p3x.deMeta is banning discussion of the 'Network State' concept; a Silicon Valley Oligarch-funded idea to replace American democracy with corporate government.
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Lughwww.usermag.co/p/meta-rep-flagged-critiques-of-…
as long as we get rollerball I guess I'm okay with it.
Lost my 20 year old FB account. Because I responded to a blatant "The South Will Rise Again" terror post by a bot. I as a joke said. "Can't wait to meet you in battle." and that was enough to ban me there. FB is protecting the hateful bigots that click on the Ai content.
Pay no attention to the fascist behind the curtain.
The fascist in front of the curtain is loud enough already.
Let's not forget how we got here though cause if we do forget & survive this round, won't be long before it comes back. I'm specifically referring to the pro-genocide candidate that we were all lied to about their cognition until we all saw the emperor had no clothes. Then they anointed the Cheney supporter that couldn't think of anything she'd do differently.
That's not really the root cause. Capitalism is closer to the root.
Money gets people elected.
Many of the ultra wealthy are bought in on the idea of cyclical history where things go golden age, decadent age, disaster, GOTO 1
So they fund the side that is most likely to wreck things, happy in the delusion that that must cause a golden age
Then business prefers weak government and little regulation
Then business wants more workers so they support whatever might get more babies born
So less capitalism, more unchecked capitalism and high inequality, and propaganda directed at those in power and the fact that to win in a 2 party democracy you just need to appeal to the bulk of people
Lol. Capitalism isn't going away anytime soon. Democrats absolutely could have won if they actually stood for anything other than themselves.
Sure, but a big part of why they don't do better is they want to continue the capitalist hellscape where a few people benefit from "owning" most everything.
Because that is the system people are subscribed to. You want big change & to take on capitalism you need a V for Vendetta. The system is built on capitalism. The best chance we'd prob have right now to take on capitalism is someone with a popular agenda that is good at acting, but once elected as President they basically say... Ha, now I'm immune & will use my platform to try to get rid of capitalism. They'd probably get assassinated real quick though. Or a complete collapse of the system.
not with that attitude
Thanks for supporting trump because you're a great morally pure saint
I'm a lot more moral than genocide supporters
Did you vote against Trump, or were you too "moral"?
I absolutely voted against Trump for Jill Stein.
You're a genocide supporter who lies
Prove it. I bet you voted for a candidate that said they support Israel unconditionally.
fair, but Harris would have won without election rigging. Voter suppression and forced provisional ballots that were never counted.
You realize Trump supports Russia (genocide of Ukrainians and minority ethnicities) and gave Israel the green light to continue on. Right?
Trump wants to start a war with Canada and Greenland. Right?
Seems like you fully support genocide. Despite having the audacity to claim otherwise.
I don't support Trump & didn't vote for him. Why in your mind does criticizing something about Democrats equate to being a Trump supporter? Maybe you should have been more critical of Democrats prior to the election & we wouldn't be in this mess.
idk calling the Democratic candidate "Pro-Genocide" (They are not, no matter how much you claim they are), while letting the literal pro-genocide candidate off scott free.
Lol, you had the Biden "proud Zionist" admin literally vetoing UN resolutions demanding a ceasefire. Instead every answer was "we'll always stand by Israel & give them money to continue." Clearly if you believe that isn't pro genocide then you're living in a different pretend reality.
Look, I much prefer any Democratic administration over a Republican one but it's ABSOLUTELY correct to say the Democratic Party supports a genocide. They clearly didn't respect international law nor did they comply with arrest warrants for Netanyahu. They also continued to fund Israel after human rights violation after human rights violation. What is that other than sheer, explicit support of a genocide?
Streisand effect: I had never heard of the “network state” until now. Uh, thanks for being such an asshole, Zuck!
I just found out like a week ago. Look up techno feudalism. Apparently these guys have been talking about it for a long time.
Curtis Yarvin is the guy peddling this shit and influencing these idiots
There's a whole video that blew up a couple weeks ago about this. Highly recommend you watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no
Yep, and this came out before a lot of shit talked about fucking happened.
This is exactly the video I was going to share. It's really scary realizing how much closer they are to pulling it off since the video was made
@magnetosphere@fedia.io
This video is a must watch. She exposing some crazy shit in this video.
You’re going to have to spread it IRL, because the media will not allow this to gain traction.
https://www.vcinfodocs.com/venture-capital-extremism
Next Reddit will start banning you for upvoting anything about it.
Please share this document far and wide. People need to understand what's going on, to stop it.
Just double checked, and it's archive both on org and is. That's good.
It's fascist city states that market themselves as tax free libertarian, likely hedonistic. Tech has little (maybe ultra deregulated healthcare) to do with anything other than billionaires who came from tech get to decide who is allowed in. This is a model in Israel and Arab kingdoms with less hedonism, but high slavery levels.
The US is definitely on path to collapse. Current administration is accelerating it. Gifting federal lands to become tax havens is setting it to 11.
Many of these tech bros also talk about an actual solution: Freedom dividends. High tax libertarianism with freedom for all. Power redistribution. Don't compete for jobs we can't do as well as China or robots. Or spend on/promote war. Freedom dividends ends crimes and makes fair labour markets. Fascism and slavery as the "libertarian utopian phoenix from ashes of US" is going to be straight mad max fascism and slavery instead of utopia.
That's because you're the one breaking it down
Fuck them and u/Spez. They can ban me for all i care
This man has a bunker and everything. He's scared shitless and he is ready to hide. Their assets need to be seized and accounts drained
That's not a joke, ALL these dudes have extensive doomsday prep. Secure facilities, staffed and stocked. There's a ton of reporting on it. They're gonna fare a LOT better than we are if shit gets really outta hand. Unless we do something about them before it gets to that point, anyway.
Edit: added a detail
They are going to get killed by their own militias
If you had billions, wouldn't you have a prepper facility? Even if there were no global warming or political upheaval, it's common sense when you have money like that.
"Hey, want to build a doomsday shelter for .0001% of your net worth?"
"Meh, why not."
They don't necessarily have to see bad times coming is my point.
No? If I ACTUALLY wanted to ride out through some sort of apocalypse, a bunker ain't gonna cut it. I would bankroll and actively participate in a fully self-sustaining off-the-grid community. Rich people always forget the second part, probably because they are psychopaths. Remember that article where they were asking about putting shock collars on their bunker security guys? If they literally just got beers with them once a week, they'd probably shoot all the migrants you ask them to. It's an irony that they consider their time 'too valuable' for that, as it turns out that the one thing you can't buy is a sense of community.
Of course, I would endeavor to not own several billion dollars of stolen property in the first place, but different strokes.
It was explosive collars, like from battle royale
I would too, but I would also be worried about the idea of being sealed in. Concrete is cheap. So is welding and thermite.
You are correct, but also when you look at the aggregate of their behavior and goals (both stated and implied) you have to reach the conclusion that they WANT to use the bunker. Or want a scenario in which it becomes useful.
The scary part is that you might be wrong, they may not even realize they're causing it and are just stuck in a loop of "number go up"
Yeah, I feel like most of them are stuck in 'number go up', but I also think that the desire to make your investment 'worth it' gets stronger the more money you pour into a bunker system.
Looking at stock markets, very few numbers are going up
Imagine just letting him be in his bunker, but you park a cement truck on top of the door.
Can we put them in there now?
You think we could pull a "Blast from the Past" and think Zuck into thinking the world is ending so he rushes to his bunker?
Other people saw that?
Why wait? Cement the bunkers before they can hide in them!
His bunker on a Hawaiian Island. Dude really wants to be far away from everything when shit pops off.
The Native Hawaiians will take care of him
It would be most justice most poetic for the coup against Queen Lili'uokalani carried out by American business interests.
What I'm hearing is that after we overthrow the government and Destroy capitalism we have to dig him out of a bunker in Hawaii and put him on trial
Just weld the door closed. Problem solved.
Certainly would be less hassle than a trial.
Don't forget the air vents
That's where you pile the poop
Or, hold a trial, and if convicted, we seal him in his bunker and bury it and cut it off from all outside contact. And depending on the severity of his conviction, plugging up every "air hole" could go along as capital punishment. Give him a very twilight zone ending, he wanted to hide in his bunker, and now he'll spend the rest of his life in it, however long that may be.
Don't plug them up - fart in them.
I've never been to Hawaii, but I'll show up for that 😎
Yeah because when I think about kicking off world wars, the last locale on my mind is Hawaii
Bunker on a tropical island you say? Don't worry, I know of some people that have some notes on that. Any secrets he has about that thing are practically out by now.
This is either a shit post or I'm looking at something glowing radioactive hot and I can't tell which.
The native Hawaiians should reclaim their land he stole so he doesn't have a bunker anymore
Crypto exchanges need to be taxed.
We are already living in a country being run by Elon Musk.
Peter thiel* is a bigger puppet master, he just doesn't want to be the face. He wants the world to collapse so he can rebuild it into his techno feudalism dream. This is all to plan
Now I know what Alex Jones would say if he were on the left
Tesla tubby is illegitimate parasite leeching on American government and taxpayer...
Federal government needs to consume some ivermectin
corporation*
Reddit is shadow banning people like crazy as well. This is scary
what's the difference between government censorship, and corporate censorship by organs closely tied to the government, and corporate censorship by organs closely tied to the government where certain phrases are randomly declared punishable by death?
Yeah, I was shadowbanned twice in a week because Reddit filters are garbage.
What does shadow banning typically look like? I would assume you don't get a notification? How do you find out?
Logout and browse your user profile page via old.Reddit it'll say banned or suspended.
Ah. That's even easier. Good to know how to quickly check.
you do a thing, but there are no interactions. maybe in only certain contexts. so to you it appears as if you're engaging, but your posts and sometimes reactions/votes don't show up except to you.
haha. seeing as I don't usually get much interaction I would never notice.
switched to lemmy as main platform on my phone a few days ago anyway. when boost for reddit finally was blocked completely. will try to be more active here and hope many other people do the same... there is a good chance with all that's going on.
yeah I probably wouldn't notice if everyone else in town was replaced by robots tomorrow until I went and tried to feed randos and found they didn't eat anymore.
Hmm. Will try it some time. Sometimes it feels like being shadow-banned.... but TBH it's more likely just not so active communities / mediocre contribution on my part.
Of course they are. They'll ban discussion of democracy next, and then voting.
We edge closer to Weyland-Yutani hegemony every day, only the IRL technocrats will be stupider and greedier
I associate it with "The Space Merchants" and their corporate congress.
It's a really good book written in 1952 and talks about climate change, rampant corporate greed, synthetic meat... Really good read.
Humanity: invents capitalism government
Engineers: Hold my dark fluid, I’ve got a mistake to fix
Zuckerberg:( hello fellow organic lifeform, you must not converse in my take over of your limited lifespan
Damn right they should!
Managed Democracy is the true path, all who resist it shall suffer our wrath~.
(I hate the possibility that this could be a real thing in the future)
Delete your facebook products.
If you know someone who works at facebook, try to convince them to leave.
If you see someone who's in a leadership position at Facebook bleeding out, perhaps after a car accident because their brakes were sabotaged, let them die.
i wish. if i delete whatsapp ill be completely isolated, even from some businesses. sadly they cornered the entire market in my country including sms.
it would unironically take a big outage for everyone to move though. heres hoping an industrious hacker is willing to paint that kind of target on their own back.
i've been trying to get people to switch platforms for years. it's not easy. if only people cared more about things than they want convenience...
Speedrunning to cp2077, starting with the corpo wars
I am a Taco Bell man myself. Gotta side with winners, ya know?
They will have a gun that induces violent diarrhea. I guarantee it.
I love a good
pizzatacoReally I'd wager it's more Snow Crash myself, it's a book that most of these Silicon Valley guys would have grown up with.
Cyberpunk 2077 was just a continuation of Cyberpunk 2020, which came out before Snow Crash.
In reality, I think the tech bros pull from all sorts of media and don't restrict themselves to just one bible.
That's a good point. Snow Crash does lean heavily into the metaverse in a way that is very aligned with Zuckerberg's concept of it. I remember early interviews with some silicon valley guys and when Stephenson was the darling out there l, like with the early Xbox guys or Google Earth.
Maybe Cyberpunk was popular too but just didn't break through to more mainstream news.
I am but a sample size of one, but I've got a copy of CP2020 and not Snow Crash, haha.
And here I have a copy of snow crash but not the 2020 books
Shut down and delete your data on your US tech accounts. Their business's are worthless without our accounts.
It's a process, start today! With the easy ones and work towards the hard ones.
Agreed.
Corporations can't even run corporations well. That's one of the lessons we should've took from 2008.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no
WATCH THIS IF YOURE NOT SURE WHAT HES BANNING THE DISCUSSION OF
It's terrifying
Yup, this is a very important video. She's hardly the first to address it too.
Very important video indeed
The Network State is just feudalism updated to accommodate a new set of vile and toxic elitist shitheads.
Pay no attention to the man-child behind the curtain.
Delay, Deny, [*redacted*]
Wait, corporate government, like in cyberpunk?
My friends have been describing America now as cyberpunk without the cybernetics. We have no neuromancers
Basically. I mean there's a bit more to it than that but it's the core idea. It's also the goal of several tech oligarchs which is why he doesn't want the peons to be able to talk about it.
Nah. Like in Snowcrash.
The term cyberpunk was first used to describe settings such as Snowcrash, i.e. dystopian corporate sci-fi, before it was adopted as a name for the gaming franchise.
I'm not sure if the person you are replying to was using it as a noun or an adjective, I parsed it is an adjective because it's more inclusive.
Anyway.. using cyberpunk to refer to the game franchise, would be a disambiguation. This is the article referring to the original usage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk?wprov=sfla1
They're both nouns, but I get what you mean.
Yep, I just want more people to read the book because I like it. Cyberpunk the game rocks, Snowcrash rocks.
I was referring to cyberpunk as a genre and theme, I remembered some things after reading this post like shadowrun, cyberpunk ttrpg, Gibson's books, system shock, etc.
Yeah, I just tend to think of that stuff as corporate feudalism. And I learned that concept from playing shadowrun as a kid and then getting into other cyberpunk stuff.
And yeah, it seems to be the direction we are headed. Elon musk is a fan of blade runner and I don't think he identifies with the poor people but the rich CEO.
I'm reading the Sprawl trilogy along with Shelved By Genre, and Gibson harps on the note that 'the Ultra Rich aren't human', and has some great examples in the books.
I think he was very observant, and Musk makes it so blatant.
Everyone needs to GTFO facebook. We can hardly do it because every other HOA and School PTA is there, but we get stop using messenger and stop having personal discussions over there.
I was fortunate that my partner never used Facebook, so I got to hold "communication with their sibling/child" over their heads and get the family chat onto signal. That was my last thing I had to do before I could delete my account
The most fun was sending a message to each of the Facebook friends: hi (name) I'm deleting my Facebook account, if you want to contact me online I can be reached on signal at (signal ID)
My wife and I were on Facebook Messenger a lot. Then she started pointing out every time we would talk about any topic she would get ads for it. I talked her into using signal.
We added the teenager into it, now the only serious problem I have is the little one could stand to be on the family chat in signal but he doesn't have a phone number.
I tried making an account for him with my Google voice number, for some reason it refused on his Wi-Fi only tablet. So I made him an account using my real phone number, then remade my account using my Google voice number on my phone which worked, But now his signal account flips back and forth between his name and my name and it's just very confused. It's good enough but I wish there was some way you could do signal without having to do a phone number. Especially a sub account for kids you know...
I thought I heard recently about signal allowing a different ID system, but I think that's about not having to share your phone number, as against them IDing you with a phone number which I expect they will keep doing
It used to surface your number to all your contacts, now they only see your handle.
Still have to use a phone number to sign up.
Don't accept it when organizations require you to sign up and hand over personal information to private and commercial third parties.
Requiring Facebook is an active attempt at curbing participation.
Oh they can't force you. You can always rely on the pta just to send you papers home and backpacks and you don't really need to talk to your neighbors or have them report problems in a public forum
There's enough value for these places that I still go back to Facebook for it, they're not forcing me. They just make it worth it.
Yeah that's them network effects
Contact those places and ask for an alternative -the less people participate the quieter the discussions the more likely they are to at least try to switch over if they start feeling some pressure.
I agree that it needs to happen but contacting these places and asking them for an alternative is a lot like contacting a deep sea tube worm and asking it to learn brain surgery.
They're probably capable of moving from one social platform to another, But it's a lot of work and they're destroying their network every time so they're highly resistant.
If Apple wasn't such a pain in the ass about notification services We could probably crowdsource NTFY and let everyone use it for schools non-profits and such
The best we could expect us for them to move to Blue sky. Health in my case half of them just recently moved off Twitter.
Yeah, I dumped facebook right after the election but unfortunately most of my friends and family are only on WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is a serious problem. There are quite a number of countries that are running a lot of their business through it.
Oh, this is the 15-minute cities they’re scared of.
Fucking insane how these people twist a good idea in to something evil, then support the evil version of that idea.
I think they do that on purpose. These powerful players not the idiots voting for them.
Quit Meta... problem solved
I have another solution, it's a little bloodier
Free rare steaks for anyone who quits! But how will we pay for it...
any terminally ill people down to go down in history as a fucking chad with a rifle or a drone?? anyone??
We're all terminally ill on a long enough timeline.
So... Was that an offer to be our chad?
im canadian, i wouldnt want to cause ww3 by assassinating a foreign leader.
Sorry Americans, this is your mess, you gotta clean it up this time :/
dude, if a canadian assassinated any american leaders, I'd just think more highly of canadians.
plus, they're gonna invade you at some point anyway.
not that it should be your responsibility. the travel costs alone; oof. there are people who walk by these bastards every day.
To be fair, American democracy was replaced with corporate Government a long long time ago.
Ya, but now you can't talk about it.
America was never a democracy in the first place
For a little bit there it had a shot, though
I had never heard about the "Network State" concept before, but now I hate it, because Zuckerberg sure as hell loves it
the only reason to ban it is if it’s their plan
Someone else already posted it, but I'll post it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no
Just another reason to abandon social networks owned by big tech companies and moving to decentralized open source social networks.
fuck facebook
facefuck facebook
Fuck book
Hot singles want to FUCK in your area
Edit: I guess no one saw the raunchy pop up ads back in the day for "fuckbook?"
Hrmm. I wonder why they would censor such a conspiratorial idea? Unless...
In modern day the difference between tin foil conspiracy and out right conspiracy appears to be about 6 months
Welcome to Facebook the capital of Meta country, jokes aside, they are banning because it's a long term thing and they are scared of it derailing if too many people know.
He doesn't want his plans posted.
Really liked the article.
They are afraid
I'm curious what people think of the author, Taylor Lorenz? I noticed I have her blocked on some social media and couldn't remember why. I searched a little and found she had referred to Biden as a war criminal on WaPo, just prior to the election. Probably when I started blocking everything I didn't think was generative in terms of news. I still think it's a shit-take but am wondering if I'm just being thin-skinned? Is she a decent writer? Should we be following her? This is definitely an important story to follow. Anyhow, I have moved onto getting my stories from rss readers and some social media, no paid subscriptions to legacy MSM. So, scrutinizing individual writers becomes more critical.
She's been caught in some stealth edits and other unethical practises when trying to push a specific narrative. I don't trust her reporting very much after following her work during the Depp-Heard trial in '22.
It is unfortunate that her need to push her, or her publishers, agenda appears to be more important than honest reporting, and I'm saying this as a very left-leaning, queer person.
(//Edited to correct the year of the Depp-Heard trial. Covid times were strange and it all blends together.)
Ah, now that does start to ring a bell. Thank you.
What did she do during Depp v. Heard?
She was staunchly pro-Heard, which in and of itself isn't a problem. However, she lied about reaching out to pro-Depp commentators (some of whom were lawyers) for comments for a piece she wrote, and the article was then stealth-edited after she got called out by several commentators.
Together with her later insistence that she did not share a meme calling Biden a war criminal, only to later admit to doing exactly that, I don't find her reporting particularly trustworthy. I try to verify her facts from other sources, and I mostly avoid her opinion pieces.
Here’s a similar article discussing the techno-libertarian movement from a different author. Covers similar themes and explicitly discusses the Network State as an ideology
Thank you.
She might be the one that Libs of Tiktok has an unhealthy stalkery lady boner for.
She is a decent left leaning reporter. She is a good writer
Thanks. That's the sense I got. I'll follow her again, I guess. (or maybe not)
Let him continue live inside the metaverse
Isn't that already happening ?
Thats a weird way of saying fascism
That makes sense. I bet lobbyist play a big roll into that. Is it the lobbyists jobs that are bad or the way and the people who take the jobs are bad?
https://annas-archive.org/md5/5f4fceb8f21891438a4a2d98713c8932
This wicked man has to be boycotted, destroyed economically.
And the fuck up samurai, we have new CEOs to [redacted]
Preventing cheating in elections is impossible (LoOk aT 2020!!!11), so to ensure a fair democratic process, we'll automatically choose the outcome of elections with AI models trained on American social media posts.
The real title:
"Meta rep flagged 'critiques of tech industry figures' as 'sensitive or controversial content'"
The idea isn't necessarily tied to oligarchy or fascism or anything like that. It originates in the early ideals of the Internet where people hoped its anarchic energy could be a force for freedom. Things have not really shaken out like that, e.g. the net ended up being dominated by tech giants rather than a profileration of small websites, and China's Great Firewall showed how states can put swathes of the internet under their thumb after all. But some of us still buy into some of that spirit (though the Network State idea itself is unrealistic). Heck, Lemmy and the Fediverse are a part of that.
I agree. Coming together to build something scientifical or technological that doesn't involve the government doesn't necessarily mean coming up with corporate money to fund and exclude everyone but their personal interests.
This is a social endeavor like any other. You can't blaim bringing people together for the corporate interests of this kind of enterprise (the Network State).
Deleted by author
I am just hearing the end of 2112 by Rush, the guitars and effects wailing as a vocoded voice repeats 'WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL'...
Guess we can consider that a confession.
Zuckerberg, go play with your BBS and let us worry about what needs to be discussed in this myopic, dystopic world.
I've been reading a little about this concept and can't see how it would work in reality. Sure, the Feds could "set aside" some land for one of these assholes to set up a new city. But that area would still be under the concurrent jurisdiction of a state and county. And not even the Feds can exempt a city from a state's regulatory environment. In fact most of the things these billionaires are trying to get away from (labor laws, building codes, etc) are state regulations in the first place.
Frankly no billionaire is going to want to live in the middle of South Dakota, no matter how "free" it supposedly is.
I believe the idea is that Trump is likely to sell our national parks to them.
That's the current conspiracy gossip I believe.
Deleted by author
Everyone seems to forget a bunch of tech bros bought almost $1B worth of land in Solano County CA with the stated goal of building a new city. It made national headlines for a bit as the buyer was initially a mystery and it’s near Travis Air Force base so there was concern it was foreign actors.
Rich people trying to buy land for their own slice of paradise goes way back.
Solano County is recent history, young squire.
I go back to the Free State project from 2001, same song and dance.
Or the non-government wet dream of Sealand off the coast of England in 1987, ditto.
And if one wants to go even more old school than that, look at the rich Confederate plantation owners that went to Brazil after the CSA fell in 1865. You can even go down to the town of Americana every year and celebrate the Confederacy! These fuckers wanted to deny that they lost so badly that they created a false reality in Brazil.
It won't be the Billionaires who have to live in places like South Dakota, it will be their workers/slaves who will.
Link to the video
I thought these tech guys all believed in 1Aand free speech?
Lol what gave you that impression
Fucking shit article.
Different network state to Bilajis? Since that was always opt in afaik.
From the website from the book.
https://thenetworkstate.com/
Seems like zuck trying to take the Name again like he came up with it, eg Meta.
Networks are opt in, just like meta product's.
They’re not opt-in when the government is fully captured. They’re not opt-in like every battle against corporate takeover we’ve lost over the last several decades, from net neutrality to effective monopolies to Musk wreaking havoc in the government.
Even without government/regulatory capture. The network effect makes not participating more costly as the network grows. Meaning you can still lose even if you don't play.
That’s the idea.
Years ago I thought Balaji was a genius. But now he's just a rich guy who thinks just because he's smart and has a a crowd he can weigh in on everything.
The idea that a "network state" where an on-line community using NFTs as passports to sleep on each other's couch would somehow be recognized by actual countries makes for a cool sci-fi plot (I'd read that!). But it has no place in reality.
Neal Stephenson, "The Diamond Age". Probably the post-cyberpunk novel. Within the setting the existence and status of phyles is certainly well-grounded, actually quite analogous to bog-standard cyberpunk -- instead of corporations supplanting nation states because they do manage to be more powerful there's a mixture of weak nation states and value/ideology-based tribes which constitute full societies not mere corporations, and have different power specialisations. If you have enough economical power, engineering prowess, hacking prowess, reasoning is that you can not just go toe to toe with nation states you can force concessions.
Also side note there's entities which are not nation states which are (almost) universally recognised as sovereign by proper states: The Holy See, and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. The latter is more of a protocol quirk, the Holy See actually works actively for that status by being a diplomatic powerhouse without any real-world power to back it up, opens quite a couple of diplomatic doors which would otherwise be closed. They use it to mediate and get stuff like human cloning banned on the UN level, aware that they can't actually push Catholic doctrine (most of the world wouldn't care), but need to convince.
That all said though yes the fever dreams of cryptobros have no place in reality. They're not CryptNet, they just like to larp as it.
Never read Diamond Age, I'll put it on my list. Thanks for the reply and recommendation.
So the rest of the predictive nature of cyberpunk is OK but the network state won't happen? 😃
Yes