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99% of people do not care about privacy. They won't switch programs because a nation state might spy on them.
by deathgrips 6y ago
99% of people do not care about privacy. They won't switch programs because a nation state might spy on them.
- mindfulhack 6y agoYes they will. You need to be thinking about LGBTQ people in many non-Western countries.
- deathgrips 6y agoThey are the 1%. 99% of people consider "privacy" a good value in abstract but will not lift a finger to protect their own privacy. It's virtue signalling.
- kennywinker 6y agoI absolutely hate the term virtue signalling. It's always reductive and dismissive. If I am willing to go a LITTLE out of my way to protect my privacy, but not a LOT out of my way, am I "just virtue signalling"? If I continue to use a privacy-less platform (e.g. zoom/instagram/facebook) but just exercise caution with what I say using that medium, is that also "just virtue signalling"? I agree, evidence shows most people are not willing to go very far out of their way to defend their privacy. But I also think privacy is a genuine virtue, and a desire for it is present and often untapped. Why else would Apple have run privacy-centric ad campaigns? Attempting to tap into the weak but widespread desire for privacy, I think Also, side note, lgbtq people make up somewhere in the range of 2-7% of the population, not 1%.
- Arbalest 6y agohttps://www.adamsmith.org/blog/stop-saying-virtue-signalling https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/stop-saying-virtue-signalling
- rconti 6y ago100% agreed. It's almost exclusively used as an ad hominem by people who lack that particular virtue to dismiss people who espouse a caring viewpoint. If you want to argue that your target does less to further that particular cause than you do, fine. If you want to argue the cause is misguided, fine. But using the term is just lazy.
- senderista 6y agoIt’s like “PC” or “fake news”, it was originally meaningful but got co-opted by people who use it in bad faith.
- cameronbrown 6y agoJust curious: Fake news was coined by Trump, so you're agreeing it was a meaningful usage?
- stonogo 6y agoIronically, it was not coined by Trump. https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/522179364767924224 https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/522179364767924224 and https://www.theverge.com/2014/10/22/7028983/fake-news-sites-are-using-facebook-to-spread-ebola-panic https://www.theverge.com/2014/10/22/7028983/fake-news-sites-... are good examples of its use pre-Trump. By the time Trump started applying it to actual news outlets, it was already in relatively common use.
- triangleman 6y agoThe irony runs deep in this case. The examples you point out are good ones for the term in common use through the end of 2016. Then this happened: https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/politics/hillary-clinton-fake-news-epidemic/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/politics/hillary-clinton-fake... December 2016 Hillary Clinton decides to use the term in reference to recent events like her losing the election. The media picks up on it and the term starts to lose its meaning. Then Donald Trump, always with a nose for catch phrase politics, picks up the term and runs with it, a turn of events that someone on HN called a huge "own goal" by the media, and I can't say I disagree with that assessment. For more analysis of this cultural specimen: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42724320 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42724320
- BolexNOLA 6y agoMan you really hit the nail on the head with this. I’ve never been able to articulate why the term bothers me so much and you just absolutely nailed it. It’s like the derogatory “social justice warrior.” What? It’s bad to give a damn about people and advocate on their behalf? If having empathy means I’m “an SJW” then I’ll gladly wear that moniker.
- raxxorrax 6y agoThe social justice and warrior part once hinted at the oxymoron of enforcing solidarity with violence. It was never meant to be criticism of social justice. The dialogue that degraded just beyond nuance. The term is probably 10 years old at least. Today it probably means just left-leaning person for most people.
- imtringued 6y agoSocial justice warrior is an oxymoron. It's a way to call someone a hypocrite because those who are called SJW usually exhibit behavior that is exactly the opposite of what they claim to stand against. e.g. fight discrimination by using discrimination in a different context https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
- deathgrips 6y agoI measure virtue by how much you are willing to lose for the sake of your values or because you want to help other people. If you aren't willing to give up anything, you're not virtuous no matter what you say. Actions matter. If you say you care about privacy but do nothing to protect your privacy, you don't really care about privacy in any way that matters. Since you mildly inconvenience yourself for the sake of privacy, I can conclude based on this very limited evidence that you mildly care about privacy, which is a whole lot more than most people care about it. Apple markets itself as privacy conscious because that makes Apple look like a trustworthy company. That's a rare and beneficial appearance that a company can maintain to get more business. Not all gay people care about their privacy. Plenty live in states where they feel more free to open up to their friends, family, and neighbors.
- cutemonster 6y agoIs, would you say, virtue signaling to say something others like but not actually do something inconvenient related to that oneself?
- deathgrips 6y agoYes and more than that. It's virtue signaling to say you have some value when you have no evidence to back up that claim.
- noobermin 6y agoEvery single day I see more and more 100K liked tweets about this or that creepy person. I don't think people don't care about privacy, they just don't see the through line because it's abstract.
- SamBam 6y agoOther comments aside, this isn't even using the term "virtue signaling" correctly. They're are plenty of things that people agree with in the abstract, but don't do enough to make a difference. Probably everyone agrees that the environment should be cleaner. If I agree with that, but "don't lift a finger" to make it better, how am a virtue signaling? It's the opposite. "Virtue signaling" involves doing some token thing to get the kudos. Smugly saying you only use DDG for web searches. Putting a Tor sticker on your laptop. Etc.
- deathgrips 6y agoI don't think people become more virtuous by saying a few words and doing nothing. If you say you care about the environment but do absolutely nothing about it, you don't care in any way that matters. It's just a social signal without any impact on the world. Buying a Tor sticker doesn't promote privacy. Buying and running a Tor node does.
- shadowprofile77 6y agoIf you go out on the street to give homeless people food but your main motivation for doing it is so you can take a quick selfie for some feel-good reactions on instagram and facebook, you're definitely virtue signalling in a particularly irritating way...... But, those homeless people still got some food as a result, and somewhere else, someone else might see your posts and decide to do the same thing (with or without selfie, depending on how much of a self absorbed ass they are) Either way, the net result is that now more people are giving food to the needy in this simple example. A net benefit is produced by self absorbed behavior. When virtue signalling can become dangerous however is in situations where something based on a mistaken notion of doing good (when in reality it does more harm) becomes a fad and people who virtue-signal keep promoting it into wider popularity.
- notimetorelax 6y agoTo be pedantic LGBTQ are ~5% of the population in the US. With higher or lower numbers in the other countries. Source for the US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Uni...
- raxxorrax 6y agoMost yes, but I don't think it is only 1%. Virtue signaling is for increasing your standing towards a social group through a feigned declaration of values. You can be sloppy with your privacy and still think it to be of utmost importance. Nobody pats you on the back for being privacy aware in the mainstream. On the contrary, it is looked down upon becuase it is associated with tin foil hats right now.
- specialist 6y agoZoom is being used by at least one court system for remote hearings. Their barebones IT people are completely incapable of independently verifying Zoom's encryption claims.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoWould they use Jitsi if it was fully managed for them and free?
- skinnymuch 6y agoHow many people want to deal with an inferior product? I used Jitsi for over a year. There’s no deal breaker. But so many little or medium issues with how inferior it is to Zoom. It’s a hard ask (outside specific vocal minorities online)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- themacguffinman 6y agoGovernments deal with inferior products all the time. At least in this case, there's a good reason to do so. The security of court systems would surely be higher priority than "my grandma couldn't install Jitsi" if they were pushed to choose.
- skinnymuch 6y agoOutside of court systems and some or a lot of government stuff, what use is there for inferior products vs Zoom? I don’t think China or whoever else is the boogeyman right now is going to care what mid level execs at most companies are talking about.
- themacguffinman 6y agoNot sure why you're implying that security in the private sector is useless. China has been known to hack and infiltrate private companies. Fun fact: this is why Google left China in the first place. You think China doesn't care what employees are discussing at Intel or AMD? You think they're not interested in worming their way into Apple's messaging systems to identify and monitor dissidents? You think the backdoors that Zoom are likely creating for the Chinese government won't ever be found and used by malicious hackers? You really think the Chinese-American human rights activists whose Zoom accounts were identified and banned from a private video call with Chinese-based allies and friends and family are thinking "what use is there for inferior products?" Oh well, we live in free countries. You're free to open your company and possibly your Chinese colleagues/friends to China or whoever else is the boogeyman right now.
- soraminazuki 6y agoIt looks like many Americans do now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23424245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23424245
- skinnymuch 6y agoThat’s a drop in the bucket. A spike of a couple thousand downloads is a rounding error to the big platforms. Downloading of Signal doesn’t signify privacy concerns. I have Signal because others do. Not because I care about signal’s privacy.
- soraminazuki 6y agoIt's still a noticeable increase, though. Taking into account that this was triggered by mass protests, it's very likely many of these people are concerned about government snooping.
- skinnymuch 6y agoIt’s a noticeable increase from almost nothing though. The increase would be just as dramatic if all the numbers were 10x smaller too. I’m sure at that point most would agree it’s just too small of a number to matter.
- sevenstar 6y agoThat number is 60 percent in the US. Specifically people, "concerned about the amount of information that companies know about them : https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/17/60-percent-of-people-in-the-us-worry-about-privacy-and-brands.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/17/60-percent-of-people-in-the-...
- kohtatsu 6y agoIt's far too black-and-white to hold the belief you wrote. Pessimism is an indulgence.
- prepperpotts 6y agoThis is sad but also extremely true. At my company, Zoom was suddenly rolled out en masse to everyone, despite the fact that we are a technology company and should know better.
- berkes 6y agoA majority cares little about privacy: maybe. 99%: where's your proof? Or is this part of the 73.6% of the made-up statistics? The other thing that is wrong with this sentiment is that "privacy" is not a binary thing: you don't "have privacy" or "not have privacy". You don't "want it" or "not want it". Privacy and the need for it, is heavily dependent on context. You want more privacy when watching porn than when watching some sports. You want more privacy when you are a minority than when you are part of the ruling class. And so on. Edit: so a person wanting to escape religion and seeking online help on how to do so needs different privacy than three friends having an online beer. Everyone has moments and time where they need (some) privacy. So probably 99% (a made up statistic) has a need to replace software in some (rare) context, over privacy matters.
- manfredo 6y agoMost users care about privacy in the sense that they don't want random people to see their communications. Most people don't care about privacy in the sense that they are concerned about the service provider divulging their communications. Gmail does not use end to end encryption. Yet it's overwhelmingly popular, and perceived to be secure. Google has a huge incentive to keep Gmail secure, and that's enough for most people. With respect to Zoom, I am fully convinced that if the PRC (or the USA for that matter) wants Zoom to compromise a given account they'll do it. But that's irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of people. Sure, companies like Google and Microsoft should not use Zoom nor should activists or other people that might attract the ire of governments that have leverage over Zoom. But that is a substantial minority of use cases.
- deathgrips 6y agoI measure values by how much you are willing to give up. How much of a pain in the ass will you endure to get privacy? How much will you sacrifice to lessen your carbon footprint? Will you march in the streets and get tear gassed in order to protest for your social activist movement? Anyone can say they believe in anything. It's your actions that have an impact.
- berkes 6y ago
- in15minutes 6y ago99% agree
- ai_ja_nai 6y ago99% of people don't understand how modern world actually works, in which your data is the product.