In the last few years I think sentiment on hacker news has shifted from libertarian leaning to much mored left leaning. The same happened on Reddit a few years before. Anyway, just my gut feeling, nothing scientific.

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radicalbyte an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I find it really hard to classify myself. I've always called myself a "libertarian" - I believe the best strategy to Civilization is to maximise freedom for anyone. As freedom enables enlightenment an enlightenment drives progress. To actually achieve that, in the real world, means that you have to distribute and limit power. That means limiting not only government power but also corporate power. That means regulation, strong regulators (breaking monopolies), policies to keep prices down (including rent/housing!) and to enable free market competition and innovation. And provide an economic system where risks can be taken, enabled by a social let (and social healthcare).

I felt that that was more common here 15 years ago before Big Tech pivoted into the cynical extractive and, in the case of the socials, net economic drag industry that it is now.

The really weird thing is that my views are considered both very right-wing (free markets, globalisation are great, maximal freedom, maximal responsibility, freedom of religion) and very left wing (strong regulation, policy to minimise rent/house prices, strong social net, progressive taxation and wealth limits, freedom to be LGBTQ+ etc).

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bitpush 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Keen observation both you and OP. We've gone from a sense of techno optimism to tech blaming.

Valid criticism is OK (I stand by crypto being a scam) but bring up any topic that is neutral to popular(VR, Autonomous Driving, LLM) and people are first to be luddites come out.

	▲	aylmao 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> We've gone from a sense of techno optimism to tech blaming. IMO this is simply because the tech industry isn't what it was 20+ years ago. We didn't have the monopolistic mammoths we have today, such ruthless focus on profiteering, or key figures so disconnected from the layperson. People hated on Microsoft and they were taken to court for practices that nowadays seem to be commonplace with any of the other big tech companies. A future where everyone has a personal computer was exciting and seemed strictly beneficial; but with time these "futures" the tech industry wants us to imagine have just gotten either less credible, or more dystopic. A future where everyone is on Facebook for example sounds dystopic, knowing the power that lays on personal data collection, the company's track record, or just what the product actually gives us: an endless feed of low-quality content. Even things that don't seem dystopic like VR seem kinda unnecessary when compared to the very tanginble benefit the personal computer or the internet brought about. There are more tangible reasons to not be optimistic nowadays.