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Tech is so depressing. Our physical world is open and based on good intent. There's bad actors but the cost of being a bad actor is high: it's risky and doesn't

by fleddr 5y ago

Tech is so depressing. Our physical world is open and based on good intent. There's bad actors but the cost of being a bad actor is high: it's risky and doesn't scale. Even if you live in a bad neighborhood, and make your walk to a grocery store, you wouldn't expect 50 people to try and rob you on the way there. When you then see a familiar face in the store, you don't expect this to be an impersonator. And when you pay for your groceries, you don't expect it to be a phishing attack or scam. When you then return home, your home isn't a fortress with military grade security. We live with the assumption that for the most part, we're safe and sound and most interactions are based on the social contract of good intent. This optimism is the basis for lots of tech, every single part turning to shit. Email was supposed to be this open, anonymous, non-authenticated and distributed way for anybody to communicate. Now 99.99% of volume is spam, scams, phishing attacks. DNS assumes genuine usage of whichever name you claim, how naïve we were. A web server is the ultimate self publication tool, setting us free from centralized media and giving everyone a voice. Now it's under attack in less than a minute after launching and almost impossible to keep secure unless you put it behind military grade protection. Self publication was supposed to produce the sum of human knowledge, which would then surface in search. Now search surfaces SEO gamers and commercial interests only. Social networks assume genuine usage of account names, not impersonation. Social networks were to give a voice to the non-tech savvy and connect the world. Now all attention is seized by the unreasonable ones, the extremists, the grifters. Crypto has interesting ideas, but is an unusable mine field of scams. We've sunk so low that now even information itself cannot be trusted anymore, not even from mainstream media. As somebody whom has experienced a non-tech world (80s) and the optimism and beauty of early tech (90s), it's been very sour to see everything turn into shit. Nothing of the original vision has materialized and rather than improve humanity, it's made it worse in so many ways. The cost of being a bad actor is just too low and it scales too well. Solving that may be worse than the actual problem.

npteljes 5y ago
>Our physical world is open and based on good intent Is that really so? What you describe is a good neighborhood. I don't think the majority of the world can reflect what you describe. >Email Same as physical mail. Email's spam percentage is definitely higher, but there's a good bunch of fliers, marketing mail, propaganda and other unwanted material stuffed into people's mailboxes everywhere in the world. >Now search surfaces SEO gamers and commercial interests only. This was a problem ever since I use the internet, which is for 20+ years. Hardly a modern problem. Google became a major player back then, because of the sort of good results it returned, but people always found a way to poison the results. Keyword stuffing worked for a long time and got ever more creative. Not to mention the myriad of popups, pop-unders and small iframes all designed to increase visitor metrics. I'd like to say two things: I think the bad intent was always there and you can do nothing about it. This has not improved and never was it better than it is currently. If it was better, it was a period that's unsustainable for some reason, and the reason I suspect is that human nature in itself. The second thing is that there are wonderful stuff that otherwise wasn't accessible. What you need to do is learn how to navigate among the bad stuff, to get to the good stuff. Wikipedia for one is a pinnacle of this. As much problems as it has, I think it's fantastic to have that resource.
selfhoster11 5y ago
While this doesn't address your entire comment, keep in mind that a lot of the current safety we're experiencing is due to the government assuming a monopoly on violence (and what violence it is! Tanks, fighter jets, nuclear weapons even). The web has no government, therefore nobody has the monopoly on violence or the ability to suppress others' capability for violence. It's no wonder that it's closer to a warzone than a neat, ordered Information Superhighway with cultured faux-50s-future cars powered by clean energy.
- fleddr 5y ago
  Interesting point but I can't say I agree that this is the most meaningful difference. In a physical world where you claim the government has a monopoly of violence, still bad actors could easily do great harm to me in my day to day interactions. But they don't, it's exceptional. The reason it's exceptional is first of all because people are generally good. Second of all because the risk/return play is very poor. When you rob people on the streets, there's a significant risk of it blowing up in your face. Or to be arrested. You can get away with it a few times, but it hardly ever ends well. Being a bad actor is not very rewarding, regardless of the government's take on violence. Being a bad actor is extremely rewarding in the digital space. The risk is near-zero (if competent) and the returns fantastic. You can easily "rob" thousands of victims in a way you could never pull off in the physical world. It scales much better, at near zero risk. And to make it worse, digitally there's infinite creative ways to scam somebody, many methods would simply not work in the physical world. Have you ever tried to impersonate somebody physically?
  - npteljes 5y ago
    >bad actors could easily do great harm to me,[...] but they don't If that is so, that's because you live in a good place. There are lots of places where material and physical harm comes easy. If you're curious how prevalent it is, I suggest to check out Numbeo, who try to put metrics on this and many other topics concerning everyday living.
    - fleddr 5y ago

by fleddr 5y ago

npteljes 5y ago

>Our physical world is open and based on good intent Is that really so? What you describe is a good neighborhood. I don't think the majority of the world can reflect what you describe. >Email Same as physical mail. Email's spam percentage is definitely higher, but there's a good bunch of fliers, marketing mail, propaganda and other unwanted material stuffed into people's mailboxes everywhere in the world. >Now search surfaces SEO gamers and commercial interests only. This was a problem ever since I use the internet, which is for 20+ years. Hardly a modern problem. Google became a major player back then, because of the sort of good results it returned, but people always found a way to poison the results. Keyword stuffing worked for a long time and got ever more creative. Not to mention the myriad of popups, pop-unders and small iframes all designed to increase visitor metrics. I'd like to say two things: I think the bad intent was always there and you can do nothing about it. This has not improved and never was it better than it is currently. If it was better, it was a period that's unsustainable for some reason, and the reason I suspect is that human nature in itself. The second thing is that there are wonderful stuff that otherwise wasn't accessible. What you need to do is learn how to navigate among the bad stuff, to get to the good stuff. Wikipedia for one is a pinnacle of this. As much problems as it has, I think it's fantastic to have that resource.

selfhoster11 5y ago

While this doesn't address your entire comment, keep in mind that a lot of the current safety we're experiencing is due to the government assuming a monopoly on violence (and what violence it is! Tanks, fighter jets, nuclear weapons even). The web has no government, therefore nobody has the monopoly on violence or the ability to suppress others' capability for violence. It's no wonder that it's closer to a warzone than a neat, ordered Information Superhighway with cultured faux-50s-future cars powered by clean energy.

fleddr 5y ago
Interesting point but I can't say I agree that this is the most meaningful difference. In a physical world where you claim the government has a monopoly of violence, still bad actors could easily do great harm to me in my day to day interactions. But they don't, it's exceptional. The reason it's exceptional is first of all because people are generally good. Second of all because the risk/return play is very poor. When you rob people on the streets, there's a significant risk of it blowing up in your face. Or to be arrested. You can get away with it a few times, but it hardly ever ends well. Being a bad actor is not very rewarding, regardless of the government's take on violence. Being a bad actor is extremely rewarding in the digital space. The risk is near-zero (if competent) and the returns fantastic. You can easily "rob" thousands of victims in a way you could never pull off in the physical world. It scales much better, at near zero risk. And to make it worse, digitally there's infinite creative ways to scam somebody, many methods would simply not work in the physical world. Have you ever tried to impersonate somebody physically?
- npteljes 5y ago
  >bad actors could easily do great harm to me,[...] but they don't If that is so, that's because you live in a good place. There are lots of places where material and physical harm comes easy. If you're curious how prevalent it is, I suggest to check out Numbeo, who try to put metrics on this and many other topics concerning everyday living.
  - fleddr 5y ago