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The more fear and confusion the EFF can spread, the more donations they get.

rootusrootus 5y ago
I agree, sadly. This prompted me to unsubscribe from them. In some ways it reminds me of the ACLU. Similar fixation on donations above all else, to the point of dark patterns. I still haven't managed to fully extricate myself from their pleas.
- websites2023 5y ago
  I’m in the same boat. Unfortunately, I don’t see myself continuing to donate to them, given the terrible job they’ve done on this topic. I trusted them to bring nuance and clarity —- really liked what they did in response to the cash bail discussion in California —- but this was too much of a miss for me. I’m still a fan of the ACLU, even with their spotty record on gay rights, but it might just be a matter of time.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    I generally support the ACLU mission, but they have antagonized me ever since I started a recurring donation a few years ago. For reasons, I decided to stop the recurring donation, but ACLU is just like the NY Times and many other places -- easy to sign up, damn near impossible to get them to stop. E-mails, phone calls, nothing. Ultimately I just declared the card stolen and had it reissued with a new number. On top of that, at some point they must have asked if it was okay to contact me, and I must have inadvertently said yes, and now I get regular text messages from random people across the country asking if I will help out. About half the time it's for something in a state (like Georgia during the election) which is several thousand miles from where I live. No amount of begging has gotten this flow of unsolicited text messages to stop.
- BTCOG 5y ago
  It's not fear though. Just watch how within the next five years or so encryption gets back doored. Mass surveillance is fully instated. Social credit score is implemented, and only state authorized programs may be installed upon approval to mobile devices and proprietary operating systems. Soon we will see The Ministry of Truth implemented. The past couple years the state is only after more power. Or, you can ignore reality and keep acting like everything is just normal and ok. Just as the continuous Middle-Eastern wars are designed, inflation will continue to increase to push all the middle class and lower into abject poverty and despotism is not very far away after that. Continuing to do these things slowly while dividing and confusing the mass of the public. This is no conspiracy whatsoever because this is exactly what is happening right this very moment. The most state power can be grabbed today via surveillance programs like that of the NSA/CIA and these false CSAM implementations "for the protection of the children." This is what the state has wanted, in every state, for 2,000 years. Increased government power and watch only goes one direction. What is very sad for me to see the past 20 years in tech is that if this is done slowly over decades and via confusion it seems very easy to get the mass of the non-thinking public to agree to illegal search and seizure, and to give up all freedoms and rights under a false guise of security. "Regardless of popular sanction, war is mass murder. Conscription is slavery, and taxation is robbery. The libertarian in short, is almost completely the child in the fable, pointing out insistently that the emperor has no clothes. Throughout the ages, the emperor has had a series of psuedo-clothes provided for him by the nation's intellectual caste. In past centuries, the intellectuals informed the public that the state or it's rulers were divine. Or at least, clothed in divine authority and therefore what might look to the naive and untutored eye as despotism, mass murder, and theft on a grand scale, was only the divine working it's benign and mysterious ways in the body politic. —Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty"

I agree, sadly. This prompted me to unsubscribe from them. In some ways it reminds me of the ACLU. Similar fixation on donations above all else, to the point of dark patterns. I still haven't managed to fully extricate myself from their pleas.

websites2023 5y ago
I’m in the same boat. Unfortunately, I don’t see myself continuing to donate to them, given the terrible job they’ve done on this topic. I trusted them to bring nuance and clarity —- really liked what they did in response to the cash bail discussion in California —- but this was too much of a miss for me. I’m still a fan of the ACLU, even with their spotty record on gay rights, but it might just be a matter of time.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  I generally support the ACLU mission, but they have antagonized me ever since I started a recurring donation a few years ago. For reasons, I decided to stop the recurring donation, but ACLU is just like the NY Times and many other places -- easy to sign up, damn near impossible to get them to stop. E-mails, phone calls, nothing. Ultimately I just declared the card stolen and had it reissued with a new number. On top of that, at some point they must have asked if it was okay to contact me, and I must have inadvertently said yes, and now I get regular text messages from random people across the country asking if I will help out. About half the time it's for something in a state (like Georgia during the election) which is several thousand miles from where I live. No amount of begging has gotten this flow of unsolicited text messages to stop.
BTCOG 5y ago
It's not fear though. Just watch how within the next five years or so encryption gets back doored. Mass surveillance is fully instated. Social credit score is implemented, and only state authorized programs may be installed upon approval to mobile devices and proprietary operating systems. Soon we will see The Ministry of Truth implemented. The past couple years the state is only after more power. Or, you can ignore reality and keep acting like everything is just normal and ok. Just as the continuous Middle-Eastern wars are designed, inflation will continue to increase to push all the middle class and lower into abject poverty and despotism is not very far away after that. Continuing to do these things slowly while dividing and confusing the mass of the public. This is no conspiracy whatsoever because this is exactly what is happening right this very moment. The most state power can be grabbed today via surveillance programs like that of the NSA/CIA and these false CSAM implementations "for the protection of the children." This is what the state has wanted, in every state, for 2,000 years. Increased government power and watch only goes one direction. What is very sad for me to see the past 20 years in tech is that if this is done slowly over decades and via confusion it seems very easy to get the mass of the non-thinking public to agree to illegal search and seizure, and to give up all freedoms and rights under a false guise of security. "Regardless of popular sanction, war is mass murder. Conscription is slavery, and taxation is robbery. The libertarian in short, is almost completely the child in the fable, pointing out insistently that the emperor has no clothes. Throughout the ages, the emperor has had a series of psuedo-clothes provided for him by the nation's intellectual caste. In past centuries, the intellectuals informed the public that the state or it's rulers were divine. Or at least, clothed in divine authority and therefore what might look to the naive and untutored eye as despotism, mass murder, and theft on a grand scale, was only the divine working it's benign and mysterious ways in the body politic. —Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty"