But all the stuff that happened from 2012 to 2024 had disenfranchised a lot of the actual engineers that do the real work with the progressive movement. There were a lot of early warnings, but they were ignored and instead silenced via social pressure.
Now the progressives are shocked that they couldn't just ratchet their causes ever further without losing support. And it is crazy who the techno-libertarian side joined forces with, but it was also obvious this was bound to happen at some point. You can't just continually ignore the grievances of your allies and then be shocked when they turn against you.
[–] jordanb 16 hours ago
[–] mmooss 13 hours ago
I think they would have absolutely believed it - that's what they were worried about and fought against. They would have not believed that libertarians and progressives (to use the terms of this thread) have adopted such an absolutely helpless, defeatest attitude and have therefore become moribund and ineffective.
John Perry Barlow-esque techno libertarianism is dead.
Modern network state authoritarianism is unrecognizable from the perspective of old-style technolibertarians.
If you had told those people the modern silicon valley was working to build a Panopticon and sell it to the TLAs they would not have believed you!