6 ms·

You know what else isn't public spirited or democratic? The internet. The internet is a bunch of private fiefdoms. I think for the most part the internet works

by darawk 6y ago

You know what else isn't public spirited or democratic? The internet. The internet is a bunch of private fiefdoms. I think for the most part the internet works much better than the physical world, in large part because it is a collection of private fiefdoms with zero transaction costs for leaving. Reddit gets to run itself the way reddit wants, HN the way HN wants, etc. If you don't like it, you can start your own. There's infinite real estate, and exit is mostly costless. I'm perfectly happy with people doing this in the physical world. I think we could use a lot more experimentation with community design and rules, and most governments simply aren't willing to do this. As long as these communities are opt-in, and not forced on anyone, I think it's great.

throwawaysea 6y ago
This requires greater self determination than we grant today. America for example, was meant to be an experiment in limited federalism, with power and control located as locally as possible. Over time it has flipped, with the nation and states imposing one size fits all rules. I think the lack of locality and self determination is not much different from tyranny, and we have a phrase for it even: tyranny of the majority.
neolog 6y ago
The costs of leaving a big social network to start your own are huge -- you can't interact with anybody.
- mjevans 6y ago
  I liked the old model of a beach of sands, maybe a couple stones, but still a rich ecosystem. Clinging to sands is lonely, and I refuse the big sites.
- mayniac 6y ago
  You can set up a phpBB instance on a shared hosting provider for <$10/month. Interact with anyone who wants to interact with you. Don't even really need any technical knowlege, just a credit card. People do it all the time, but they keep themselves to themselves and you don't find out about it.
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    Social networks are immune to competition because of network effects. Once their network is established as the first mover, a subsequent newcomer will always have a worse product because of the smaller networks be therefore can’t challenge the incumbent. Where we have seen successful upstarts in social media is when they have a different product. So Tik Tok can enter this space. But a Twitter clone or Facebook clone will have a hard time. The technology isn’t the blocker. It’s that the nature of the social media product works differently, and the lack of competition is inherent to such a product.
    - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
      That’s why MySpace is still so huge.
Barrin92 6y ago
>I think for the most part the internet works much better than the physical world so you have opted out of your local police protection and healthcare plan and rely on reddict detectives and crypto-marketplaces for your life insurance? When you need your teeth fixed do you rely on the guy who got his training from khan academy and youtube videos or someone who went to a good public school? YoU'd rather board a plane that, instead of being regulated by the government was regulated by a blockchain startup in the cloud? Private internet fiefdoms do reasonably well at things that aren't made out of atoms. If you'd want to put it less charitably, the internet works for things that don't matter. Something Thiel, who is mentioned in the article as chief advocate for this weird feudal-libertarianism, has lamented himself.
- notduncansmith 6y ago
  I agree but I would say the internet is not unique in that respect. Bioshock was cautionary tales.
hh3k0 6y ago
> You know what else isn't public spirited or democratic? The internet. And we've seen in 2016 how great it really is when it leaks into the physical world. > I think for the most part the internet works much better than the physical world And it works abysmally poor in crucial areas. The internet has turbocharged child porn distribution, using such private fiefdoms you romanticize as safe havens -- out of reach for government agencies and thus quite often with impunity for the perpetrators. (And that's not even taking the real-world implications of rising demand through near effortless accessability and anonymity into account.) > Reddit gets to run itself the way reddit wants, HN the way HN wants, etc. They can to that in the physical world, too. And in both worlds Reddit and HN still have to oblige laws and regulations.
- EvilEy3 6y ago
  > The internet has turbocharged child porn distribution, using such private fiefdoms you romanticize as safe havens -- out of reach for government agencies and thus quite often with impunity for the perpetrators. Woah, that changes everything! Shut internet down now!
kitd 6y ago
You can't do all that with the real world. People need to eat, have water, electricity, sewage etc. You need access and transport. And security (private armies, anyone?) All of a sudden, control over basic resources becomes a problem that just doesn't exist in the simplistic internet mirror. And people will kick up a stink about that much quicker than they would over eg, FB misinformation or "free speech".
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Most of these things are achievable with a ~1900s level of technology. Most "needs" today are consumer-driven or "but the Jones have one!" driven.
pdog 6y ago
> The internet is a bunch of private fiefdoms. For $7 a year you can host a website that's accessible from anywhere in the world. Things are better not worse.
- Stratoscope 6y ago
  That's what GP was saying.
3np 6y ago
I'd like to agree, but land ownership is essentially local monopoly. To see exactly how this can go horribly wrong, read up on the Irish famine, which was mostly caused by how the England-based land-owners were using the land to extract value. The local people didn't own any land and would have had to leave the entire island for an alternative.
- darawk 6y ago
  That's my point though. We should be trying to figure out how to make the physical world more like the internet, imo.
ceilingcorner 6y ago
This is rapidly becoming not the case, with most major tech and media organizations calling for their "competitors" to be shut down. The recent situation with Parler should have made this clear. At this point, "start your own" is extending down to "build your own currency and payment processor."
- threatofrain 6y ago
  Per the CEO of Parler, their bank and lawyers also cancelled on them, as did their mail and text services. We still exist in corresponding meatspace and must reconcile our concepts of fraternity there as well.
  - MikeUt 6y ago
    But how can this be? Wouldn't an allegedly white-supremacist America support, instead of oppose, services such as Parler?
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
There's a half-joking political ideology named "Anarcho-Frontierism" that basically believes this: true anarchist societies can only exist on the frontiers of civilization. Anarchist communes can exist only so long as people that don't want to belong to them are free to leave, venture a bit further out into the vast frontier, and start up their own new thing. The moment people are forced to live together with other people that don't share their same beliefs, we start to need social structure, rules, and formalized decision-making processes to prevent violent strife.
hntrader 6y ago
The opt-in part is what makes all the difference, and it's why the accusations of utopianism fall flat. We should have more experimentation of alternative systems of governance. Creating experimental, small scale and opt-in societies to do that is a low risk way to achieve that. Then the process of selection takes over: the most desirable model becomes dominant as more people move there voluntarily. In the end we will have more competition between states, especially as remote work becomes the norm. This is very different to an attempt to radically transform an existing society, which requires hoisting things onto a large number of unwilling people who haven't opted in, and risks destroying something that's already working pretty well. We shouldn't confuse the two.
meheleventyone 6y ago
The existence of the Internet at all is an extremely successful example of something public spirited and democratic. Literally made and grown by public entities and mostly run not to privilege anyone. The companies running on top of it not so much I agree. Imagine if Google or Apple built the Internet today and what a weird walled garden that would be. Would we even have concepts like net neutrality?
- mmikeff 6y ago
  AOL tried, but their customers demanded better

by darawk 6y ago

throwawaysea 6y ago

This requires greater self determination than we grant today. America for example, was meant to be an experiment in limited federalism, with power and control located as locally as possible. Over time it has flipped, with the nation and states imposing one size fits all rules. I think the lack of locality and self determination is not much different from tyranny, and we have a phrase for it even: tyranny of the majority.

neolog 6y ago

The costs of leaving a big social network to start your own are huge -- you can't interact with anybody.

mjevans 6y ago
I liked the old model of a beach of sands, maybe a couple stones, but still a rich ecosystem. Clinging to sands is lonely, and I refuse the big sites.
mayniac 6y ago
You can set up a phpBB instance on a shared hosting provider for <$10/month. Interact with anyone who wants to interact with you. Don't even really need any technical knowlege, just a credit card. People do it all the time, but they keep themselves to themselves and you don't find out about it.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  Social networks are immune to competition because of network effects. Once their network is established as the first mover, a subsequent newcomer will always have a worse product because of the smaller networks be therefore can’t challenge the incumbent. Where we have seen successful upstarts in social media is when they have a different product. So Tik Tok can enter this space. But a Twitter clone or Facebook clone will have a hard time. The technology isn’t the blocker. It’s that the nature of the social media product works differently, and the lack of competition is inherent to such a product.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    That’s why MySpace is still so huge.

Barrin92 6y ago

>I think for the most part the internet works much better than the physical world so you have opted out of your local police protection and healthcare plan and rely on reddict detectives and crypto-marketplaces for your life insurance? When you need your teeth fixed do you rely on the guy who got his training from khan academy and youtube videos or someone who went to a good public school? YoU'd rather board a plane that, instead of being regulated by the government was regulated by a blockchain startup in the cloud? Private internet fiefdoms do reasonably well at things that aren't made out of atoms. If you'd want to put it less charitably, the internet works for things that don't matter. Something Thiel, who is mentioned in the article as chief advocate for this weird feudal-libertarianism, has lamented himself.

notduncansmith 6y ago
I agree but I would say the internet is not unique in that respect. Bioshock was cautionary tales.

hh3k0 6y ago

> You know what else isn't public spirited or democratic? The internet. And we've seen in 2016 how great it really is when it leaks into the physical world. > I think for the most part the internet works much better than the physical world And it works abysmally poor in crucial areas. The internet has turbocharged child porn distribution, using such private fiefdoms you romanticize as safe havens -- out of reach for government agencies and thus quite often with impunity for the perpetrators. (And that's not even taking the real-world implications of rising demand through near effortless accessability and anonymity into account.) > Reddit gets to run itself the way reddit wants, HN the way HN wants, etc. They can to that in the physical world, too. And in both worlds Reddit and HN still have to oblige laws and regulations.

EvilEy3 6y ago
> The internet has turbocharged child porn distribution, using such private fiefdoms you romanticize as safe havens -- out of reach for government agencies and thus quite often with impunity for the perpetrators. Woah, that changes everything! Shut internet down now!

kitd 6y ago

You can't do all that with the real world. People need to eat, have water, electricity, sewage etc. You need access and transport. And security (private armies, anyone?) All of a sudden, control over basic resources becomes a problem that just doesn't exist in the simplistic internet mirror. And people will kick up a stink about that much quicker than they would over eg, FB misinformation or "free speech".

ceilingcorner 6y ago
Most of these things are achievable with a ~1900s level of technology. Most "needs" today are consumer-driven or "but the Jones have one!" driven.

pdog 6y ago

> The internet is a bunch of private fiefdoms. For $7 a year you can host a website that's accessible from anywhere in the world. Things are better not worse.

Stratoscope 6y ago
That's what GP was saying.

3np 6y ago

I'd like to agree, but land ownership is essentially local monopoly. To see exactly how this can go horribly wrong, read up on the Irish famine, which was mostly caused by how the England-based land-owners were using the land to extract value. The local people didn't own any land and would have had to leave the entire island for an alternative.

darawk 6y ago
That's my point though. We should be trying to figure out how to make the physical world more like the internet, imo.

ceilingcorner 6y ago

This is rapidly becoming not the case, with most major tech and media organizations calling for their "competitors" to be shut down. The recent situation with Parler should have made this clear. At this point, "start your own" is extending down to "build your own currency and payment processor."

threatofrain 6y ago
Per the CEO of Parler, their bank and lawyers also cancelled on them, as did their mail and text services. We still exist in corresponding meatspace and must reconcile our concepts of fraternity there as well.
- MikeUt 6y ago
  But how can this be? Wouldn't an allegedly white-supremacist America support, instead of oppose, services such as Parler?

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago

There's a half-joking political ideology named "Anarcho-Frontierism" that basically believes this: true anarchist societies can only exist on the frontiers of civilization. Anarchist communes can exist only so long as people that don't want to belong to them are free to leave, venture a bit further out into the vast frontier, and start up their own new thing. The moment people are forced to live together with other people that don't share their same beliefs, we start to need social structure, rules, and formalized decision-making processes to prevent violent strife.

hntrader 6y ago

The opt-in part is what makes all the difference, and it's why the accusations of utopianism fall flat. We should have more experimentation of alternative systems of governance. Creating experimental, small scale and opt-in societies to do that is a low risk way to achieve that. Then the process of selection takes over: the most desirable model becomes dominant as more people move there voluntarily. In the end we will have more competition between states, especially as remote work becomes the norm. This is very different to an attempt to radically transform an existing society, which requires hoisting things onto a large number of unwilling people who haven't opted in, and risks destroying something that's already working pretty well. We shouldn't confuse the two.

meheleventyone 6y ago

The existence of the Internet at all is an extremely successful example of something public spirited and democratic. Literally made and grown by public entities and mostly run not to privilege anyone. The companies running on top of it not so much I agree. Imagine if Google or Apple built the Internet today and what a weird walled garden that would be. Would we even have concepts like net neutrality?

mmikeff 6y ago
AOL tried, but their customers demanded better