Rug pulls, forks, and open-source feudalism

> 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"

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.

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.