[HN Gopher] To Fight Big Tech, We Must Seize the Means of Comput...
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To Fight Big Tech, We Must Seize the Means of Computation
Author : msszczep2
Score : 89 points
Date : 2023-10-09 15:40 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (truthout.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (truthout.org)
| misterbishop wrote:
| The headline borrows from Marx for radical cred, but all of
| Doctorow's ideas are from the anarcho-liberal school of permanent
| impotence.
|
| He spends the first 2000 words talking about how industry bribed
| the government to set unjust, inhumane policies on copyright,
| reverse-engineering, antitrust. Then in the 2nd half, all his
| tech proposals have to do with alternative tech solutions:
| federation, mastodon, driver coop apps, etc.
|
| The problem with big tech is just capitalism. You don't fight
| capitalism with new apps. You fight capitalism with an
| independent political movement of workers. This movement wouldn't
| even be a tech-oriented movement because most people rightly
| don't give a fuck about tech.
|
| We have to fight the political power of Musk and Zuckerberg by
| cutting off their ability to make profit. This happens through
| organizing in the workplace, and with a WORKERS PARTY opposed to
| the capitalist duopoly.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It's telling that every time an alternative, FOSS, socially-
| conscious tech product gets popular - CyanogenMod being a big
| example - they often end up doing unpopular shady things to
| monetize, and sometimes then fall apart.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27951250
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27069913
| undersuit wrote:
| I dislike that every single one of our displays utilizes an
| encrypted connection. And it doesn't protect me, I don't have the
| keys. And though it is fixed function hardware I've often
| wondered about the waste we have introduced in this world so I
| can't copy a Disney video that I might watch hundreds of times.
| huytersd wrote:
| I don't understand. If you're watching it the bits have been
| decrypted. Can't you just get them from local memory?
| choeger wrote:
| Realistically, no. You don't have access to the device that
| contains the decrypted content.
|
| Of course, you could try to open up or bypass the DRM module
| (e.g., via the GPU driver during hardware accelerated
| decoding), but that won't work with a TPM module and signed
| kernel space.
|
| If you look at the security technologies introduced into
| consumer decides over the last decades, it all serves the
| dual purpose of securing your hardware from ... you.
| huytersd wrote:
| Couldn't you just plug a capture card into the display out?
| holonsphere wrote:
| HDCP.
| huytersd wrote:
| Wow, so the decryption happens in the monitor? Can't the
| capture card replicate that?
| notRobot wrote:
| No, decryption keys are tightly held and inaccessible to
| general populations and small manufacturers and those
| used by illicit capture cards are regularly revoked iirc.
| metalcrow wrote:
| In regards to that, i assume that manufacturers have to
| apply for a cert for their device and then embed that
| cert, correct? Then if the device is found to be
| stripping HDCP the consortium can revoke that cert, but
| how? Sure you can do it for PCs and consoles, but are
| blu-ray players connected to the internet and auto-
| updated nowadays? Otherwise it'd be pretty easy for
| Chinese manufactures out of reach of the DMCA to just
| release one every few years and have it work for all
| devices prior.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| "are blu-ray players connected to the internet and auto-
| updated nowadays?"
|
| Some blu-rays force you to update before you can watch
| them. Also, the key revocation lists can (I believe) be
| included in the blu-ray itself to make them work offline,
| too.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Easier to just recover via camera at this point.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Kinda. You need access to a decryption key. The ones
| known to be leaked will be revoked, so you need one that
| cannot be revoked, because the financial fallout would be
| too painful. That's why WEB-DL rips are typically made
| using the DRM keys extracted out of very popular consumer
| TV models.
| saulpw wrote:
| Every time you say 'just' an engineer who's already spent
| hours trying out your simple idea pulls out another clump
| of hair.
| api wrote:
| We have plenty of computation. A decent laptop today is a
| supercomputer. Terabytes of storage can be had for under $200.
|
| Locked hardware isn't much of an issue either. Most of that
| either can be unlocked or there are equivalently powerful
| unlocked alternatives to be had.
|
| What people must seize is the network, and the network effect.
| Most of today's tech empires are built on owning the hub around
| which everyone communicates. The fact that they own a lot of
| hardware is just about irrelevant to their market power or
| dominance.
|
| The only area where compute power determines relevance at all
| today is AI base model training and large scale AI deployment and
| that is likely not going to last that long. In the next few years
| the market for accelerators for AI is going to heat up a lot and
| prices will come down. There is no way the nVidia monopoly will
| last more than another two years tops.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Don't "seize". _Build_.
|
| That is, there is a network out there. You're not going to
| seize the existing one. You're not going to take over Facebook,
| either by government mandate or by force of arms. You're just
| not.
|
| And that's OK, because "seize" was always a morally bankrupt
| idea anyway.
|
| You want a network that's the peoples' network? Great. Go build
| it. Go convince people to use it.
|
| That's not as hopeless as it sounds. As the existing stuff
| becomes more and more horrible to use, the existing players are
| doing your marketing for you.
| [deleted]
| Willish42 wrote:
| Largely agree with this analysis, however your claim about
| nvidia:
|
| > There is no way the nVidia monopoly will last more than
| another two years tops.
|
| I feel as if I've heard paraphrases of this sentiment for at
| least the last ~6 years. Is there a reason you think nvidia's
| monopoly is decreasing or will decrease? They have quite the
| lead in terms of market share for discrete GPUs AFAICT
| (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-market-healthy-and-
| vib...). Even if costs go down etc., there are market dynamics
| at play here that I'm not convinced this industry will get
| disrupted anytime soon. The only major competitors in
| innovation for this space are Apple, Intel, and AMD, with Apple
| being the only one with manufacturing improvements, and that's
| a walled garden with very low market share for desktop
| computing.
| api wrote:
| It's different now because AI is hot, which is going to
| motivate other companies quite a bit more to try to get in on
| the hardware side.
|
| Prior to this year AI was much more of a niche thing. It
| wasn't seen as the unambiguous next generation of computing
| the way it is now.
| nologic01 wrote:
| The sad part is that nobody really prevents us from seizing the
| network. It is intrinsically decentralized by design. It takes
| hard work to subvert this.
|
| Yet we don't do it. A sort of digital rigor mortis has
| descended upon the land. A comatose capitulation, complete lack
| of vital signs, let alone the _lust_ for life that
| characterized the early period of the Web when everything
| seemed possible.
|
| The "network effect" is really a psychological and economic
| mind game. Once a sufficient number of people were conditioned
| (tricked by novelty and lack of education and regulation) to
| consider it a "reality" it became a runaway self-financing
| monopoly.
|
| A collective digital hallucination that is actually against the
| self-interest of the vast majorities, based on rather dodgy
| foundations and atypical of how societies are generally
| organized. It was never a perfect world but it never flirted so
| closely with a surveillance dystopia.
|
| This state of affairs becomes very puzzling when it is now
| almost a point-and-click exercise to setup the equivalent of
| the early facebook or twitter or skype etc (#fediverse,
| #matrix, you name it). Either this is the darkest hour before
| dawn or it is the darkest hour, period.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >The sad part is that nobody really prevents us from seizing
| the network. It is intrinsically decentralized by design. It
| takes hard work to subvert this.
|
| The network is currently download only for most households.
| We need iCloud and YouTube and other companies hosting our
| content because of ipv4/CGNAT and lack of upload bandwidth.
|
| Ideally, we would be able to host our own content on our own
| NAS at home and access it from anywhere, but the market or
| people who have an internet connection capable of that is not
| worth addressing.
| iteria wrote:
| We can't do it until literally everyone is willing to
| maintain multiple platforms. There's always people who don't
| and you end up on a situation where either that person is
| Isolated or what usually happens, people bend to them because
| it's just easier. Facebook won the moment elders got there
| because grandma uses Facebook and it's just easier to
| interact with her there instead of trying to convince her to
| do something different. As long as these kind of anchors
| exist centralization is basically predestined
| [deleted]
| api wrote:
| I don't really agree about the causes. The big problem is
| economic. It's a business problem not a technology problem.
|
| The problem is that good software that ordinary people can
| easily use is extremely labor intensive to produce. Software
| is very expensive.
|
| This means you have to have an economic model and there has
| to be a toll booth somewhere or an indirect way of generating
| revenue like ads. Centralized services make those parts easy.
|
| Everything else can be built in a decentralized manner. Many
| times it's even easier to build that way. But how do you
| build it if there's no funding available and nobody pays for
| anything?
|
| It can't all be volunteer. People need to be paid. There's
| nowhere near enough volunteer open source labor available to
| build really polished usable systems for everyone.
|
| It's similar to the dynamic in other areas of media. Media is
| usually a deflationary race to the bottom. The best media has
| no funding.
| nologic01 wrote:
| > nobody pays for anything?
|
| We pay for almost everything in tech. Part of the digital
| hallucination that oppresses us is to have this self-
| flagellating view.
|
| Nobody gets _any_ free hardware of any kind. Nobody gets
| _any_ free network infrastructure and bandwidth of any
| kind. Its all paid, by purchases, monthly subscriptions
| etc. With real, hard earned money by people from all walks
| of life and economic means. Not to mention that
| historically people happily paid for newspapers, TV
| licenses and they still do for streaming.
|
| The deceit of big tech is propagating the idea that after
| you have shelled for the all the above, you really don't
| have to pay for certain very specific pieces of software
| and services - oh just pay with your reduced privacy and
| agency (which you don't even know is important).
|
| What is happening is that the masses can't tell they are
| being ripped off (and the potential risks to individuals
| and society) and nobody in authority does warn them either.
|
| In such a situation it is indeed impossible to have a
| normal economic model to compete. Bad business models
| repelled good business models.
|
| But there is just the slightest glimmer of light at the end
| of this dark tunnel. While you are right, the volunteer
| open source enthusiasts can't substitute for the absence of
| healthy funding they achieved something very important:
| they showed that alternatives are possible, they don't
| require trillions, they just require a society with basic
| decency.
| api wrote:
| People don't pay for software unless they have to, which
| means they only pay for software that restricts their
| freedom... because that is the software you have to pay
| for. This is what I mean.
|
| You can build high quality open freedom and privacy first
| software. Then you will probably go bankrupt. Lots of
| people will use it but nobody will pay for it.
|
| Mastodon is used by millions. I've heard the devs make
| way below market rates and the foundation behind it is
| cash starved. That's just one example.
| nologic01 wrote:
| > Mastodon is used by millions. I've heard the devs make
| way below market rates and the foundation behind it is
| cash starved. That's just one example.
|
| Yes, the funding situation around mastodon is very
| transparent and many other interesting projects in this
| space are total labor of love. I will forever admire
| those people whether they manage to make the world better
| or not.
|
| Well, politicians could create a healthy market for
| software overnight by outlawing various targeted
| advertising practices. Once personal data gathering and
| use for advertising (and who knows what else - who ever
| reads and understands these manipulative "terms and
| conditions") is prohibited, any software supported by
| generic ad technology will be unsufferable.
|
| Ten years ago you could excuse politicians, regulators
| and the lot that is supposed to work on our behalf as not
| being informed. Today there is no excuse.
| [deleted]
| newsclues wrote:
| If you want to fight big tech stop feeding it data.
| parski wrote:
| I really recommend Cory's talk at DEF CON and he was a guest on
| the Srsly Wrong podcast.
|
| DEF CON: https://youtu.be/rimtaSgGz_4?si=EBlHqv2tmKICIYhT
|
| Srsly Wrong: https://srslywrong.com/podcast/297-platform-decay-
| and-how-am...
|
| It's a great podcast. I recommend the episodes on degrowth and
| half earth socialism in particular.
| thefascistleft wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| crmd wrote:
| Is this from the Sudoer's Manifesto?
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I finished reading this book last week. I basically liked it,
| lot's of background material and then practical suggestions.
| clnq wrote:
| I am always unconvinced by the argument that one can't leave
| social media because their friends are on some site.
|
| No one I know does not check their SMS and email, and doesn't
| pick up phone calls.
|
| I've not been on social media for about 5 years now, and I have
| not fallen out of touch with a single friend because of that. For
| other reasons like moving away physically or not gaming as much
| anymore, but not for this. Everyone still picks up my calls and
| reads my messages.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Not being contactable the same place all group stuff is
| organized or info distributed is either asking others to do
| work for you (to send you info everyone else got automatically)
| or means you're opting to exclude yourself from those
| activities and discussions.
|
| Less relevant if your friend/family circle doesn't organize
| group activities or chat as a group often, I guess.
| iteria wrote:
| This realistically. This is why I can't leave Facebook. There
| is no platform that all of my friends have some kind of
| presence on. Some of us have discord. Some us use whatapp.
| Some of us use $platform, but Facebook is the only one that
| all of use have at least a login to. There are like 100 of
| us. I don't know all of them, but my friends want to invite
| people I don't know and I invite people they don't know and
| here we are in our 30s still stuck on this situation for big
| get togethers. Email and text just doesn't work. I don't have
| have the emails and honestly I'm not all that interested in
| my friend's sister in law's contact information. This is how
| Facebook has chained me to it. The network effect is real
| when you need to keep 2nd and 3rd degree friends in the loop.
| I can't leave because of people I don't even know.
| jijijijiji wrote:
| I don't think it's less work with the new, Whatsapp-based way
| of organising group events. It seems to be more stressful and
| distracting to all involved. Your friends shoud appreciate
| the lack of an extra set of dings in a group chat, and gladly
| let you know about upcoming events where your presence is
| desired.
| asdff wrote:
| Who uses facebook groups anymore for things like that?
| Whenever I get organized info electronically e.g. wedding
| stuff its an email with a link to a website. Whenever
| something gets planned among friends its a group text.
| Whenever any event in town is happening and they put up a
| flyer about it, there will be a QR scan to a purpose built
| website.
| proc0 wrote:
| Are online user revolutions a thing? I can see this happening if
| the future continues on a dystopian path. Maybe users would
| organize and threatened to leave or have a change of power
| structure. Our online accounts are increasingly becoming our
| identities to the rest of the world, which consequently gives us
| agency in it, and social media has evolved to literally own this
| part of ourselves.
| PeterHolzwarth wrote:
| A subset of users and mods attempted a bit of a revolution on
| Reddit recently, you'll recall.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| I switched from Reddit to Lemmy and haven't been back more
| than a handful of times (and will never comment again). Turns
| out only a fraction of users did the same, so not sure it was
| an efficient protest.
|
| I'm happy about the quality of discussion in Lemmy, although
| it would be nice to have more niche communities. On the other
| hand, the enshittification of Reddit is for sure not over, so
| I'm happy to have left that timesink earlier rather than
| later.
| ornornor wrote:
| I've also deleted my account and never went back to Reddit.
| I will never create an account or comment on there again. I
| don't even miss it, turns out there are 15-20 years old
| forums with much higher quality information and
| participants about any niche subject I was using Reddit
| for. Thanks for opening my eyes /u/spez I guess :)
| CalRobert wrote:
| For what it's worth, Mastodon has been a nice community for
| me. I haven't really found my place in the lemmyverse.
| Maybe that's a good thing though.
| KirillPanov wrote:
| To use the Mastodon web application, please enable
| JavaScript. Alternatively, try one of the native apps for
| Mastodon for your platform.
| krapp wrote:
| ... yes, and?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Turns out only a fraction of users did the same, so not
| sure it was an efficient protest.
|
| The interesting question is, what makes an efficient
| protest? What is effective in what situations? How is it
| organized?
| colordrops wrote:
| Lemmy isn't some utopia either. There seem to be users of a
| particular political bent that if you breath in a way that
| slightly hints that you might not fully align with them,
| they follow you around every forum and harass you. I ended
| up replying to one of harassers in a nasty way, and it
| earned me a ban on the main instance without warning. I was
| fine with it though, as I was falling into the same shitty
| time-wasting use patterns that I found myself engaging in
| on Reddit and Twitter.
| wccrawford wrote:
| Lemmy wasn't ready for _all_ of Reddit 's users to switch,
| and I suspect it still isn't. But enough of them switched
| that it got critical mass, and the develops can focus on
| some pain points for a while.
|
| I've kept both my accounts, and I look at both... And I'm
| quite happy with Lemmy in comparison. Reddit does tend to
| both have more content and more comments, but they're
| generally lower-value to me than Lemmy's comments.
|
| I now check Lemmy first, and if I have more time to waste,
| check Reddit.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| That stunt was doomed to fail due to inconsistent messaging,
| goals, and total lack of solidarity.
|
| Reddit and its ilk are already dead. Even Lemmy's content
| starts to repeat itself due to 'cross posts' or other
| allegedly community building activities.
|
| The chief problem of these platforms is their gameability.
| Numbers create social 'games' and before you know it, nobody
| gives a shit what you're saying, they just want to say some
| short quip, make a number go up, and feel superior.
|
| It comes back around to the problem of: you can't solve
| social problems with more technology. Social media has a huge
| verifiability and trust problem.
|
| We need to do away with karma systems, because giving people
| power to silence each other only leads to abuse. Invitation
| trees as a social concept keeps people honest, at least if
| they don't want to piss off others who invited them or were
| invited by the same person.
|
| The group on Reddit really has no backbone. They folded as
| soon as their Reddit accounts were threatened. Real protest
| would've been gaming their system with bots (the same way
| they do!) And manipulating the narrative en masse.
|
| Nobody had anywhere to go except the Fediverse, and that has
| its own collection of issues.
|
| Social media is just not compatible with the way people
| socialize. It's a glamor and attention competition, and the
| winner gets... likes?
|
| But yeah, to call that half-assed protest a revolution is
| somewhat of an insult to activism.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Yes... and to be honest, it appears to have failed miserably.
|
| And that was with Reddit. Try inciting a full scale
| revolution against Google and Amazon, for what they are right
| now. It's not happening.
|
| I've honestly come to the conclusion that 98%+ of people...
| don't give a darn about "computational freedom." And, to be
| honest, why should they? They have so many other demands on
| their lives than an argument about what software they can run
| on their phone. As long as it runs what they are used to,
| they don't care. The market also shows this as well. If
| "computational freedom" was something that most people
| _actually cared about_ , Linux would not be sitting with ~2%
| market share.
|
| I also have found that most people _like appliances_. We
| argue against appliances - like, why would you want your
| phone to be a dumb appliance considering everything it could
| possibly do? I 've even seen Right-to-Repair and other people
| (I believe Cory included) screeching about how Apple has
| turned smartphones into appliances. For most people though...
| that's a feature, not a bug. Appliances mostly just work.
| "Computers" in their mind, don't. They don't _want_ their
| phone to be like their "computer". In which case, I think
| Microsoft bears the greater blame for permanently sullying
| what a "computer" feels like.
|
| Edit: And while I keep adding my thoughts, I think it is
| interesting how the App Store, despite literally restricting
| what customers can install, actually gives customers a very
| strong sense of "freedom." How many people install apps on
| Windows? Almost none - in part, because the openness of the
| platform made most people terrified to install, or even just
| download, anything. Customers aren't afraid of installing, or
| trying, anything from the App Store - so to them, the iPhone
| probably feels more free than their PC. While I generally
| support sideloading, I do get the sense that most people
| will, ironically, feel less free overall once it rolls out.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| ... and if the users and mods who led the "revolution" had
| gotten their way, reddit would have become even more reddit
| than it ever had been. I want a revolution that returns
| reddit to the way it was ten or so years ago when for the
| most part you could publish whatever you wanted (or a
| distributed alternative that was uncensorable), but they want
| a reddit revolution where nobody could publish _anything_
| unless it was groupthink approved.
| gdulli wrote:
| Once a big enough Eternal September hits a platform I don't
| think that kind of revolution is possible anymore. The
| tyranny of the docile will ensure that a big enough majority
| will always stick around regardless of how the platform
| degrades.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Surely that's ideal. Eternal September is not a desirable
| state and presumably the "docile" are not the desired
| compatriots. So that means that this is good. One can just
| go start Sawwit and Reddit will act as the lightning rod
| for the docile while the John Galts go to Sawwit.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Are online user revolutions a thing?
|
| How do you define that?
|
| People organizing themselves and changing their situation,
| successfully, is as old as time. Likely, you live in a country
| where democracy was forced on the powers-that-be in that way.
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