[throwayay5837]

I feel a similar sense of confusion at the overall reaction from HN. Ten years ago there would have been unanimous disapproval.

Has the userbase changed so much? If this is hackernews, what about the general population of developers?

[stormbeard]

I don't think anyone can assume that every comment on HN comes from a real human anymore. This law comes from the same nation that gave us Cambridge Analytica.

HN is a large enough forum that it would be included in any serious propaganda campaign.

[HaZeust]

Times are dark now; people jaded, perspectives eroded. There's not much holding dreams hostage anymore.

I wish there was a refund for all the wasted time on propaganda.

[AdrianB1]

Yes, the userbase changed quite a lot. Supporters of autocratic governments are in greater numbers, especially from EU based on what I see but also an increased number from SV. I have a passion for sociology, but I did not figure out completely this shift in a way I can prove it.

[VonGuard]

Hacker News users now profit from extensive invasion of privacy, from Facebook to LinkedIn, to every ad network, VPN, ISP, etc... They all trade in our private info daily. 20 years ago, the battle cry was around privacy and government monitoring of all traffic and how bad that was. Now people climb over one another to give away their data for free in exchange for mind-altering social media platforms and AI driven nonsense.

I am convinced Libertarians do not exist. The current state of the US should drive them to utter insanity, and yet, they tend to be mostly silent on all of these corporate over reach issues. People who say they are Libertarian just don't want to pay parking tickets. If the real techno Libertarians existed, they'd be burning our current Valley to the ground. Anyone who cared about the 2nd amendment should be losing their minds over military deployments on US soil. Constitution huggers should be screaming bloody murder, daily. Instead, those types are super happy with their new dictator. Funny how all the performative anger goes away when it's their side that is performing the authoritarian actions. The NRA seems to LOVE this willing take over of the well armed militias by the federal government... But I digress.

Instead, the reigning philosophy here is now greed. Privacy, sovereignty, ownership, open source, all those things are forgotten in the backseat of the crypto and VC cash car.

It surprises me how little the newer generations care about ethics, morality, principles. Call them whatever you want, but it really feels like everyone screams about how righteous they are, how wrong everyone else is, and then they take the cash and stand up for nothing when the chips are down.

Remember when the big thing we were worried about was the NSA recording our phone calls? Now large corporations harvest our call info, chat texts, social media posts, and even the raw microphone input on our phones to strip every last piece of information about us and mine it for data to influence our lives, purchases, and even out thoughts. And what did we do in the last election? We put in the party that will remove even more roadblocks from this type of thing, and has deregulated crypto. Victory!

How did we get here? Where are the Cypherpunks? Where are the high ideals we used to have?

All burned alive at the altar of money.

[star-glider]

I think it's less that HN users profit from privacy invasion as much as some of them aspire to run companies that do so. Perhaps a distinction without a difference.

[account42]

Yeah it's like how people constantly vote for laws that benefit only those better off than themselves because that's where they are in their heads - they're not regular folk, they're just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

[efnx]

The cypherpunks are still here, working hard everyday, but we’re a small group.

[cypherjohn2816]

Where, doing what? How does one get involved?

[RankingMember]

In their bedrooms dusting off their sneakers and 1.44MB diskettes. :P

For real though, IRC is still where old-school nerds are still out there chatting in my experience.

[efnx]

I recently joined the zcash team, but there are other groups out there doing good through open source.