Rug pulls, forks, and open-source feudalism

You worldview is incredibly foreign to me, but I'll try to engage fairly with it.

> the US right wing looked like it was about to build a complete alternative internet for a while there

This would seem to imply that the established internet, what we had before this relenting, was somehow left wing. Is that an accurate description of your view? When did this relenting take place?

> they just partially marginalised when the censorship backed off.

Is it your position that Truth Social (the social network started by the current president of the united states) is currently a marginalized space?

> That isn't how feudal revolts work in my understanding; typically peasants just got squished by better armed, armoured and organised soldier classes.

I think it's interesting that you posit this as a fight between the "peasants" and the "soliders". I'm assuming, to make sense of your analogy, that the "peasants" in this case is the current president of the united states and Elon Musk. the "soliders" would then be "Jeff Bezos" and "Sundar Pichai"

>This would seem to imply that the established internet, what we had before this relenting, was somehow left wing.

I would omit the left-wing characterization as a debatable generalization. Perhaps it would be better described as the specific platforms being opposition partisans, rather than the Internet itself.

> Perhaps it would be better described as the specific platforms being opposition partisans

I'm sympathetic to such an argument, but it does beg the question: Which platforms? The original comments choices of singling out Rumble and Truth Social, would imply that YouTube and Twitter would at least be _among_ those "specific platforms" but neither of those platforms are, at least according to the left, particularly left wing. Both platform have repeatedly been criticized for creating and propagating structures that lead people down what was called "the alt-right pipeline" and has, historically, hosted some of the most active alt-right figureheads.

That's not to say either platform is or was right-wing either. I'm not the one making an argument. Though I'm not convinced they were particularly left-wing or partisan before the creation of Rumble and Truth Social.

Exactly; there are many mechanism in-place that allow us (anybody) to create alternatives if the currently dominant players start to misbehave too much; they just have not

Just to be clear, I never said anything about the left wing. I don't think they were involved in that one. Suppressing speech is generally opposed by the leftists.

> they're only sticky as long as they do a good job

> Groups like AWS or Google are actually pretty vulnerable (...) build a complete alternative internet for a while there until the management in tech relented and allowed them to speak up in public

The part of AWS or Google infrastructure necessary to "speak up in public", relative to their total infrastructure, is probably close to the tiniest number you can imagine. I can't see how an alternative web forum or short text message service, even if used and supported by many, could make AWS or Google vulnerable. And as a reminder, the public is not a customer for Google nor AWS.

Or maybe by "the US right wing" you meant a handful of billionaires who would fund an alternative to Google and AWS? That still sounds naive to me. The estimated assets of Google or AWS in datacenters only is somewhere in the hundredth of billions, plus a good fraction of that every year for maintenance. Their current valuation is between $2 and $3 trillion.

Having no exeprience about peasants revolts (yet ;)) I only meant to comment on that part of your message.

> This would seem to imply that the established internet, what we had before this relenting, was somehow left wing. Is that an accurate description of your view? When did this relenting take place?

No, the left wing wasn't really involved. It looked from the outside like a pocket of authoritarians settled in the US intelligence services. Given the priorities of the Trump establishment on starting Term 2 when they moved very quickly to gut the US propaganda services I think Trump's people came to a similar view. And the relenting came when it was obvious that the companies involved were going to start suffering commercial consequences. Or, in cases like Twitter, got bought out by prominent right-wing figures.

> Is it your position that Truth Social (the social network started by the current president of the united states) is currently a marginalized space?

Yeah. It isn't really operating on the same scale as Twitter and it only exists because Twitter felt the obvious way to construe "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th." was as glorification of violence [0]. It's commercial wisdom is unclear.

> I think it's interesting that you posit this as a fight between the "peasants" and the "soliders".

I'm almost positing the opposite, NOT(it is a fight between peasants and soldiers). That is why I think the feudal meme is a mistake - this isn't a situation where the powers that be in the tech world can actually bring consequences down on a class of people. The people have freedom.

[0] It was bizarre. I've kept a copy of Titter's announcement saved to disk as a reminder of how crazy groupthink can get. Anyone willing to state such a stupid theory in public has to believe it.

And there are mechanism that restrict you. The article states it too: There is a resource (for software, id add knowhow) asymmetry and market innertia at play here.

Otherwise, im am really wishing for alternative payment processors ... could someone proove me wrong here please.

I have 0 trouble understanding why Twitter didn't want to be whipping up fury against democracy using their power to do so. Six days before that ban Trump had definitively crossed the line over to full-blown treason with the Reffensperger call. Two days before the ban he sat quietly, waiting and hoping a mob of his supporters whipped up by his verbal diarrhea would sieze power for him, ending democracy. Make no mistake, Twitter did exactly what they had every legal and moral obligation to do.

> The people have freedom.

I repeat my other reply:

The article states it too: There is a resource (for software, id add knowhow) asymmetry and market innertia at play here.

Feudalism is formed by birth right privileges, excluding peasants or merit. With a look to present wealth distribution mechanisms (inheritance), its is no far fetch to apply that polarization effect to software infrastructure too, because software isnt really that immaterial.

> Feudalism is formed by birth right privileges, excluding peasants or merit

Lots of systems have that property, including many democracies (the UK political system, for example, is quite democratic yet embraces birthright privilege excluding peasants). It doesn't characterise or get to the important parts of feudalism.

unless you make that privilege about a universal resource like money, which can be translated to political power. You are right, many societies have that feudalism-like problem (social mobility), when you look at it that way, even without a royal family.

https://www.wired.com/story/yanis-varoufakis-technofeudalism...

> No, the left wing wasn't really involved.

That's fair. You didn't mention the left wing at any point, and I made an assumption.

This is veering quite quickly into unsubstantiated claims of collusion and conspiracy. You're weaving a network of secret deep state authoritarians secretly colluding with tech CEOs, and leaving no trace. It's honestly pretty close to QAnon, which is a huge red flag for me. I can't follow you there, and therefore can't make any substantial arguments for you.

What I would like to point out is the historical revisionism of Elon Musk buying twitter to weed out the subversive forces. He tried to get out of the deal, but the establishment forced him to see it through.

> I've kept a copy of Titter's announcement saved to disk as a reminder of how crazy groupthink can get. Anyone willing to state such a stupid theory in public has to believe it.

The announcement twitter made mentions that you have to take those tweets in context of the whole Jan 6. insurrection event. When you say that it's not incitement of violence, should I take that to mean you believe that the armed insurrection was not connected to Donald Trump? or do you believe that it was but that the further tweets weren't a further escalation of that conflict?

> The people have freedom.

I understand your argument for that then. I would caution that by saying that your conclusion hinges heavily on whether you believe Donald Trump is actually a popular reformist, or if you believe he is an elitist authoritarian. Your argument is quite close to "This can't be feudalism, the lords wants what's best for us", which is a quite unconvincing argument.

> You're weaving a network of secret deep state authoritarians secretly colluding with tech CEOs, and leaving no trace.

I'm really not, I just read political news from time to time. The Twitter files [0] were front page material for a few weeks, there isn't really any argument about whether the big social media companies are coordinating with US intelligence. They have regular meetings and there is some cross-pollination of employees.

It's hardly traceless, and it is good stuff to keep abreast of.

> What I would like to point out is the historical revisionism of Elon Musk buying twitter to weed out the subversive forces.

Again, you seem to be reading more than I'm writing with this one. You asked when the relenting happened, I picked a rough date on the timeline. I don't think it is remotely controversial to say that he's made Twitter more accommodating for voices from the US right wing.

> When you say that it's not incitement of violence, should I take that to mean you believe that the armed insurrection was not connected to Donald Trump?

I mean, if we're talking about the ~100 people who turned up armed [1] then I think it would have been easier for Trump to maintain the element of surprise and just hire some goons rather than making whiny statements on Twitter that require a Doctorate of Crazy to detect violent intent. Maybe even arm them all with guns. He is said to be quite wealthy.

It is an interesting open question of how many of those hundred people decided to come armed because he wasn't going to attend the inauguration. Although I have always applauded Trump's ingenious follow-up of not attending said inauguration to make it look like he was serious rather than the modern Machiavellian puppetmaster he actually is.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...

BTC ecosystem is growing strong :) Especially the Lightning Network

Just compare X and Blue Sky. There may be some principled leftists who oppose suppressing speech, but in recent times, it has been the left that has been censoring/blocking peoples speech. Another comparison is what is actually censored. Of course there is a certain amount that would be censored by both sides - criticism of power.

I’ll just add that the quote in the comment you replied to was one of the least offensive things Trump said during that incident (if he even tweeted that).

The news ran a video of him inciting a riot, etc, etc.

> The Twitter files [0] were front page material for a few weeks

You're again making vague gesturing towards "coordination" and "regular meetings" in service of justifying claims of "a pocket of authoritarians settled in the US intelligence services". You must know that "regular meetings" don't signal "packet of authoritarians" to anybody but the most diehard conspiracy theorists. Who were these authoritarians? what were they doing? and how were they doing it? The "Twitter Files" holds none of these answers, having been widely reported (according to the Wikipedia page you linked) as being a misrepresentation of normal communication between governmental entities and private companies.

> Again, you seem to be reading more than I'm writing with this one.

I disagree that I'm making any assumption outside of what you've written there, but I'll leave it there.

> I mean, if we're talking about the ~100 people who turned up armed

You're not answering the question. From your tone I can tell your answer is most likely that you don't consider the armed insurrection of the US capitol building connected to Donald Trump. What caused it then? Does Trump have any culpability for letting armed people take part of his march?

The reason he used that quote is that it was _the_ tweet that caused Twitter to ban him, according to their press release. I agree that it should be viewed in context, and twitter even says as much in that press release, but he didn't cherry pick that quote.

I don't think we're going to get any further here, but I appreciate you taking the time to explain your worldview. It was very nice of you to answer all of my questions :)