Sloppy With Cyberlibertarianism
The rhetorical tricks of the ideology jump out when you know what to look for
Cyberlibertianism was well-described in David Golumbia’s posthumously published 2024 book, Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology. It represents a politics that many people don’t seem to realize tilts us toward authoritarianism and fascism because it deprives citizens of some key democratic rights like copyright, freedom to do business as you see fit, and the freedom to say “no” or be selective.
The use of the term “open” is something Golumbia viewed as a marker of these politics:
The terms “open” and “free” are primary marketing labels for cyberlibertarianism. . . . Once one side of a debate or a particular way of looking at an issue has been labeled “open” it becomes almost impossible to have a reasoned debate about the issue at hand. The overwhelming assumption is that anyone arguing against “open” is therefore arguing in favor of “closed.” Among the terms used in cyberlibertarian discourse, these two are the most likely to be subject to the constant shifting of meaning . . . as a key method used in strategic digital denial.
We’ve seen this trick before with Dimensions and their implicit access politics, where subscription content is labeled “closed” in their search interface:
We saw it again last week in a piece in UKSG Insights by Ben Rawlins, where subscription access is labeled “closed” numerous times: