apparently some Tumblr funnyman author decided to go to bat for "AI" (it was only a matter of time) and in addition to the same old weak defenses, they held up the EFF's AI opinions as another defense, despite the fact that the EFF has rightfully been criticized for how weak and naive those opinions are. "You can't regulate using AI because big companies would just ignore it/pay fines and do it anyway (amazing stance for an activist group to take)", or "you can't reform copyright to take into account AI because you would have to reform copyright law which is controlled by big companies and thus impossible (AMAZING stance for activists to take)". And another defense, not from the EFF but from a certain subsect of people who treat their stance as gospel, "You can't reform copyright law to actually be useful to small artists because don't you know art isn't labor, artists are all big corporations or ivory tower wine drinking brunch club elites, and anyone who actually wants things like royalties or to be able to live even in part from their artistic labor, let alone doesn't want the work they make fed to the garbage word scrambling genie machine are actually stealing from the "real poor"/are class traitors/etc."

Liberalism

*chorus of boos, some pelted fruit*

Yeah yeah, okay. I see a lot of hatred from both the hard left and the hard right for liberals. Taking the absolute worst examples of both sets of discourses, the right would seem to consider liberals agents of the communist agenda, where the left would consider liberals fascists-in-waiting.

I expect that from the right, but I've been baffled to see it coming through so strongly on the left.

I'm sure I've said this before, but it bears repeating. Political alignment isn't just measured by which positions you take on issues, but also by how principled you are on those issues.I was similarly baffled in Pride Month this year by posts which were like "Actually corporate pride celebrations are good because even if they're just in it for the money, we finally have their support to be out and proud in public!" And I just think of what happened around that exact same time when it came out that Disney was backing homophobic laws in Florida, the backlash from the creator of The Owl House who had to basically distance herself from her own brand- it's not principled support of LGBT people! They don't have your back, they don't care about LGBT people even within their own organisation. You were the ones who provided your own protection. You were the ones who made it easier for yourselves to be out and proud in public. Now you're too large a demographic for corporations to ignore, and they want your money, so they pretend to care even when they don't. If they can get more money at the same time in other areas from homophobes, so much the better.

There are so many times I see people, whose political motivations are clearly that they're just selfish and unprincipled, get called "liberals" by the hard left as if it's written into liberalism as a belief system to stop short of enacting any meaningful change and start, idk, worshipping the military-industrial complex. It's kinda exactly like how "centrist" became a catch-all term for disagreement which roughly translated to "we need to compromise with these genocidal maniacs to achieve consensus on equal rights, which, duh, means we only have to do a little bit of genocide!"

Listen, I can't account for the folly of human selfishness, but on the left, actual liberals are your allies. You gain nothing from making enemies out of them just because some people on Twitter misrepresent their position because it makes them seem friendlier! That's not liberalism, that's just lying! If I had to define liberalism - and I do - I'd have to go to Wikipedia, which talks about things like "the rights of the individual", "consent of the governed", "equality before the law" "freedom of speech/press/religion". And if you asked me to apply that concept to some guy on Twitter who said Racism is Bad, Defund The Police, Equal Treatment Under The Law, but now can only say "At least it's not Trump" as Biden's administration massively increases the police budget... well, I just wouldn't be able to do it.

If we don't get better at making friends soon, liberalism will collapse under the weight of the unprincipled selfishness pressing in from all sides, that says "Freedom of Speech for me, but not for anyone else" or "equal treatment under the law unless you're poor or disabled" or "the governed aren't allowed to protest anymore because it upsets people".

I propose that we start by agreeing to work together, with the caveat that the whole "rule of law" thing needs a shake up, because some laws are inherently unjust and law enforcement has too much power. And the caveat that revolutionary communist utopia is off the table, since one of the conventional wisdoms that informs many of liberalism's core beliefs is that other people have to live in this society, too.