5 ms·

What I'm curious about is future changes in user behavior in response to this kind of stuff. Private data, public data and the public-private grey areas like ps

by netcan 11y ago

What I'm curious about is future changes in user behavior in response to this kind of stuff. Private data, public data and the public-private grey areas like pseudonymous posts, access restricted (FB-like) profiles and such are getting leaked all the time. Paranoia is definitely building. Awareness of how exposed people are is building. Yet, exposure is going up not down. People are posting more stuff online. I wonder if, for example, the cloud hack has impacted the trend of people taking nude picture at all? I suspect it hasn't. I suspect that none of these leaks will impact user behavior. On one hand, a leak of an Ashley madison profile or salacious photos makes people aware that the danger exists. On the other, it confirms how widespread and normal it is to do these things. Here's my (soft) prediction: Norms concerning fidelity and/or modesty will give before online behavior does. If the choice is stop sending nudie pictures or stop getting embarrassed when they leak, we'll go for the latter. For infidelity… maybe strict monogamy will soften as a norm.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
> I wonder if, for example, the cloud hack has impacted the trend of people taking nude picture at all? I suspect it hasn't. I've noticed recently that polaroid cameras are making a bit of a comeback. I wonder if this has any connection? (Not sure myself.)
- prawn 11y ago
  No, it's purely a fashion/trend thing. Only ever seen them at parties and used as a gimmick to create a certain style of photo. Similar happens with vintage or modern photo booths hired for weddings.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Of course your prediction will come true, there's already a lot of evidence for it in the comments of most articles on the leak. Cheaters will be the victims and anyone who thinks cheating on one's spouse is bad will be considered insensitive.
- AlexandrB 11y ago
  > Cheaters will be the victims and anyone who thinks cheating on one's spouse is bad will be considered insensitive. How do you know the spouse's opinion on the matter? That's the only opinion that matters regarding how bad it is.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    Society can deem a behavior bad even while the individual can forgive and forget.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    Because if the spouse is aware and accepting, it's not "cheating" anymore, it's just an open relationship. "Cheating" implies dishonesty and deception. ..Something I think that keeps getting lost in this discussion that inevitably turns towards discussions of polyamory - this is not a discussion about whether polyamory is okay, it's a discussion about whether it's okay to lie to another person who you've of your own free will promised that you will be monogamous with.
- comrh 11y ago
  Can't you agree with both? The cheaters had their personal information stolen and leaked on the internet, and while they're engaging in unethical behavior (imho) that doesn't absolve the hackers.
nyandaber 11y ago
There's also the fact that for all those hacks, a non-negligeable portion of the people think the victims "had it coming". They feel it's wrong to take lewd pictures of yourself or join a site like Ashley Madison, so those hacks are justice being served. They don't see the real underlying issue about privacy and informatic data. The day it's something more sensible like medical or financial records being leaked, I hope they'll change their outlook at it.
- bby 11y ago
  I actually find that it is the more uneducated people that think this way - that the hacks are justice being served. The majority of posts that I see on HN and Reddit (and even with my IRL peers) seem to take on a more informatic stance.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >They don't see the real underlying issue about privacy and informatic data. And many against even these hacks feel that the victims of hacks of hidden tor services 'had it coming'. Most people think that a sufficiently immoral online action means the hacked individual 'had it coming'. The difference is in what counts as sufficiently moral, not in the underlying view of if it is possible for someone to deserve to be hacked.
petercooper 11y ago
I hope so. Humans have shown for millenia that they are unable to give in to certain urges. Some things are well worth fighting against, but in today's society strict monogamy doesn't seem to pose a major evolutionary advantage (though I could be wrong). When Secret came out, I always assumed such a leak would occur, especially since it was linked to Facebook. So I only mostly posted fake secrets to troll people :-D I wonder if a certain level of mixing lies with reality will become the norm online to increase the doubt over information that leaks.
- creshal 11y ago
  > in today's society strict monogamy doesn't seem to pose a major evolutionary advantage (though I could be wrong). With the availability of reliable contraceptions (for both genders) and paternity tests, it has lost one of its main advantages: Ensuring that your offspring is really yours (for males) and that it won't have to compete with another mates offspring (for females).
- netcan 11y ago
  If you're going to biology, absolutely strict monogamy is not really part of our package. But, some sort of monogamy (or pairing) is almost certainly. Culture makes these rules, not biology and culture is pretty malleable in this regard. Your great grandmother might have had a much more forgiving reaction to this infidelity stuff as a lot of people today. She probably thought girls having extra marital relationships some lasting days and some lasting years (as is normal today) as immoral trollop behavior. Side note on evolutionary monogamy: A lot of birds are monogamous. A lot of foundational zoologists were Victorians so they saw eye-to-eye. There were a lot of studies of avian reproductive behavior for the entirety of the modern scientific period. Recently, DNA tests on nestlings revealed that birds cheat. The reason Victorians (and other later) rarely picked up on it is because they're so damn sneaky about it. It's a no no in bird marriages, but they still do it.
fab13n 11y ago
> maybe strict monogamy will soften as a norm. Polygamy is already the norm in the West, only it's serial polygamy instead of parallel one, i.e. you're supposed to dump your previous partner before picking the next one. But most people enter most relationships being very open to the idea that it won't be lifelong, and that other partners will be part of their sexual, sentimental and patrimonial future: this constitutes polygamy, irrespective of the order in which you have sex with the several partners you plan to have. Will insistance on serial polygamy soften? I'd say that the forces seem aligned for this to happen: * reproductive control was the main reason for historical control over people's sexuality. With reliable contraception and easy paternity tests, those incentives are dramatically weakened. * don't underestimate homo sapiens' urge to practice polygamy: historically we've had to punish adultery by gruesome death, it still routinely causes financial ruin in the US, yet people always kept committing it! They're still willing to wreck their own children's family and well-being, in exchange for some renewal in their sentimental and sensual lives! This urge seems to me at least as strong as the gluttony epidemic, which turns many Westerners into impotent, morbidly obese wrecks, one hamburger at a time. * Exposure accelerates acceptance. Internet is bound to make affairs more and more visible, and as a result, we'll get used to them. As for modesty, even before Internet, the list of which body parts / positions were naughty evolved fast and flexibly, within decades (think miniskirts, sleeveless tops, bikini, monokini, Frei Korper Kultur, or conversely, the comeback of islamic female garbs in middle eastern countries). With Internet as a great accelerator, we'll soon be mildly too bored to Google sextapes of our acquaintances. I known I already feel that way about celebrities. First time patrons of naturist resorts typically report nudity-induced awkwardness to last about 1/4h :-)
- rue 11y ago
  ‘Serial polygamy’ means a sequence of multiple simultaneous relationships. You mean serial monogamy.
  - fab13n 11y ago
    I meant it as an electrical engineering metaphor, where you can string devices in parallel, or in serial one after the other, but where with a few adaptations both can lead to the same practical result. Besides, my whole point is that this behavior constitutes a variant of polygamy, not a variant of monogamy, so I stand by that term. That there's a "serial monogamy" idiom describing it (I just discovered it thanks to you and Google, I'm not a native speaker) is tellingly disingenuous IMO.
LesZedCB 11y ago
I am a part of the polyamorous (not totally distinct, but not the same as polygamy) culture, and I think it is slowly gaining some momentum. I'm not convinced it will ever see mainstream acceptance (who knows, LGBTQ+ people somewhat enjoy that now), but I think that it's a valid way to live life and enjoy romance and relationships. I have been with my current partner for 2 years, and we have both dated other people simultaneously. Many people don't believe that jealousy isn't an issue, but to be honest, for some people it's not an issue at all, and for others, trusting your partner is much stronger than worrying about what "could happen." Then, when it comes to stuff like this, it's not even an issue. My partner wants to hook up with somebody else? Totally, go for it, enjoy yourself. Find love in others as well. It's not that scary, and I have no fear of ever being cheated on.
- angersock 11y ago
  It's a curious thing--from observation, I note that poly (along with a lot of other non-normal personality traits) tends to be notably prevalent in the tech and academic sectors. It is an open question whether this is because there's simply more visibility, or something else. There's also a decent amount of it in the kink sub-communities. I have a hunch that it may be a byproduct of the ongoing evolution of the dating marketplace--if you have, for example, a rather uncommon kink or something, it makes sense not to voluntarily limit yourself to one supplier.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    I'd say that belonging to the polyamourous community is more likely to limit you in the "dating marketplace" than giving you more options. You're essentially excluding the vast majority of the population, which is very much not OK with it.
    - angersock 11y ago
      Well, yes and no, right? It's a smaller marketplace, but theoretically one with more chances to connect with people, because the resources are being more fully utilized and distributed. And yes, the vocabulary here is somewhat on purpose. I think it's easy to argue that, if you're willing to treat the whole thing as matching providers and consumers, the poly approach is a strictly better marketplace than mainstream dating. Somewhat comically: the odds are good, but the goods are odd. :)

by netcan 11y ago

JupiterMoon 11y ago

> I wonder if, for example, the cloud hack has impacted the trend of people taking nude picture at all? I suspect it hasn't. I've noticed recently that polaroid cameras are making a bit of a comeback. I wonder if this has any connection? (Not sure myself.)

prawn 11y ago
No, it's purely a fashion/trend thing. Only ever seen them at parties and used as a gimmick to create a certain style of photo. Similar happens with vintage or modern photo booths hired for weddings.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

Of course your prediction will come true, there's already a lot of evidence for it in the comments of most articles on the leak. Cheaters will be the victims and anyone who thinks cheating on one's spouse is bad will be considered insensitive.

AlexandrB 11y ago
> Cheaters will be the victims and anyone who thinks cheating on one's spouse is bad will be considered insensitive. How do you know the spouse's opinion on the matter? That's the only opinion that matters regarding how bad it is.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Society can deem a behavior bad even while the individual can forgive and forget.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  Because if the spouse is aware and accepting, it's not "cheating" anymore, it's just an open relationship. "Cheating" implies dishonesty and deception. ..Something I think that keeps getting lost in this discussion that inevitably turns towards discussions of polyamory - this is not a discussion about whether polyamory is okay, it's a discussion about whether it's okay to lie to another person who you've of your own free will promised that you will be monogamous with.
comrh 11y ago
Can't you agree with both? The cheaters had their personal information stolen and leaked on the internet, and while they're engaging in unethical behavior (imho) that doesn't absolve the hackers.

nyandaber 11y ago

There's also the fact that for all those hacks, a non-negligeable portion of the people think the victims "had it coming". They feel it's wrong to take lewd pictures of yourself or join a site like Ashley Madison, so those hacks are justice being served. They don't see the real underlying issue about privacy and informatic data. The day it's something more sensible like medical or financial records being leaked, I hope they'll change their outlook at it.

bby 11y ago
I actually find that it is the more uneducated people that think this way - that the hacks are justice being served. The majority of posts that I see on HN and Reddit (and even with my IRL peers) seem to take on a more informatic stance.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>They don't see the real underlying issue about privacy and informatic data. And many against even these hacks feel that the victims of hacks of hidden tor services 'had it coming'. Most people think that a sufficiently immoral online action means the hacked individual 'had it coming'. The difference is in what counts as sufficiently moral, not in the underlying view of if it is possible for someone to deserve to be hacked.

petercooper 11y ago

I hope so. Humans have shown for millenia that they are unable to give in to certain urges. Some things are well worth fighting against, but in today's society strict monogamy doesn't seem to pose a major evolutionary advantage (though I could be wrong). When Secret came out, I always assumed such a leak would occur, especially since it was linked to Facebook. So I only mostly posted fake secrets to troll people :-D I wonder if a certain level of mixing lies with reality will become the norm online to increase the doubt over information that leaks.

creshal 11y ago
> in today's society strict monogamy doesn't seem to pose a major evolutionary advantage (though I could be wrong). With the availability of reliable contraceptions (for both genders) and paternity tests, it has lost one of its main advantages: Ensuring that your offspring is really yours (for males) and that it won't have to compete with another mates offspring (for females).
netcan 11y ago
If you're going to biology, absolutely strict monogamy is not really part of our package. But, some sort of monogamy (or pairing) is almost certainly. Culture makes these rules, not biology and culture is pretty malleable in this regard. Your great grandmother might have had a much more forgiving reaction to this infidelity stuff as a lot of people today. She probably thought girls having extra marital relationships some lasting days and some lasting years (as is normal today) as immoral trollop behavior. Side note on evolutionary monogamy: A lot of birds are monogamous. A lot of foundational zoologists were Victorians so they saw eye-to-eye. There were a lot of studies of avian reproductive behavior for the entirety of the modern scientific period. Recently, DNA tests on nestlings revealed that birds cheat. The reason Victorians (and other later) rarely picked up on it is because they're so damn sneaky about it. It's a no no in bird marriages, but they still do it.

fab13n 11y ago

> maybe strict monogamy will soften as a norm. Polygamy is already the norm in the West, only it's serial polygamy instead of parallel one, i.e. you're supposed to dump your previous partner before picking the next one. But most people enter most relationships being very open to the idea that it won't be lifelong, and that other partners will be part of their sexual, sentimental and patrimonial future: this constitutes polygamy, irrespective of the order in which you have sex with the several partners you plan to have. Will insistance on serial polygamy soften? I'd say that the forces seem aligned for this to happen: * reproductive control was the main reason for historical control over people's sexuality. With reliable contraception and easy paternity tests, those incentives are dramatically weakened. * don't underestimate homo sapiens' urge to practice polygamy: historically we've had to punish adultery by gruesome death, it still routinely causes financial ruin in the US, yet people always kept committing it! They're still willing to wreck their own children's family and well-being, in exchange for some renewal in their sentimental and sensual lives! This urge seems to me at least as strong as the gluttony epidemic, which turns many Westerners into impotent, morbidly obese wrecks, one hamburger at a time. * Exposure accelerates acceptance. Internet is bound to make affairs more and more visible, and as a result, we'll get used to them. As for modesty, even before Internet, the list of which body parts / positions were naughty evolved fast and flexibly, within decades (think miniskirts, sleeveless tops, bikini, monokini, Frei Korper Kultur, or conversely, the comeback of islamic female garbs in middle eastern countries). With Internet as a great accelerator, we'll soon be mildly too bored to Google sextapes of our acquaintances. I known I already feel that way about celebrities. First time patrons of naturist resorts typically report nudity-induced awkwardness to last about 1/4h :-)

rue 11y ago
‘Serial polygamy’ means a sequence of multiple simultaneous relationships. You mean serial monogamy.
- fab13n 11y ago
  I meant it as an electrical engineering metaphor, where you can string devices in parallel, or in serial one after the other, but where with a few adaptations both can lead to the same practical result. Besides, my whole point is that this behavior constitutes a variant of polygamy, not a variant of monogamy, so I stand by that term. That there's a "serial monogamy" idiom describing it (I just discovered it thanks to you and Google, I'm not a native speaker) is tellingly disingenuous IMO.

LesZedCB 11y ago

I am a part of the polyamorous (not totally distinct, but not the same as polygamy) culture, and I think it is slowly gaining some momentum. I'm not convinced it will ever see mainstream acceptance (who knows, LGBTQ+ people somewhat enjoy that now), but I think that it's a valid way to live life and enjoy romance and relationships. I have been with my current partner for 2 years, and we have both dated other people simultaneously. Many people don't believe that jealousy isn't an issue, but to be honest, for some people it's not an issue at all, and for others, trusting your partner is much stronger than worrying about what "could happen." Then, when it comes to stuff like this, it's not even an issue. My partner wants to hook up with somebody else? Totally, go for it, enjoy yourself. Find love in others as well. It's not that scary, and I have no fear of ever being cheated on.

angersock 11y ago
It's a curious thing--from observation, I note that poly (along with a lot of other non-normal personality traits) tends to be notably prevalent in the tech and academic sectors. It is an open question whether this is because there's simply more visibility, or something else. There's also a decent amount of it in the kink sub-communities. I have a hunch that it may be a byproduct of the ongoing evolution of the dating marketplace--if you have, for example, a rather uncommon kink or something, it makes sense not to voluntarily limit yourself to one supplier.
- icebraining 11y ago
  I'd say that belonging to the polyamourous community is more likely to limit you in the "dating marketplace" than giving you more options. You're essentially excluding the vast majority of the population, which is very much not OK with it.
  - angersock 11y ago
    Well, yes and no, right? It's a smaller marketplace, but theoretically one with more chances to connect with people, because the resources are being more fully utilized and distributed. And yes, the vocabulary here is somewhat on purpose. I think it's easy to argue that, if you're willing to treat the whole thing as matching providers and consumers, the poly approach is a strictly better marketplace than mainstream dating. Somewhat comically: the odds are good, but the goods are odd. :)