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In some ways, we got this future. We wanted total freedom. We got total freedom. "No we don't! What about Facebook and Google and and an..." ...listen: Freedo

In some ways, we got this future. We wanted total freedom. We got total freedom. "No we don't! What about Facebook and Google and and an..." ...listen: Freedom means the ability to choose NOT to be free. (This is the challenge that faces anarchists: How do you enforce freedom? It's a contradiction in terms. I say this as someone who would desperately like to be wrong about this, but in all my years I've yet to see any resolution to that.) We choose to use Google instead of Duck Duck Go. We choose to use Facebook instead of our own self-hosted blogs. We choose to reveal our identities online rather than use anonymous personas. We choose all of this. Yes, there's an amount of privacy violation that is happening at the ISP level that allows an unconscionable amount of tracking, and that's a fight worth fighting. But the vast majority of what we talk about when we discuss privacy is stuff that we chose. We chose wrong, but we chose. We can still make better choices, but we don't. The conglomerates of the world are winning not because of force (no one pointed a gun at my head to join Facebook or install it on my phone), but because they offered us a nicer playground. We had Second Life, where we could do and be anything we wanted. We chose Minecraft and Fortnite. We had free email servers that we could run on our machines. We chose Gmail. We had absurdly cheap storage devices that we could use to create our own "cloud" services to store all of our data ourselves, outside the reach of prying eyes or hands. We chose iCloud and Drive and AWS and Dropbox and all the rest. Cyberspace IS independent and free, or at least as independent and free as its ever been. The reason we don't feel that way is because we choose, every day, to participate in controlled wonder gardens. We prefer the convenience.

fossuser 5y ago
I mostly agree, but many of these choices are constrained by problems. We use gmail (or fastmail) because of the spam problem and your own email server getting blacklisted. Also the complexity and know-how necessary to be a linux admin. Many use FB (or other centralized social media) now because of network effects, but also because of how easy they are to use. Things don't have to be this way - in theory you can have a system designed from the ground up to solve these kinds of problems in a way that's still easy to use and possible to maintain. It's just way harder than doing it the centralized way and it's harder to figure out a way to generate money to make it self-sustaining. The only group I'm aware of trying to do this from first principles is Urbit - there's always a lot of knee-jerk responses when I mention them, but it's a really cool project even if it's tall odds that it'll work out in a serious large scale way. They're at least aware of why previous attempts always fail and they're not afraid to rebuild the entire stack to fix it. Ethereum and DAOs are also similar in a way - a method to have applications and organizations built on decentralized state that can actually work with financial incentives to support it. We're still in the middle of experiencing the shock of what the internet means for us: https://press.stripe.com/#the-revolt-of-the-public https://press.stripe.com/#the-revolt-of-the-public - it'll be a while before we understand how things will change, but they're already changing in strange ways - hopefully when the dust settles it'll be better and not worse.
- nickelcitymario 5y ago
  I agree with everything you said. Only two comments: (1) I only want to emphasize that at every stage, we had choices. Network effects are powerful, perhaps even irresistible, but still subject to free choice. (2) Spam and blacklists... that's a tougher thing. But there are plenty of options (like fastmail, I think) that never violated anyone's privacy. Most of us still use gmail. I should clarify, because I kinda took the coward's way out with all the "we" stuff: I use Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and even use an iPhone and MacBook despite all the limitations and lack of freedoms that come with every single one of them. I choose them freely, which says a lot about how much I think I value freedom versus how much I actually do in practice.
  - fossuser 5y ago
    Even fastmail is still using a centralized service. I use fastmail (with my own domain) and hardest part about the switch from gmail was going through all the crappy website account flows to change email (some of which are impossible). I dropped FB last year after painstakingly deleting every post/like/photo, but I still use twitter (though I do delete old stuff after a retention period around 1yr - this is easy to do for tweets, but hard to do for likes so I stopped liking stuff). I think Amazon is really great and still use them, same for Netflix. YouTube I use because there's no real alternative, but I pay for premium to at least avoid ads (though can't avoid the tracking). Apple hardware is arguably the best available option for aligned incentives/privacy. In theory you could throw ubuntu on a thinkpad (I did this for college years among others like Arch), but the experience is bad and the security is likely worse. I play around with Urbit and it's surprisingly usable - it also feels like old school internet from when I was young. Strangers hanging out on forums or chat and enjoying the shared experience of being online. The nature of people interested in Urbit brings some of that back.
Dracophoenix 5y ago
I completely agree with your assessment. Everyone from the 1990s to the 2010s chose their poison and the strings that came attached. I myself will even admit to it as I seek to correct my own course. However, a dangerous trend (likely one that's always existed but is now rearing its ugly head) is the imposition of multiple, contradictory views from cultures, governments, interest groups onto those who don't wish to be involved. What's the solution to those who wish to return to the freewheeling heyday of the BBS, Usenet, and Internet forums? Where does one go after shattering the garden wall?
- nickelcitymario 5y ago
  There's literally nothing stopping us from using them again. Usenet is still a thing. Forum software still exists and continues to be maintained. I never used BBS, but I can't see why it can't be brought back. The problem is that dreaded network effect. We can choose differently, but if all your friends choose the walled garden, you're left out in the cold. No one's forcing you to do anything, but it sure gets lonely, doesn't it? So we follow the crowd. But we can start the exodus any time we want, and maybe others will follow. Maybe when enough of us do so, we'll reach a tipping point and the network effects can work to our benefit.

fossuser 5y ago

I mostly agree, but many of these choices are constrained by problems. We use gmail (or fastmail) because of the spam problem and your own email server getting blacklisted. Also the complexity and know-how necessary to be a linux admin. Many use FB (or other centralized social media) now because of network effects, but also because of how easy they are to use. Things don't have to be this way - in theory you can have a system designed from the ground up to solve these kinds of problems in a way that's still easy to use and possible to maintain. It's just way harder than doing it the centralized way and it's harder to figure out a way to generate money to make it self-sustaining. The only group I'm aware of trying to do this from first principles is Urbit - there's always a lot of knee-jerk responses when I mention them, but it's a really cool project even if it's tall odds that it'll work out in a serious large scale way. They're at least aware of why previous attempts always fail and they're not afraid to rebuild the entire stack to fix it. Ethereum and DAOs are also similar in a way - a method to have applications and organizations built on decentralized state that can actually work with financial incentives to support it. We're still in the middle of experiencing the shock of what the internet means for us: https://press.stripe.com/#the-revolt-of-the-public https://press.stripe.com/#the-revolt-of-the-public - it'll be a while before we understand how things will change, but they're already changing in strange ways - hopefully when the dust settles it'll be better and not worse.

nickelcitymario 5y ago
I agree with everything you said. Only two comments: (1) I only want to emphasize that at every stage, we had choices. Network effects are powerful, perhaps even irresistible, but still subject to free choice. (2) Spam and blacklists... that's a tougher thing. But there are plenty of options (like fastmail, I think) that never violated anyone's privacy. Most of us still use gmail. I should clarify, because I kinda took the coward's way out with all the "we" stuff: I use Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and even use an iPhone and MacBook despite all the limitations and lack of freedoms that come with every single one of them. I choose them freely, which says a lot about how much I think I value freedom versus how much I actually do in practice.
- fossuser 5y ago
  Even fastmail is still using a centralized service. I use fastmail (with my own domain) and hardest part about the switch from gmail was going through all the crappy website account flows to change email (some of which are impossible). I dropped FB last year after painstakingly deleting every post/like/photo, but I still use twitter (though I do delete old stuff after a retention period around 1yr - this is easy to do for tweets, but hard to do for likes so I stopped liking stuff). I think Amazon is really great and still use them, same for Netflix. YouTube I use because there's no real alternative, but I pay for premium to at least avoid ads (though can't avoid the tracking). Apple hardware is arguably the best available option for aligned incentives/privacy. In theory you could throw ubuntu on a thinkpad (I did this for college years among others like Arch), but the experience is bad and the security is likely worse. I play around with Urbit and it's surprisingly usable - it also feels like old school internet from when I was young. Strangers hanging out on forums or chat and enjoying the shared experience of being online. The nature of people interested in Urbit brings some of that back.

Dracophoenix 5y ago

I completely agree with your assessment. Everyone from the 1990s to the 2010s chose their poison and the strings that came attached. I myself will even admit to it as I seek to correct my own course. However, a dangerous trend (likely one that's always existed but is now rearing its ugly head) is the imposition of multiple, contradictory views from cultures, governments, interest groups onto those who don't wish to be involved. What's the solution to those who wish to return to the freewheeling heyday of the BBS, Usenet, and Internet forums? Where does one go after shattering the garden wall?

nickelcitymario 5y ago
There's literally nothing stopping us from using them again. Usenet is still a thing. Forum software still exists and continues to be maintained. I never used BBS, but I can't see why it can't be brought back. The problem is that dreaded network effect. We can choose differently, but if all your friends choose the walled garden, you're left out in the cold. No one's forcing you to do anything, but it sure gets lonely, doesn't it? So we follow the crowd. But we can start the exodus any time we want, and maybe others will follow. Maybe when enough of us do so, we'll reach a tipping point and the network effects can work to our benefit.