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Few have tasted this mythical freedom the web provides. What extremely tiny percentage of people own their own web site, let alone own any of their digital prop

Few have tasted this mythical freedom the web provides. What extremely tiny percentage of people own their own web site, let alone own any of their digital property (and these days even the hardware it lives on)? I would say AOL and Compuserve won judging by the success of Facebook and other feudalistic platforms. We have exchanged freedom and rights to our property for the convenience and security of platforms ruled by feudal lords.

bowlofpetunias 13y ago
Most people voluntarily exchange their freedom and rights in exchange for someone else telling them what to do. For most of our history they choose religion. These days corporations are taking that place. What matters is being able to opt out without being effectively reduced to second class citizens. We haven't lost that option yet, but it is true that that is under threat. Being able to consume content without advertising (which is corporate propaganda, i.e. the new "religion") is one of those things. That content is not just someone's private property (no matter what the manipulative copyright laws say), it is the end product on generations of collective knowledge and creativity. If the minority ever gets excluded from it because they're not members of the Church of our Corporate Overlords, then our freedom would truly suffer. The fact that the majority so easily surrenders their freedom for convenience and a false sense of security is not a measure of our freedom.
- pirateking 13y ago
  Yes, I agree. It is a difficult topic to reason about, but I would say that freedom can only be reasoned about relatively, and only by exercising it can its limits be discussed. And then those limits themselves must be exercised for the notion of freedom to exist in the first place. I wonder if there is some kind of idealized equilibrium, as both freedom and control try to fully realize themselves in society.

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

Most people voluntarily exchange their freedom and rights in exchange for someone else telling them what to do. For most of our history they choose religion. These days corporations are taking that place. What matters is being able to opt out without being effectively reduced to second class citizens. We haven't lost that option yet, but it is true that that is under threat. Being able to consume content without advertising (which is corporate propaganda, i.e. the new "religion") is one of those things. That content is not just someone's private property (no matter what the manipulative copyright laws say), it is the end product on generations of collective knowledge and creativity. If the minority ever gets excluded from it because they're not members of the Church of our Corporate Overlords, then our freedom would truly suffer. The fact that the majority so easily surrenders their freedom for convenience and a false sense of security is not a measure of our freedom.

pirateking 13y ago
Yes, I agree. It is a difficult topic to reason about, but I would say that freedom can only be reasoned about relatively, and only by exercising it can its limits be discussed. And then those limits themselves must be exercised for the notion of freedom to exist in the first place. I wonder if there is some kind of idealized equilibrium, as both freedom and control try to fully realize themselves in society.