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by misterbishop 978 days ago
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.
2 comments
Apocryphon 978 days ago
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

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yreew 977 days ago
Communism/Soviet in a nutshell.
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mrbadguy 977 days ago
Could you please elaborate on this? Your reply is witty but it seems to me that those companies only start doing shady things once they become more capitalist (ie try to “monetize”) so I’m curious to hear more.
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antifa 977 days ago
Nothing to elaborate, a brave HN user just needed to finally take a stance and let everyone on the English speaking internet know they agree with one of the most popular opinions on the English speaking internet.
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gruez 977 days ago
>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.

China has a "WORKERS PARTY". How's that working for them? Or is that not a true "WORKERS PARTY"?

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antifa 977 days ago
> you can't do anything nice for workers, otherwise you transform into an exact clone of China

wow never thought of it like that

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