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> They can choose not to navigate to websites they don't trust. They can choose not to run javascript. They can disable css. How do you settle on (dis)trust ab

> They can choose not to navigate to websites they don't trust. They can choose not to run javascript. They can disable css. How do you settle on (dis)trust about a website? Just as you do with a person, there are 4 ways: * reputation (meaning someone else already visited it and had to pay with bad experience) * your own experience (meaning you already visited and were victim of the website) * intuition (very poor driver, full of biases) * homogeneity: a checklist of norms and conventions (can easily be gamed) So in any case, it's either very uncertain or relies on others to throw themselves over the cliff so you can benefit from their experience. So no, you cannot simply choose to not navigate websites you don't trust. It's just blind navigation and that's what most people, uninformed as they are, do.

least 4y ago
> So in any case, it's either very uncertain or relies on others to throw themselves over the cliff so you can benefit from their experience. Every human advancement has basically been a result of benefiting from other's experiences or insight. Sometimes you make your own individual contributions to human knowledge but you mostly don't. > So no, you cannot simply choose to not navigate websites you don't trust. It's just blind navigation and that's what most people, uninformed as they are, do. Sure you can. All the reasons you mentioned above are totally legitimate ways of establishing trust with a website. You absolutely can only visit websites that others have vetted, if you're someone so paranoid about webpages. Some people are pioneers and some are not. You cannot avoid blind trust. Society as a whole hinges on the notion that people's behavior en masse is predictable and generally not destructive. How do you know, for example, that the groceries you just bought are not poisoned? You can't. You can regulate things but regulations cannot be perfectly enforced. So yes, you absolutely can just choose not to navigate to websites you don't trust.
- xcambar 4y ago
  All very good points. Trust is also a leap of faith, when that's all you have. I had put that in the "intuition" category of my first comment.

least 4y ago

> So in any case, it's either very uncertain or relies on others to throw themselves over the cliff so you can benefit from their experience. Every human advancement has basically been a result of benefiting from other's experiences or insight. Sometimes you make your own individual contributions to human knowledge but you mostly don't. > So no, you cannot simply choose to not navigate websites you don't trust. It's just blind navigation and that's what most people, uninformed as they are, do. Sure you can. All the reasons you mentioned above are totally legitimate ways of establishing trust with a website. You absolutely can only visit websites that others have vetted, if you're someone so paranoid about webpages. Some people are pioneers and some are not. You cannot avoid blind trust. Society as a whole hinges on the notion that people's behavior en masse is predictable and generally not destructive. How do you know, for example, that the groceries you just bought are not poisoned? You can't. You can regulate things but regulations cannot be perfectly enforced. So yes, you absolutely can just choose not to navigate to websites you don't trust.

xcambar 4y ago
All very good points. Trust is also a leap of faith, when that's all you have. I had put that in the "intuition" category of my first comment.