A better way to think of it is: you need to live in a host state that may be hostile to you (refugees fleeing conflict or natural catastrophe). You need to work and can do it remotely. A network state might possibly facilitate your work and payments regardless of the host state's laws.
People don’t like immigrants as it is, why would they take kindly to “digital nomads” proclaiming citizenship in a “network state”?
Proclaiming a permanently foreign identity and banding together to demand preferential treatment. It’s the polar opposite of the model immigrant, who seeks to assimilate and become a citizen that contributes equally to local society.
Not only that, they even seek entire cities to themselves complete with favorable tax treatment, worse than an anti-immigration activist’s most farfetched strawman depiction of an immigrant neighborhood!
Sounds like being politically invisible as “some odd expats/tourists” is saving these people’s skins.