# From Platform Brutality to Streaming Alternatives | Geert Lovink

- Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress)
- Date: 2026-07-09
- Duration: 19:35
- Topics: web3, privacy, now, crypto, cryptography, blockchain, data, security, human right, rights, tech, technology, internet, open source, free, freedom, ethereum, hackers, ethics, cypherpunk, dev, developer, dapp, decentralization, bitcoin, computer, surveillance, cyber, peer2peer, p2p, love, solidity, zk, zero knowledge, education, academy, w3pn, neo, summit, berlin, neocypherpunk
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-kEa1Q08tB8E
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEa1Q08tB8E

## Description

“From Platform Brutality to Streaming Alternatives” by Geert Lovink from Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

Are you still stuck on the platform -- or ready to move beyond it? Yes, we are living through an accelerationist, techno-authoritarian phase of the internet, but that is precisely why we need to identify the exits already taking shape. We will map the cracks in the system: decentralized infrastructures, collective digital practices, and emergent cultures of autonomy that challenge the regime of “cloud rent” and passive usership. What would it mean to reclaim agency beyond endless swiping and prompting? How can we turn doomscrolling into coordination, and platforms into terrains we either reshape or abandon? This talk explores both practical and speculative strategies to overcome platform dependency, rebuild the digital commons, and develop a network culture that is once again participatory, resilient, and free.

Speaker

Geert Lovink — Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
https://networkcultures.org/
https://www.hva.nl/
X: https://x.com/glovink

Follow Web3Privacy Now:

🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info
𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy
🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info
📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/
🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/

Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

## Transcript

[applause] Yeah, I'm comfortable sitting here because I have to focus on the reading. So, um it's a pleasure for me to uh to be here. Um, and I'm going to start uh with some news from Amsterdam concerning the Institute of Network Cultures that I've been leading for over 22 years. And um because of mandatory retirement um we will have to uh close down the center um inside the uh polytech in Amsterdam and we are going to become uh an independent autonomous organization maybe again uh yeah depending on you know your perspective I've been uh running small independent organizations for a long time and um uh I have um uh quite some um experience with that. So we're confident that um from September onwards um we can uh rebuild it and we would like to uh yeah invite you all to uh you know contact us uh propose things collaborations we're very open um and as you might know we have been running since 2014 for about a decade the money lab pro project and um this is something that we also would like to uh um continue and um uh this is why uh you know it's it's such a a great opportunity for me to to be here and talk about my work here. You see the collaboration with Ukraina TV and the Stream Art Network. Um we've been known uh lately especially because of our uh digital uh publishing experiments but um yeah we have uh moved quite substantially uh into the realm of um uh peer tube and um uh stream um art uh collaborations uh starting from Krakow and then together with groups in VNUS in in Budapest and many other places. Um the um we we find that the streaming uh uh collaborations are a living alternative for the social media blues experienced by so many young people, right? Um we don't believe that uh going into the forest going offline is necessarily uh the right move. We believe that we need to uh redefine uh how tech should uh operate and um uh yes uh the um cipher crypto blockchain part um you know is is an integral part of that but um uh because this has been stagnating in our view u very much so uh Not because of our efforts, not because of our ideas, but I would say because the world in general around us is becoming way and way more um uh techno libertarian, way and way more right-wing populist, straight out conservative also in a country like the Netherlands. Um so this is um and this really works works against uh our um uh objectives and so uh we have to become resilient ourselves uh and count on setbacks. Uh these are some of the research directions that at the moment uh we are proposing. So uh but we are actually very very open uh in the coming years uh if you would like uh to uh push this uh in a in a general direction. Um as you can see there on the left side below um it says art and precarity creative reset beyond money lab. That's a bit of uh you know the the context that uh in our terminology let's say the the things uh that we are dealing with uh here in this um in this field. Uh then uh this is further materialized in a in a collaboration with transmedial um and that's a project that is going to start uh shortly. It's called Solidarity Economies Lab. So that's um something also directly related to all the issues uh that uh that we're um dealing with here uh today in Funkas. Okay. Now um I would like to focus um on my new book, Platform Brutality. Um and um I would like to read some of the uh some of the parts. Um and uh I would like to see if uh if the slides are moving by themselves. I don't know. I I asked if that was possible, but I'm not really sure. So maybe I'll have to do it uh manually. Let's uh let's see. So this um uh this book um kind of reflects on the last three years postco and um for me uh it became quite uh obvious that we were facing uh a violent turn of uh technology and the internet. Um, and this was rather difficult because I'm coming from uh the generation of the 80s and '9s talking about public access uh opensource free software uh facilities and the idea that the internet would grow and would facilitate was kind of a consensus. Of course, it was about the direction and it was in direct fight with um you know state censorship or with large corporations. But still there was this idea that um that this field was somehow still growing and that it was just a hegemonic fight basically, right? Uh about concepts about Yeah. um maybe also about the hearts and mind of people. This story has come to an end and um this kind of idea that after a period a long period of many decades of growth the movement is now turning inside into itself. So there is a violent implosion uh especially uh quite um visible of course uh since uh last year since 2025. Okay. Um all right. The stagnation of the platform has brought us back to the military origin of the internet. What happens when mindless and distracted users remain stuck with no end inside? The destruction of attention starts to hurt eventually turning into structural violence. And um this idea of structural violence is interesting. This comes very much from let's say the context of the 1970s. But I find it interesting. It's also known as abstract violence, right? Or indirect violence. But it's important to notice and and Kate Dean has done that also. He in the speech before and I would like to say my work really builds on his work. um that abstract violence at some point for some not for all will become real violence. Yeah. And that's what this talk is also about. And that's I think what needs to be addressed more. Platforms are the unseen and behave like innocent bystanders pretending never to be responsible for anything. They were intended for users to look straight through them and not notice their design anymore. Thanks to mundane and smooth functionality, transparency makes it hard to see them as distinct objects. platforms do not shine to put it in the words of the late Dutch architecture theorist Maurice Neo. So mentally speaking, users have been proven incapable of facing these changes. Glued to the phone, users do not even notice they're logged in. In a matter of seconds, they've liked this, purchased that, responded with an emoji hoovering around the apps. The mindless online presence has turned subconscious and this subconscious state is related to this violent turn. So the purpose of the platform is to do what it does. And this is kind of self-evident. Yeah. No higher goal or problem needs to be resolved. Once you've created a profile and clicked on something, the endless scroll takes over. From the moment you've signed up, the platform presents itself as a self-evident totality, a service, that was, is, and always will be ready to lure you into more transactions. Now that you're part of the flow, any attention hook can pull you away. there's no um no longer a tiring obligation to build your social network. And as you might know, my work is very much um defined about the this kind of decline, very subtle decline of of network networking and social networks, right? and the and this earlier transition let's say from social networks uh to social media uh platforms now I turn to the term itself the term platform brutality and it was instigated of course as you can guess by ail mmbbe's book uh called brutalism I can highly recommend you it's a book from 2020 20 um and yeah I've applied many of his core concepts uh uh to this um turn. So the thesis here is that instead of being portrayed as a machine of endless facilitation, the internet has hit a historical wall and in response response to uh to this change with an inner destructive energy as planetary machines in a murderous fancy state platforms. are still at full capacity for mobilizing resources. So they're not dead in that sense. They're they're at maximum capacity. But this state can in a way no longer be maintained. And we all know that as a vast plane lacking depth, it facilitates a neverending one-dimensional trip that is impossible to quit. As lost subjects endless toil around inside it, digital reason has a hard time explaining the matter. as today's uh as an example of today's um violence um um after the book I've been writing more about this concept of deletion and I'm calling for more theory more reflection and even poetry of deletion what it means to delete because the violent turn will eventually lead to a variety of forms of deletion. Yeah. Digitally erasing the other is both a symbolic and literal act. The public gesture of cancelling individuals or calling out groups. Maybe you remember uh C cancel culture and I wrote about that uh in my previous book stuck on the platform uh is kind of a a social experiment but much smaller and and um not really harmless. What we should look at instead uh is mass deletion, right? Because delion is the technical manifestation of a cold act and not just uh a symbol of moral condemnation which you know we could still associate with cancel culture and of course maybe you remember it was Elon Musk's department of government efficiencies main weapon right hepei specialized in tracing. He he did that earlier on when he took over um Twitter and in the in the months most active months of Doge maybe you remember they were actively searching for entire databases to be deleted permanently by the way right because you could say okay um uh deletion uh is not so harmless harmful because you can always reinstall a copy Right. No. Um they tried very very hard to um um instate um a a culture u in which uh the deletion of 300,000 people that they fired uh was going to be permanent. Right. And I think the the dodge capital is is is again a um an experiment uh that we will face larger. I would like to end here with a quote of Hannah Arand who uh has this interesting essay from 69 uh on violence and um and it's an hopeful um quote um because it indicates also that [snorts] we could analyze all this u as a as a sign that Silicon Valley's power is waning. As Hana Arent writes, power and violence are opposites. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy. Violence can destroy power, but it's incapable of creating it. Right? So, this is for me a very key uh insight. Following her argument, we could say that violence is not a display of tech power but arises from its moment of impotence. and impotence. Then uh maybe I use this term in the um tradition of uh Franco Berardi who who writes about this and maybe also Benast Declar's um notion um of um in in the same uh let's say tradition. So back big tech hegemony evaporates into thin air when soft power no longer works. We see platforms moving beyond optimization and openly committing forms of structural violence. The Trump Musk Doge saga exemplifies that the Californian ideology once defined by Richard Barbuk and Andy Cameron and uncontested for three decades has lost its hegemony and is showing its brutal side. Dodge and Palunteer stand for the transition to Californian violence. We delete you was going to be the next battle cry for the years to come. Thank you very much. [applause]