- cross-posted to:
- technology
- cross-posted to:
- technology
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Is Cory Doctorow some sort of controlled opposition? I don’t know much about him but he has made a career out of being anti-big tech. This in itself would not alarm me but he says he has given talks in Google offices about this. I cannot imagine someone truly a threat to Google would be allowed to do this.
He seems genuine enough from everything I’ve seen.
He plays it safe well enough, all his proposed solutions are within the framework of the advertised workings of liberal laws. Material conditions are worsening so it makes sense that somebody would fill his niche of concerned tech critic.
He used to just be a fiction writer and tech enthusiast before, so the Google Talk might’ve been the execs not noticing the change in his discourse over the last 5 years. But if he were controlled opposition the control is being very lax because he constantly agitates for breaking up tech monopolies.
TBF Google is probably fine with that, so long as the legislators target Bing, Yahoo, and Microsoft first.
He is a liberal, his “anti-tech” solution is… anti-monopoly legislations.
From what I remember Richard Stallman gave talks at Microsoft. But outside his Free Software extremism he is very liberal lol
But to get that new, good internet, we have to support technologists of good will and character by terrorizing their venal and cynical colleagues by hitting them where they live: in their paychecks.
Eh, still a liberal answer. good luck hitting them in their paycheck without effectively taking their entire business away from them.
For sure, this whole boycotting idea doesn’t really achieve much of anything in practice. I’d say when it comes to the internet the solution is to build our own open source tools and platforms. Lemmy is a perfect example of that in action.
If you’re interested in video hosting, peertube exists. But since video hosting is one of the most expensive way to share data it uses a peer to peer connection like torrenting. So in some countries you might be responsible for sharing what you watch.
I’ve been keeping an eye on peertube, and it does seem to be progressing nicely. Torrenting is probably the only practical approach to the problem.
I’ve noticed this weird trend with Doctorow. On his independent websites or his interviews, he hardly ever mentions China or communism. But whenever he is publishing something under somebody else, a newspaper or his books, he always randomly inserts some completely unrelated “China Bad” paragraph.
Almost feels like it’s some publisher quota that anti-capitalist works have to fill.
This is from the linked locustmag article.
It really does seem like there’s a requirement to have at least some China bashing in any article that’s even slightly anti-capitalist. I suspect that criticizing capitalism isn’t actually seen as any sort of a real threat to the system. In fact, it can even be seen as a pressure release valve. People read this stuff and get to feel intellectually superior, that they really get how bad the system is and they see past the obvious propaganda others fall for.
However, acknowledging that there are viable alternatives to capitalism that exist today is dangerous. Ultimately, the whole capitalist realism is premised on the idea that capitalism sucks, but everything else is worse. Therefore, we need a constant stream of messaging assuring us that no matter how bad things are in the west, we’re lucky that we’re not living in China where we’d be rounded up and thrown in a gulag for our courageous free thinking. This notion also helps stroke people’s egos because it implies that whatever it is they have to say is so profound that it would have to be silenced.
I had a similar thought, albeit less eloquently, when I saw this ‘ancap reading list’. This is apparently a revolutionary philosophy that seeks to abolish the status quo and liquidate all existing states. And yet you can do as much of it as you like – backed by whatever mainstream publishers you choose – and the CIA will not even write your name in pencil on the back of an envelope. Because none of it is at all a serious attempt to change capitalism. It just, as you say, acts as another kind of release valve.
Indeed, what ends up being censored and suppressed is generally a very good indicator of what actually works in practice. Incidentally, it’s very notable that a lot of shows tend to promote anarchism and antiauthoritarianism as a positive way to rebel while demonizing USSR and communism.
