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Privacy is something of an illusion - any 'private discussion' on a supposedly safe back-channel can easily get leaked to the wider web by any number of mechani

Privacy is something of an illusion - any 'private discussion' on a supposedly safe back-channel can easily get leaked to the wider web by any number of mechanisms, such as nation-state monitoring or a member of the privileged membership club leaving their keys lying around. In this context, it should be kept in mind that the desired outcome of a panoptic monitoring system controlled by an authoritarian power, be it socialist or capitalist in nature, is self-censorship by the target population and its retreat into hidey-holes (which the authorities still have access to) which either provide a false sense of security or limit the spread of objectionable ideas and knowledge. Going along with this program is unwise: give the authoritarian power structure an inch and it'll take a mile, and then you end up having to deal with the Gestapo/STASI system. Additionally, the psychological pressures imposed by such a system lead to widespread mental illness in human beings. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/137/ https://xkcd.com/137/

lolinder 4y ago
I can't speak for everyone, but I landed here because the word "cozy" resonated with me right now—I'm in the mood for some good vibes. While it would be very HN for a thread about "the cozy web" to tangent into a high-stakes, hugh-strung discussion of authoritarianism... could we, for once, let a conversation about cozy things have its day?
- bookofjoe 4y ago
  FunFact: "The Americans favour the spelling cozy, while the British prefer cosy."
ryandrake 4y ago
People are fooled by marketing and sales pitches. Cloud services are on the Internet. A fact that everyone twists themselves into knots to try to ignore. No matter how many times a service’s marketing materials say “private” and “secure” and “trust”, at the end of the day, when you use that service, you are sending data to the Internet. Don’t send anything to the internet you wouldn’t want published one the New York Times or sent to your worst enemy. Look at cloud services in this light and of course you’ll be more careful about what you post! You will also not be surprised at the fallout of data breaches. “Millions of social security numbers leaked!” Well of course: you sent yours to the internet when you signed up for that credit card. “My nude photos are getting passed around!” Of course they are: you sent them to iCloud (the internet). “My private DMs got anonymously sent to my ex-wife!” You sent them to the Internet.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  I think there's a small but significant difference between putting things "in public" vs. "on the cozy web" in that (with not a lot of effort) the cozy web is practically safe enough for most folk. We've reached a point now where the average person feels some anxiety about their future employer seeing an unsanitized public blog, but future employers aren't poking into a Discord and de-pseudonymizing usernames. Nor is my worst enemy; he's a meathead and lacks the savvy to do that, nor the competency to hire someone to do it for him (yeah, I said it, and you know what you did so don't act like it ain't true, name redacted!). We've gone past the generation that thought if we lived with our private lives in public everyone would realize that everyone is human and be chill about that and we've built the infrastructure to have public selves and pseudonymous selves that (for most people) won't get cracked because it's not worth the hassle. Sure, nation-states and criminal syndicates still have the resources and incentives to do that kind of cracking, but we can only hide from them by staying all the way off the Internet, and we've definitely reached the point where that leaves one with a massively de-enriched lived experience.

lolinder 4y ago

I can't speak for everyone, but I landed here because the word "cozy" resonated with me right now—I'm in the mood for some good vibes. While it would be very HN for a thread about "the cozy web" to tangent into a high-stakes, hugh-strung discussion of authoritarianism... could we, for once, let a conversation about cozy things have its day?

bookofjoe 4y ago
FunFact: "The Americans favour the spelling cozy, while the British prefer cosy."

ryandrake 4y ago

People are fooled by marketing and sales pitches. Cloud services are on the Internet. A fact that everyone twists themselves into knots to try to ignore. No matter how many times a service’s marketing materials say “private” and “secure” and “trust”, at the end of the day, when you use that service, you are sending data to the Internet. Don’t send anything to the internet you wouldn’t want published one the New York Times or sent to your worst enemy. Look at cloud services in this light and of course you’ll be more careful about what you post! You will also not be surprised at the fallout of data breaches. “Millions of social security numbers leaked!” Well of course: you sent yours to the internet when you signed up for that credit card. “My nude photos are getting passed around!” Of course they are: you sent them to iCloud (the internet). “My private DMs got anonymously sent to my ex-wife!” You sent them to the Internet.

shadowgovt 4y ago
I think there's a small but significant difference between putting things "in public" vs. "on the cozy web" in that (with not a lot of effort) the cozy web is practically safe enough for most folk. We've reached a point now where the average person feels some anxiety about their future employer seeing an unsanitized public blog, but future employers aren't poking into a Discord and de-pseudonymizing usernames. Nor is my worst enemy; he's a meathead and lacks the savvy to do that, nor the competency to hire someone to do it for him (yeah, I said it, and you know what you did so don't act like it ain't true, name redacted!). We've gone past the generation that thought if we lived with our private lives in public everyone would realize that everyone is human and be chill about that and we've built the infrastructure to have public selves and pseudonymous selves that (for most people) won't get cracked because it's not worth the hassle. Sure, nation-states and criminal syndicates still have the resources and incentives to do that kind of cracking, but we can only hide from them by staying all the way off the Internet, and we've definitely reached the point where that leaves one with a massively de-enriched lived experience.