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Some HN users are stuck in an interesting privacy paradox. Most of the time when a company or government tries to undermine privacy or encryption they jump at t

Some HN users are stuck in an interesting privacy paradox. Most of the time when a company or government tries to undermine privacy or encryption they jump at the throat and point out the need for both. However, it seems when we actually accomplish those goals and create systems that are truly anonymous, private and/or encrypted they basically say it's only for criminals and child abuse.

ma2rten 5y ago
Are you sure those are the same people?
lottin 5y ago
This is a good point. Censorship-resistance sounds good in theory, but when you actually think about it there is certain stuff that everybody would agree needs to be censored.
- h_anna_h 5y ago
  A lot of people? Sure. Everybody? Not really, some people are really vocal about how "data wants to be free".
- wongarsu 5y ago
  If everyone agrees that it needs to be censored, then who is posting it?
- int_19h 5y ago
  When you actually think of it, it's impossible to design systems that are capable of such "good" censorship without also being open to all the other kind. Experience has also shown that, when such capacity exists, its use expands over time. And some of us have decided that the long-term social damage from that far exceeds the damage from any information that could be effectively censored.
kragen 5y ago
Can you point out which HN users are doing both of these? Maybe they're Russian trolls.
- h_anna_h 5y ago
  We could do with less racism and cold-war-era scare. Edit: As a revenge for pointing his racism the above user decided to act abusively and go to my history and downvote my recent posts - the only one of my 4 most recent posts that was not downvoted was this one, as people can't downvote replies to their own posts. It happened just after that poster responded, feel free to form your own opinion about it. Apparently pointing out that associating a whole ethnicity with hacking, trolling, and shilling is racist is "vicious, hateful slander" and a lie. I guess this user is going to complain next about indian scammers, jewish bankers, and whatever other vile racist description he can think of when it is convenient. I find it sad that a lot of posts nowadays end up attacking the person behind the post rather than just the post itself, it seems like it is becoming more and more common as time goes on (although I do recognize that this applies to my edit too rather than just the reply).
  - kragen 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure the trolling offices the Russian government runs will hire people regardless of their race; it's not a racism thing. It's true that other governments have also started doing this, but the Russian government was an early pioneer and is still arguably the leader. There's no need to get scared, but this is well-attested information with reputable sources like Freedom House, the Washington Post, the Grauniad, el Arabiya, BuzzFeed, the BBC, the St. Petersburg Times, and Global Voices Online. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades I haven't seen any indication that they've targeted HN, but if they have, it would be an interesting thing to know. Going around making baseless accusations of racism is... unfortunately par for the course in the degraded slum parts of the internet and not at all limited to Russian trolls trying to silence critics of their government's deplorable astroturfing policies. (I wasn't the one who went to your recent history to downvote your comments. Maybe someone else thinks you're contemptible but doesn't want to be targeted for your vicious, hateful slander. Or maybe you're lying about that too.)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
trutannus 5y ago
There's another side here. Some don't like companies and governments chipping away at privacy. At the same time, they don't trust Shiny New Privacy Startup 2021 to not expose them to illegal material as a result of being overrun by bad actors. I would personally rather an established organization to respect my privacy, rather than move to a new platform that does not have the resources to protect me from liability.
- cgtzczykldpq 5y ago
  Freenet has been in development for 21 years.
  - trutannus 5y ago
    Time really is irrelevant if you lack the resources to deal with issues quickly and effectively.
nullc 5y ago
One problem is that the privacy invading and censorous systems work 99% of the time ... sucking away most of the market, which is boring usage, and leave the alternatives concentrated in "other stuff", much of which is undesirable.
robertlagrant 5y ago
Can you give some examples of individual HN users who've said both things?
- ddtaylor 5y ago
  A wild sea lion has appeared.
  - KirillPanov 5y ago
    I am the walrus?
hinkley 5y ago
That’s what happens when a problem isn’t black and white.
edgyquant 5y ago
Like most things in the world there needs to be a middle ground/balance between allowing the government and corps to invade your privacy and allowing individuals to share child porn/etc with one another. I do not believe it is either or.
- ArneBab 5y ago
  The balance has been that the cops can take you into custody when there is suspicion against you, but if you’re not suspected of a heinous crime, they are not allowed to read your diary. In the past decade that has been shifting more and more towards “the cops can break open every device you have just in case you may someday do something illegal”. But if they can install physical surveillance, all security is already moot. That is the balance that works. But that is no longer enough. They want to have cheaper surveillance of everyone instead. Surveillance that is cheap enough to be used on everyone. And they promise they will totally not abuse that. Or send your address to violent extremist groups that are pissed at you because you exposed their activities. As happened to more than one journalist in Germany who investigated Nazis.
hamstergene 5y ago
There is a feature in English to call the same thing different words depending on one's moral judgement towards them. Shooting a person dead is a "kill" if a homeowner has defended himself from a burglar, but a "murder" if the burglar has fired first. My language for comparison only uses a single word, regardless of circumstances. That's where the paradox has to be coming from. When they say "end censorship" they mean "prevent filtering that we don't want to happen" (like whistleblowing). But at the same time they absolutely totally want NOT to prevent filtering they want to happen (like drugs, child porn, terrorism, etc). It's only censorship if they don't want it, if they want it that's not censorship that's a different word. It's like saying it's a candy if it's intended to be eaten, but a toy if it's intended to be had, and then expecting to eat the candy and have the toy.
- Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
  I think when most people talk about "ending censorship" they are talking very specifically about speech. Any link between the idea of speech and the sharing of child abuse material or drug marketplaces is extremely tenuous. Most non-anarchists agree that there are reasonable limits that must be placed on behaviors and enforced by governments. Trying to claim "not letting me buy drugs online is censorship" feels like little more than mental gymnastics.
  - hamstergene 5y ago
    How do you allow government to enforce one thing (block illegal drug sales) while simultaneously preventing it from enforcing another (censorship)?
- kybernetikos 5y ago
  > at the same time they absolutely totally want NOT to prevent filtering they want to happen I'm sure there's a lot of this about, but the situation with freenet is more complex than that. When you run a freenet node, you are storing data on behalf of others, and you don't have access to that data so you don't know what it is. It's one thing believing that speech should be free, but that's a different thing to believing that individuals should be forced into storing and sharing speech they disagree with. It's that extra level of potential complicity in speech you find objectionable that makes freenet more problematic, and that makes accusations of hypocrisy a little unfair.
quotemstr 5y ago
There is no privacy paradox. HN types aren't actually opposed to censorship and surveillance. They just think they should be the ones doing it. It's a good thing that the legacy tech scene that the loud, high-karma moral busybodies on this site represent is becoming hated, bypassed, and ultimately irrelevant.

ma2rten 5y ago

Are you sure those are the same people?

lottin 5y ago

This is a good point. Censorship-resistance sounds good in theory, but when you actually think about it there is certain stuff that everybody would agree needs to be censored.

h_anna_h 5y ago
A lot of people? Sure. Everybody? Not really, some people are really vocal about how "data wants to be free".
wongarsu 5y ago
If everyone agrees that it needs to be censored, then who is posting it?
int_19h 5y ago
When you actually think of it, it's impossible to design systems that are capable of such "good" censorship without also being open to all the other kind. Experience has also shown that, when such capacity exists, its use expands over time. And some of us have decided that the long-term social damage from that far exceeds the damage from any information that could be effectively censored.

kragen 5y ago

Can you point out which HN users are doing both of these? Maybe they're Russian trolls.

h_anna_h 5y ago
We could do with less racism and cold-war-era scare. Edit: As a revenge for pointing his racism the above user decided to act abusively and go to my history and downvote my recent posts - the only one of my 4 most recent posts that was not downvoted was this one, as people can't downvote replies to their own posts. It happened just after that poster responded, feel free to form your own opinion about it. Apparently pointing out that associating a whole ethnicity with hacking, trolling, and shilling is racist is "vicious, hateful slander" and a lie. I guess this user is going to complain next about indian scammers, jewish bankers, and whatever other vile racist description he can think of when it is convenient. I find it sad that a lot of posts nowadays end up attacking the person behind the post rather than just the post itself, it seems like it is becoming more and more common as time goes on (although I do recognize that this applies to my edit too rather than just the reply).
- kragen 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure the trolling offices the Russian government runs will hire people regardless of their race; it's not a racism thing. It's true that other governments have also started doing this, but the Russian government was an early pioneer and is still arguably the leader. There's no need to get scared, but this is well-attested information with reputable sources like Freedom House, the Washington Post, the Grauniad, el Arabiya, BuzzFeed, the BBC, the St. Petersburg Times, and Global Voices Online. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades I haven't seen any indication that they've targeted HN, but if they have, it would be an interesting thing to know. Going around making baseless accusations of racism is... unfortunately par for the course in the degraded slum parts of the internet and not at all limited to Russian trolls trying to silence critics of their government's deplorable astroturfing policies. (I wasn't the one who went to your recent history to downvote your comments. Maybe someone else thinks you're contemptible but doesn't want to be targeted for your vicious, hateful slander. Or maybe you're lying about that too.)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

trutannus 5y ago

There's another side here. Some don't like companies and governments chipping away at privacy. At the same time, they don't trust Shiny New Privacy Startup 2021 to not expose them to illegal material as a result of being overrun by bad actors. I would personally rather an established organization to respect my privacy, rather than move to a new platform that does not have the resources to protect me from liability.

cgtzczykldpq 5y ago
Freenet has been in development for 21 years.
- trutannus 5y ago
  Time really is irrelevant if you lack the resources to deal with issues quickly and effectively.

nullc 5y ago

One problem is that the privacy invading and censorous systems work 99% of the time ... sucking away most of the market, which is boring usage, and leave the alternatives concentrated in "other stuff", much of which is undesirable.

robertlagrant 5y ago

Can you give some examples of individual HN users who've said both things?

ddtaylor 5y ago
A wild sea lion has appeared.
- KirillPanov 5y ago
  I am the walrus?

hinkley 5y ago

That’s what happens when a problem isn’t black and white.

edgyquant 5y ago

Like most things in the world there needs to be a middle ground/balance between allowing the government and corps to invade your privacy and allowing individuals to share child porn/etc with one another. I do not believe it is either or.

ArneBab 5y ago
The balance has been that the cops can take you into custody when there is suspicion against you, but if you’re not suspected of a heinous crime, they are not allowed to read your diary. In the past decade that has been shifting more and more towards “the cops can break open every device you have just in case you may someday do something illegal”. But if they can install physical surveillance, all security is already moot. That is the balance that works. But that is no longer enough. They want to have cheaper surveillance of everyone instead. Surveillance that is cheap enough to be used on everyone. And they promise they will totally not abuse that. Or send your address to violent extremist groups that are pissed at you because you exposed their activities. As happened to more than one journalist in Germany who investigated Nazis.

hamstergene 5y ago

There is a feature in English to call the same thing different words depending on one's moral judgement towards them. Shooting a person dead is a "kill" if a homeowner has defended himself from a burglar, but a "murder" if the burglar has fired first. My language for comparison only uses a single word, regardless of circumstances. That's where the paradox has to be coming from. When they say "end censorship" they mean "prevent filtering that we don't want to happen" (like whistleblowing). But at the same time they absolutely totally want NOT to prevent filtering they want to happen (like drugs, child porn, terrorism, etc). It's only censorship if they don't want it, if they want it that's not censorship that's a different word. It's like saying it's a candy if it's intended to be eaten, but a toy if it's intended to be had, and then expecting to eat the candy and have the toy.

Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
I think when most people talk about "ending censorship" they are talking very specifically about speech. Any link between the idea of speech and the sharing of child abuse material or drug marketplaces is extremely tenuous. Most non-anarchists agree that there are reasonable limits that must be placed on behaviors and enforced by governments. Trying to claim "not letting me buy drugs online is censorship" feels like little more than mental gymnastics.
- hamstergene 5y ago
  How do you allow government to enforce one thing (block illegal drug sales) while simultaneously preventing it from enforcing another (censorship)?
kybernetikos 5y ago
> at the same time they absolutely totally want NOT to prevent filtering they want to happen I'm sure there's a lot of this about, but the situation with freenet is more complex than that. When you run a freenet node, you are storing data on behalf of others, and you don't have access to that data so you don't know what it is. It's one thing believing that speech should be free, but that's a different thing to believing that individuals should be forced into storing and sharing speech they disagree with. It's that extra level of potential complicity in speech you find objectionable that makes freenet more problematic, and that makes accusations of hypocrisy a little unfair.

quotemstr 5y ago

There is no privacy paradox. HN types aren't actually opposed to censorship and surveillance. They just think they should be the ones doing it. It's a good thing that the legacy tech scene that the loud, high-karma moral busybodies on this site represent is becoming hated, bypassed, and ultimately irrelevant.