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I think a lot of us grew up being some of the very few people "in the know" surrounded by masses of technologically-oblivious people who couldn't care less abou

I think a lot of us grew up being some of the very few people "in the know" surrounded by masses of technologically-oblivious people who couldn't care less about such issues. I think a lot of us have a sense of "learned-helplessness" based on initial attempts to explain to people why such things matter. However, in the meantime, I think the average citizen has largely caught up. For example, even on reddit, comments are exceedingly pro-privacy. I also remember net neutrality being overwhelmingly important to people, even the ones who had never programmed in their life. I think it's time to unlearn that helplessness, because I think the average citizen is informed enough to care and finally is starting to care. A lot of the old fox-news-watchers have since passed on, and now nearly every citizen uses the internet daily. Examples of corrupts government are no longer hypothetical sci-fi exercises, they are public knowledge.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Ironically I think the latest decade has brought conservatives up to speed on some topics. Not from the US, but could you have imagined a US conservative arguing for free speech and against censorship in 2010? They were always big on the constitution, but very selectively for this topic and there was some kind of flip.
- zionic 5y ago
  Decentralization as well. 10 years ago your average conservative didn't even know that word, and now the big tech monoculture has taught huge portions of them why using distributed, decentralized systems is important.
- angst_ridden 5y ago
  There's nothing new here. The "conservatives" in the US are arguing for free speech and against censorship while passing laws banning the mention of concepts in the classroom.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    It's been a tactic since the days of "Jewish Questions." Why are you angry, we're just asking questions, what are you trying to hide? But even a disingenuous introduction to matters of digital privacy and mass censorship is an education. 1/20 of them may enter into a relationship with the subject separate from the people clumsily manipulating them. Part of the right-wing revival (really a Eustace Mullins revival) amongst average people is a sense that they are being deceived and a consequent lust for secret, forbidden knowledge. Real conspiracies are going to be more interesting to the smarter ones than the ancient, fake conspiracies that are constantly being pumped by people asking for money.
pessimizer 5y ago
> I think a lot of us grew up being some of the very few people "in the know" surrounded by masses of technologically-oblivious people who couldn't care less about such issues. TBH, the claim that normal people don't care about privacy has been almost exclusively used to silence normal people who are concerned about privacy on the basis of zero evidence. I remember being "in the know" about when and how people were being tracked and being paranoid about things most people weren't paranoid about, but when I explained it to people, it also bothered them - they hadn't 1) realized they were that interesting, or 2) realized how granular and concrete the records they leave behind are. I've virtually never met someone who wasn't concerned about privacy other than David Brin-familiar nerdballs and radical devotees of communal living and/or eastern philosophy. What people don't know is how computers work, and people who build their business models around surveillance and rent-seeking make a huge effort to obscure how computers work.
- exolymph 5y ago
  You misunderstand. People say they care about privacy. And they do, in their day-to-day context. But they don't care enough about mass surveillance to make any tradeoffs to avoid it.
  - dublinben 5y ago
    Why should they have to? The tradeoffs suggested are ridiculous and untenable, like "not having a phone" or "never using the Internet" which is incompatible with participating in modern society. Those behaviors don't inherently need to require abandoning all privacy, but they've been recently built to not allow any alternative.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Ironically I think the latest decade has brought conservatives up to speed on some topics. Not from the US, but could you have imagined a US conservative arguing for free speech and against censorship in 2010? They were always big on the constitution, but very selectively for this topic and there was some kind of flip.

zionic 5y ago
Decentralization as well. 10 years ago your average conservative didn't even know that word, and now the big tech monoculture has taught huge portions of them why using distributed, decentralized systems is important.
angst_ridden 5y ago
There's nothing new here. The "conservatives" in the US are arguing for free speech and against censorship while passing laws banning the mention of concepts in the classroom.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  It's been a tactic since the days of "Jewish Questions." Why are you angry, we're just asking questions, what are you trying to hide? But even a disingenuous introduction to matters of digital privacy and mass censorship is an education. 1/20 of them may enter into a relationship with the subject separate from the people clumsily manipulating them. Part of the right-wing revival (really a Eustace Mullins revival) amongst average people is a sense that they are being deceived and a consequent lust for secret, forbidden knowledge. Real conspiracies are going to be more interesting to the smarter ones than the ancient, fake conspiracies that are constantly being pumped by people asking for money.

pessimizer 5y ago

> I think a lot of us grew up being some of the very few people "in the know" surrounded by masses of technologically-oblivious people who couldn't care less about such issues. TBH, the claim that normal people don't care about privacy has been almost exclusively used to silence normal people who are concerned about privacy on the basis of zero evidence. I remember being "in the know" about when and how people were being tracked and being paranoid about things most people weren't paranoid about, but when I explained it to people, it also bothered them - they hadn't 1) realized they were that interesting, or 2) realized how granular and concrete the records they leave behind are. I've virtually never met someone who wasn't concerned about privacy other than David Brin-familiar nerdballs and radical devotees of communal living and/or eastern philosophy. What people don't know is how computers work, and people who build their business models around surveillance and rent-seeking make a huge effort to obscure how computers work.

exolymph 5y ago
You misunderstand. People say they care about privacy. And they do, in their day-to-day context. But they don't care enough about mass surveillance to make any tradeoffs to avoid it.
- dublinben 5y ago
  Why should they have to? The tradeoffs suggested are ridiculous and untenable, like "not having a phone" or "never using the Internet" which is incompatible with participating in modern society. Those behaviors don't inherently need to require abandoning all privacy, but they've been recently built to not allow any alternative.