Or… acknowledge this is a fear of a future 30, 40, 50 years away that may never happen, which is never an argument.
It’s like saying the government, because they have power, and the SCOTUS, because they have power, could decide to kill all children. Yes, they could. No, it’s absurd to let that power keep you up at night, or say the solution is to abolish their power.
Ha! Let me know how to achieve that and I will. I’ve advocated, donated, and volunteered for years on behalf of a number of causes, some with excellent organizations promoting them, and yet things continue to get worse. The only minor victories have been temporary delays of bad policy.
No, the best response for the average citizen is stubborn noncompliance and constant passive resistance. Drag your feet until the whole thing comes crashing down. And encourage your friends to do it too! (But don’t stop trying through conventional politics, maybe one day it will work. Just don’t get your hopes up.)
You can’t pass a law; because you have almost no bad examples to point to. Emulators, something that happened on the other side of the world, and piracy aren’t arguments.
The banning of Parler did more for activism and awareness regarding platform control than all FOSDEM. Of course, HN happily piled on in favor of this decision, missing the moment to build common ground on platform control, for the sake of political expediency.
If the government, or tech, starts regulating out things people actually care about, then you’ll have your sway. The rush to technical solutions seems to imply we already internally agree tech and government aren’t going to do anything the average person cares about - as it assumes the “bad future” can happen without a national policy discussion anywhere.
It may be across an ocean, but Europe isn’t exactly the other side of the world geographically or culturally. Many of the ideas being trialed there are working their way into parts of the US. The frog is being boiled slowly, but the heat is rising more quickly in big cities.
> HN happily piled on in favor of this decision
HN is not a monolith with a single opinion. The loudest users at the time (not just here, all over the internet) were pro-censorship political activists, so maybe that caused you to interpret things that way.
> If the government, or tech, starts regulating out things people actually care about, then you’ll have your sway.
The public will not respond until the groundwork has been laid to make effective protest impossible. Only then will important things be regulated out. Until then it will just be “nerd stuff”.
This is a lazy argument, as I can safely say that 80% or more of HN has the same political bent, and every community ever has said “but not everyone.”
Read the comments on the Parler deplatforming. See what was upvoted. See what the consensus was. Nobody cares about the principles, even here, when rubber hits the road.
Imagine if the undesirables, on either side, started actively using all the decentralized censorship-resist tech for their cause. Would the builders and commentators here be saying “working as designed,” or would there be a sense of fury, a sense of “not like that?” A sense of “that was supposed to enable my cause, not yours?”
Suppose Proud Boys coordinated their Jan 6 activities on Signal and Tor. Suppose Truth Social was built on ActivityPub and MAGA developers were the loudest voices at FOSDEM advocating for censorship-resistant protocols. How do you feel? Are we still citing the same principles? If not, we never believed them.
> The public will not respond until the groundwork has been laid to make effective protest impossible. Only then will important things be regulated out. Until then it will just be “nerd stuff”.
I’m looking at history and noticing that 99.9% of revolutions did not have the internet required to be successful.
> This is a lazy argument, as I can safely say that 80% or more of HN has the same political bent, and every community ever has said “but not everyone.”
I disagree, but even if you were correct: like, what’s your point? Are you grouping me in with them because I happen to be posting here? I reject that characterization.
Edit: I feel like this is an attempt at some kind of “gotcha” based on the example you provided. No, I don’t believe access to tech should be gated based on politics. IMHO everyone should have access to private and secure systems, as part of their human rights regarding speech, thought, and personal privacy. I attempted to raise this point in several venues during the “deplatforming” fad and explained how the political pendulum made it a bad idea. The mob remained unconvinced.
> I’m looking at history and noticing that 99.9% of revolutions did not have the internet required to be successful.
You tell me how people are going to protest effectively in the face of:
- Ubiquitous visual surveillance and facial recognition
- Ubiquitous audio surveillance via pocket spies and things like Flock/ShotSpotter/other competing systems
- Ubiquitous ALPR systems and GPS-enabled “digital plates” being trialed in some areas
- Data mining coupled with AI behavioral analysis (sloppy but likely good enough)
- An increasing percentage of cars with remote shutdown capabilities
- The replacement of cash with digital currency that can be remotely disabled
The future looks a lot like China, but without their “economic miracle” that has kept the population satisfied.
Or… acknowledge this is a fear of a future 30, 40, 50 years away that may never happen, which is never an argument.
It’s like saying the government, because they have power, and the SCOTUS, because they have power, could decide to kill all children. Yes, they could. No, it’s absurd to let that power keep you up at night, or say the solution is to abolish their power.