We didn’t lose freedom. We outsourced it.
Call it what Yanis Varoufakis calls it in Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism? (2023): we don’t compete in a market; we operate on somebody else’s land. The “land” is cloud, identity and discovery. Rent is paid in fees, data and dependence.
Own the nameplate or be owned.
The JD forum is how society should be.
Call it what Yanis Varoufakis calls it in Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism? (2023): we don’t compete in a market; we operate on somebody else’s land. The “land” is cloud, identity and discovery. Rent is paid in fees, data and dependence.
How technofeudalism works
- Life sits behind logins you don’t control. “Access revoked” is a social and economic downgrade.
- A few clouds (AWS, Google, MS...) run the base layer. Control infra, price reality.
- Algorithms gate visibility, payments and speech. Courts become “appeal forms.”
- AI doesn’t decentralize power. It fortifies whoever already owns the pipes.
Comfortable myths
- “Just leave.” Network effects and switching costs say hello.
- “Private property, their rules.” Cute theory. In practice these are de facto utilities.
Do the boring things that buy freedom
- Own your name: domain, DNS, email, hardware keys. No phone-number logins if avoidable.
- Engineer exits: containers, infra-as-code, two DNS providers, multi-region storage. Test restores.
- Prefer protocols to platforms: tools you can move without changing your workflow.
- Reduce your target surface: tracker blocking, per-service aliases, least-privilege everything, end-to-end where possible.
- Decouple money: separate merchant from personal, redundant on/off-ramps.
- Export on a schedule: contacts, docs, media, messages. Keep cold copies you physically control.
- Back teeth, not takes: portability mandates, real APIs, audits for ranking/moderation.
Own the nameplate or be owned.
Why the JohnnyDoe forum is resilience instead of cosplay
- Independent stack. Built to avoid Big-Cloud choke points. No Google/Meta/AWS dependencies tugging the strings.
- No algorithmic throttle. Chronological discussions, transparent rules. Visibility isn’t a favor from a black box.
- Privacy-first. No trackers, no profiling. Minimal logs. Use aliases. Your business stays your business.
- Redundancy by design. Off-platform backups, DNS failover, multiple comms fallbacks.
- Portability over hostage-taking. You write it, you own it. Content is designed to be archivable and movable.
- No moderation. You are responsible for your own words and actions. Post like an adult, accept the fallout.
- Free to join, hard to pressure. No payment processors to satisfy.
The JD forum is how society should be.
