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Communications on the internet are different than physical communications. So different in my view as to not really have a useful comparison point. If I tell a

by yifanl 8y ago

Communications on the internet are different than physical communications. So different in my view as to not really have a useful comparison point. If I tell a joke, people will chuckle and it'll be on their mind for 10 seconds, and then it's gone. All I need to do to make sure no one is overhearing it is to do a quick look over my shoulder. And if someone does leak it, I'll know which 6 people it might be and I can confront them. If I write that same joke down online, it's there forever, anyone can grab the joke any amount of time later, strip out all surrounding context, report me and have me fired from my director gig. Our social systems were developed with the understanding that communications would persist for a minute at most. This does not translate well to online systems.

rexpop 8y ago
Our social systems will adapt; James Gunn will survive, but also his and similar examples may impose a chilling effect on discompassionate writing.
- discompassion 8y ago
  It's basically a fact now, that anything you say in any text messaging service to anyone, no matter how encrypted or protected the service may claim to be, if you say something interesting, your friend is likely to capture the screen contents to an image, and publish it somewhere to get laughs. There's no stopping this fact, and with daily zero day fire drills, the defense of claiming an insecure, hacked smartphone is at fault, is essentially plausible. But it gets worse, because hacking isn't a even required step. One sketchy app installed on a phone with zero defects is enough to plausibly deny a sceenshot of a private conversation escaping into the wild. People breeze past those permissions authorizations all the time. But of course installing promiscuous app isn't even a required step, because some phones have stock apps installed at the factory, and are insecure out of the box. Or, hey, maybe they bought their phone second-hand, because phones can cost $1000 now, so knocking a hundred bucks off the sticker price isn't even unconscionable, and less technical users are clueless as ever, so they wouldn't even consider the risks. So, no matter what, at the consumer level, truly no one is in control of how things leak, even if you choose your friends wisely. An Apple engineer can't even let his daughter look at a prototype over lunch without her accidentally instagramming the world in a moment of irrevocable error. So, chilling effects? I mean, without question, when being deaf and mute to the point that one may as well be bound and gagged is the only cure, calling that "chilling effects" is quite the understatement. We are moving rapidly toward a society that only thinks "happy" thoughts, for fear of the consequences oherwise. Is such a fear healthy?
  - watwut 8y ago
    That is not what happened to Gunn. And my friends were never shitty like that. I would never call someone like that "a friend". And realistically, while IT crowd knows about hacks, most people dont, because such hacks are in fact rare.

by yifanl 8y ago

rexpop 8y ago

Our social systems will adapt; James Gunn will survive, but also his and similar examples may impose a chilling effect on discompassionate writing.

discompassion 8y ago
It's basically a fact now, that anything you say in any text messaging service to anyone, no matter how encrypted or protected the service may claim to be, if you say something interesting, your friend is likely to capture the screen contents to an image, and publish it somewhere to get laughs. There's no stopping this fact, and with daily zero day fire drills, the defense of claiming an insecure, hacked smartphone is at fault, is essentially plausible. But it gets worse, because hacking isn't a even required step. One sketchy app installed on a phone with zero defects is enough to plausibly deny a sceenshot of a private conversation escaping into the wild. People breeze past those permissions authorizations all the time. But of course installing promiscuous app isn't even a required step, because some phones have stock apps installed at the factory, and are insecure out of the box. Or, hey, maybe they bought their phone second-hand, because phones can cost $1000 now, so knocking a hundred bucks off the sticker price isn't even unconscionable, and less technical users are clueless as ever, so they wouldn't even consider the risks. So, no matter what, at the consumer level, truly no one is in control of how things leak, even if you choose your friends wisely. An Apple engineer can't even let his daughter look at a prototype over lunch without her accidentally instagramming the world in a moment of irrevocable error. So, chilling effects? I mean, without question, when being deaf and mute to the point that one may as well be bound and gagged is the only cure, calling that "chilling effects" is quite the understatement. We are moving rapidly toward a society that only thinks "happy" thoughts, for fear of the consequences oherwise. Is such a fear healthy?
- watwut 8y ago
  That is not what happened to Gunn. And my friends were never shitty like that. I would never call someone like that "a friend". And realistically, while IT crowd knows about hacks, most people dont, because such hacks are in fact rare.