Question is, how do we get ourselves out of this tar pit?
I feel like it might be impossible. The people agree with the tar pit makers.
Pass a mass surveillance law, 10% will be outraged, 80% will say "Well I don't have anything to hide. Oh well."
Pass a censorship law targeting legal but unpopular/controversial material. 10% outraged, 80% say "Good, I never liked it anyway."
Pass a preemptive policing law, 10% outraged, 80% claim "If it makes me safer, I like it. I'm not a criminal after all, I don't have anything to fear."
Pass a law that codifies your nation's most popular religion as something to be promoted and enforced. 10% outraged, 80% cheer it on, because it agrees with their views.
The 80% is illustrative here, but it seems like the people who agree with the above statements are a very solid and overwhelming majority. So why it did take us so much time to creep up to deliberate censorship and surveillance? As someone who was born in the 21st century, the freedom to access and do things on the internet had only ever been on the downhill, any small wins are overwritten by inevitable losses that make things more controlled, more 'safe'.
Generally the more democratic a country is, the less hostile the government is against the people, from my observations.
If you decentralise, any damage will be localised and would affect fewer people.
I think having a mostly crippled central government is probably the most realistic alternative but you can see how that is taken advantage of in the US and how it fosters unnecessary discord between people whose interests are generally aligned.
A part of the problem today is that there are massive autocratic powers that have the resources, means and channels to influence any democratic powers. Decentralization in this case means less unity in opinion, and more opportunity for foreign influence.
I dont see a way out of this, because essentially as a decentralized democracy, you are playing with your hands open to the whole world, and trusting that your decentralized people will filter out the noise/influence and make rational choices when they are open to any foreign influence.
This is why we are seeing EU go more authoritarian. There is (rightfully so given the average technological literacy), no trust in that the individual will be able to see through foreign influence. Control of the individual is the only short-term solution.
I believe Switzerland is prospering because the citizens are in charge of their nation, not a select few belonging to the political class and well connected wealthy individuals.
Simple:
A Cypherpunk's Manifesto
by Eric Hughes
written 9 March 1993
All of those things are pushed by people right now. Maybe the scale isn't right, maybe the effort needs you as well.
We, the technological community, have failed the wider public by not creating decentralized alternatives that are as good as centralized ones.
Chat Control shouldn't even be an issue, we should just be able to laugh it away.
Is anyone concerned about Mastodon being banned? No right because it would be almost impossible to implement. Yet it is possible for WhatsApp/Telegram(yuck)/Signal. Even the tech darling Signal is centralized as fuck.
https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/signal-faci...
This. Signal is actively fighting against decentralization, which makes me suspicious. Their arguments were debunked by the Matrix team, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21936929
Indeed. At the parent page of https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html (https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/), you can read:
"if you want to write code, go to OpenPrivacy.org":
> https://www.openprivacy.org/
This website perhaps gives you some inspirations.
Among all candidates, it seems the least likely here. It didn't even happen at the same speed the internet grew.
(The issues with monopolized editorial powers are still valid, it's just this one that I think is wrong.)
Overwork, lack of space, lack of transportation.
I imagine people blames the internet for lack of interest (as in "social networks are a dopamine machine"). But IMO it's absurd to jump into a lack of interest when the physical means for people to get together are destroyed.
Boom-bust cycles, including environmental ones don't do anything to harm capitalism. Rather, they just make it stronger. AI systems have locked in existing power structures forever and guarantee that we will technologically advance fast enough to solve for or at least adapt to climate change.
I'd argue that the whole climate movement for the last 20 years stymed and significantly harmed the left as a result. The anti-nuclear and some anti-vax positions taken by parts of the green left in particular were anti-scientific and have cost that portion of the party the support of many scientist types.
Scare porn about what will happen if you don't de-develop society and reduce your CO2 footprint just makes folks want to eat even more burgers. Same reason why the majority of non cyclists hate cyclists.
It's the same thing when you show a ton of kids how a chicken nugget is made. They all go "eww" for a moment, then you ask them "who wants chicken nuggets?" and literally every hand goes up[1] . We want our slop. We don't care that it's slop, and these days, emotions of cruelty, subjugation, and schadenfreude are political dominant and in the zeitgeist.
I’m with you that cruelty and domination is winning right now, and that a sizable fraction of people are fundamentally evil and an even more sizable fraction basically don’t care. I still eat meat and acknowledge that it’s immoral to do so.
Just think that whatever happens after climate catastrophe / the water wars will likely be worse but it feels natural that it will at least be a different type of worse. I don’t see the global internet as being extremely relevant then.
Idk, as an individual there’s nothing much I can do and arguing here won’t help anything so I guess agree to disagree.