AlexMar 22

_Cyberlibertarianism_ by David Golumbia pulls no punches. SOPA/PIPA opponents compared to:

* The National Rifle Association
* Anti-Obamacare activists (“death panels” hysteria in particular)
* Front groups for big business (EFF and Fight for the Future and Google, Facebook, et al.
respectively)

Well at least they made sure Google/Alphabet could keep posting whatever they wanted on YouTube, something that has had no negative effects whatsoever…

Show threadAlexMar 22
Wikipedia is pretty obviously a highly centralized and hierarchical project despite all the decentralized branding that people parrot about it
Show threadAlexMar 23
The EFF portrays the “entertainment industry” as a behemoth when in fact it’s a fraction of the size of any of the Big Tech firms. It also sees, uh, “getting paid for your work” as opposed to freedom (?). Like, optical media (once the bread and butter of Hollywood alongside cinemas and cable) is only a ~$1 billion industry.
Show threadAlexMar 24
The #MIT Media Lab, which launders insane #AI propaganda into respectable-sounding jargon, also fancies itself an authority on “ethics,” which nevertheless didn’t stop it from continuing to accept money from Jeffrey Epstein after he’d been convicted and disqualified from the university’s database. #books #bookstodan #bookstoread #book
Show threadAlexMar 28
Golumbia talks about how the mantra of “‘free’ as in ‘free speech’,” not as in ‘free beer’” actually doesn’t make sense, because the free software movement has little in common with free-speech advocacy…but everyone just takes them at their word lol.
Show threadAlexMar 31
Whenever you hear about “the market” or market forces,” you should assume the person is A) talking about some kind of computer and B) promoting ignorance—after all, why trust yourself or another person when you can just appeal to a nebulous “market” and what it “wants”? This mentality also explains why YIMBYism (which is obsessed with “market-clearing” rates and an Econ 101 view of the world) is so appealing to the tech world, and how LLMs are seen as oracles #books #bookstodon #book #bookstodon
Show threadAlexMar 31
“The reliably derisive Mike Masnick of the nominally independent blog _TechDirt_…[and its] voluminous and typically cyberlibertarian comment boards,” god I’ve waited so long for someone to say something like this. Masnick once called an attempt to get Snapchat in trouble for drug trafficking that results in kids dying “dumb” #books #book #Bookstodon #bookstadon
Show threadAlexMar 31
Section 230, which often consumes Bluesky for days on end, is a right-wing provision mostly defended by computer babies with no expertise in any other field #books #book #bookstodon #bookstadon
Show threadAlexMar 31
Section 230 defense basically boils down to “Cambridge Analytica was good, actually, and we should make sure it happens again” (Also love the mocking of the EFF as a “civil rights” group) #book #books #bookstodon #bookstadon
Show threadAlexMar 31

Things that people think are vital bulwarks of liberals democracy but actually aren’t:

* Section 230
* U.S. Dollar hegemony
* Unbreakable encryption

Things that people dismiss but which are actually vital bulwarks of liberal democracy:

* censorship and de-platforming
* Luddism (as in, actual critique of technology)
* copyright

Show threadAlexApr 1
So glad Mike Masnick has berated people over Section 230 so that Grindr scammers can continue to make people fear for their lives. Great job Mike 🙄 #book #books #bookstodan #bookstodon
Show threadAlexApr 1
Way too many liberals who should know better spend all day correctly railing against Big Tech as the destructors of democracy but then acting like repealing Section 230 (something that other countries do just fine without and which disproportionately benefits Meta and Alphabet in the US specifically) would be intolerable. It’s absurd. #book #books #bookstodon #bookstodan
Show threadAlexApr 3
You can’t understand the current political moment without understanding that a lot of nominally left-wing people and causes have been enlisted in the defense of extremely reactionary projects. Here’s the head of Fight For the Future, who today was ranting against age verification laws, saying we shouldn’t tax cryptocurrency because that’d be “surveillance capitalism” (my eyes are rolling back so far in my head that I just advanced two balls in a 9-ball game) #book #books #bookstoread #bookstodon
Show threadAlexApr 3
Mike Masnick is terrible part 2,564 #book #books #bookstoread #bookstodon
Show threadAlexApr 6
One reason people obsessively compare digital technology to the printing press (think Jeff Jarvis, Clay Shirkey, et al.) is that unlike radio, TV, or film, the invention of movable type is far enough back in history that its creation can be framed as a story of successful and broadly beneficial deregulation…which it’s wasn’t, but you can’t apply the same framing to e.g. radio, which was obviously deregulated thanks to dark money. #book #books #bookstoread #bookstadon #Bookstodon
Show threadAlexApr 12
The world before the printing press is hard to imagine; by comparison, the world on the eve of the internet is tame, awash in the familiar types of information (audio, video, and, yes, print itself) for which the internet merely became a new vessel. It was a revolution of degree, not type (pun intended). #book #books #BooksToRead #bookstodon
Show threadAlexApr 17
Jeff Jarvis, Clay Shirkey, and Clayton Christensen (to name just three) are ultimately nihilists: They gushingly compare the internet to the printing press only because they see the creation of each as a “disruptive” event—they couldn’t care less about human flourishing, let alone about what made print so special (and the allure endures enough that they have the nerve to write books talking about how books and book culture suck). #book #books #booksToRead #BookQuoteWednesday #bookstodon
Show threadAlexApr 19

> Free software is designed to offer no impediment to commercial usage of its products and in general gives away both the products and the labor associated with them to corporations.

This is a great argument, esp. the labor part; far from leading to utopia, free software has in practice empowered Big Tech precisely because it costs nothing, despite the endless pedantic arguments about “free as in speech, not beer” (turns out it’s the beer part that matters) #book #books #Bookstodon #booklover

Show threadAlexApr 19
The incivility and reply-guyness of #Reddit in particular and of message boards in general aren’t just irritating—they’re also anti-democratic, in that they discourage the respectful debate that we know for a fact was necessary for the creation and maintenance of constitutional government. They’re consequences of the anything-goes libertarian ethos that underpins the internet as currently constituted. #book #booklover #books #BooksToRead #Bookstodon
Show threadAlexApr 20
Golumbia hits a grand fucking slam here: Mike Masnick and other self-absorbed, nominally “leftist” online activists loathe DRM, even tho 1) it’s the exact type of narrow technical fix (rather than a political or social one) that they champion in other contexts and 2) they love encryption of their own communications and files. Also, Richard Stallman-esque opposition to DRM is intellectually incoherent. #book #books #booksToRead #booklover #bookstodan
Show threadAlexApr 20
The Internet Archive has utter contempt for authors and libraries. A great test for any nominal online “leftist” is whether they were filled with seething rage at Chuck Wendig—an outspokenly leftist author who opposed the IA’s illegal lending scheme—rather than at the various libertarians like Brewster Kahle who run the IA. #book #books #libraries #bookrecommendations #booksToRead #booklover #bookstodon
Show threadAlexMay 2
Whenever someone talks about “democratizing” something (journalism, encyclopedia, fucking writing itself) they’re almost always taking an anti-democratic stance. Wonder how Musk and RFK Jr.—guys with no expertise in _anything_—became so powerful? Just look at the contempt the Wikipedians and François Chollets of the world have for actual experts and how these reactionary attitudes are easily adopted by those on the “left” #books #BooksToRead #BookReview #BookCommunity #BookLover #BooksAndAuthors
Show threadAlexMay 28
Most rhetoric about a “free and open internet” rings hollow because it’s ultimately about the freedom of _things_ rather than of people. Such rhetoric is incoherent whether it comes from the likes of Meta (which profits from proprietary tech that mines data from “free and open” sharing) or the Internet Archive (which often makes things “free and open” against people’s consent). #books #book #Bookstodon #bookCollection #booksToRead #BookLover #BookCommunity
Show threadAlexMay 30
Incredible, incendiary passage (and a good illustration of why this #book isn’t more popular): Golumbia shows how an affinity for pseudoscientific sorting and categorization—supported by digital technologies—links Julian Assange, JK Rowling, and cypherpunks together in the fascist project #books #booksToRead #bookLover #BookCommunity #bookstadon #bookstodon
Show threadAlexMay 31
Omg he says exactly what I’ve thought about how weird it is that Sam Harris is an “AGI is imminent, my friends” huckster while pretending to be stridently anti-religion. Also embarsssing how every “rational” guy wants to preemptively acknowledge their own god 🙄 #books #bookstodon #book #booksToRead #BookLover #BookCommunity https://mastodon.social/@eARCwelder/114506422078693111
Show threadAlex
Finally finished. Even the epilogue—which says that no “don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Luddite or anything lol” disclaimer will be forthcoming—is delightfully contrarian. What a huge loss his (David Golumbia’s) death was, he had so much to say and his perspective is underrepresented in tech commentary.
Jun 1 at 1:54amMona for iPhone