left out of owning a piece of the dystopia. So is most every product that gets thoroughly marketed to consumers, if not right out of the gate then definitely down the road after some pivots and acquisitions. Digital technology can provide a lot of freedom, but Surveillance Valley has done fuck all to actually get that unrestricted freedom into end users' hands, as there's no profit in doing so. Ultimately the only thing "libertarian" about Surveillance Valley is that same hypocritical dynamic of freedom for me but not for thee.

It remains to be seen if anything worthwhile for non-techies comes out of web 3.0. Cryptocurrency is itself a bust, having been thoroughly colonized by finance douchebags even quicker than web 2.0. Perhaps fungible currencies have long term futures or perhaps not (non-fungible Bitcoin et al certainly do not). Or perhaps there are enough newly minted millionaires that some will actually continue to build solid human-empowered technology and reject the VC playbook of business disruption masquerading as "tech" in name only. Only time will tell.

Although, you might find since times of yore ancient Howard Beale type actual techies have foretold of this dark dystopia and tried their best to prevent it. Their warnings falling on deaf ears.

The enshittening is ushered in by the managerial types, the MBAs, the marketing folks, run of the mill code monkeys and designers in fedoras. The enshitting is ushered in by the eager consumers, the influencers, the professionally outraged, and you.

This is/was the website for hackers. The type who disobey and mock the system for what it is. And lemmings for what they are.