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It should not matter whom the argument comes from. Your comment speaks nothing of the merits of argument itself, but rather attacks the speaker - that is an ad

• geofft 8y ago
  It absolutely matters, because it changes how invested the person is in the argument and what their motivations are. When a Google employee writes about privacy on the web, you'd read it differently from when a Mozilla employee does. When a Christian talks about separation of church and state, you read it differently from when an atheist does. When Edward Snowden endorses a secure messenger, you read it differently from when Keith Alexander says it. An ad hominem is fallacious because it is irrelevant to the argument - an argument is not irrelevant merely because it is about the speaker. If the speaker's stated political goals are to oppose a political movement, arguments about how that political movement is actually bad should be treated with suspicion. (Also, it would make more sense to attack the argument on the merits if it contained merits beyond "It's bad, and I don't like it, and here's an anecdote.")