3 ms·

I'm also having a hard time understanding the issue here. Is any private data (besides social relationship data) being 'published' that wasn't available before

• mechanical_fish 17y ago
  As I will have cause to say again: Life is not a mathematics problem. There is a world of difference between that which is theoretically possible, that which is practical, that which is routine, and that which is obvious. And the tendency to assume that these things are all the same is a huge problem in tech product design, especially social software design. Cryptographers have a principle: security-through-obscurity is no security at all. And in the world of cryptography, that's a good principle. [1] But, alas, in the world of people who are being stalked, that principle is useless -- or, rather, it is isomorphic to in the long run you are doomed. Security-through-obscurity, and its undependable, amorphous cousins like social engineering, are all that you get, assuming that you physically exist, that you can't afford to live in an armed compound, and that you can't afford (or have no legal power) to get your stalker put in a secure prison for life. Don't force your users to give up all the pragmatic social tools that they know best, that they've developed for themselves -- their knowledge of the natures, personalities, and social norms of the people around them -- and make them live inside a math-class story problem. Such a move can literally kill them. And they won't appreciate it even if it doesn't. --- [1] Because cryptographers study a class of problems in which this assumption makes sense and maps well to the real-world situation.