3 ms·

I'm on your side ... The defeatism is real, I can't really name a single win. GDPR? Protests against SOPA/PIPA? Net neutrality? Apple not giving up passcodes to

I'm on your side ... The defeatism is real, I can't really name a single win. GDPR? Protests against SOPA/PIPA? Net neutrality? Apple not giving up passcodes to LEO (they do)? I've attempted to educate friends/family on tech privacy concerns, but nobody cares, even my friends in the industry. I have many tech friends that won't even modify their home network, let alone ditch FB or Google or Snapchat or Tiktok. Ultimately, computing and the internet is untrustworthy and always will be so. I don't possess the knowledge or time to assess every line of code or dependency in a project. Let alone backdoors in chips, hardware, and my ISP providing a line to the NSA. Abstinence + sabotage of platforms is probably the only way. Keep the corporate developers busy fighting spam, fraud, abuse - make it unprofitable to build spyware.

nologic01 3y ago
I cant deny any of that. Its more or less my experience. Ultimately it boils down to fundamental optimism or pessisism that is not necessarily linked causally to empirical data. To me the commingled business models of big tech as we have come to know them, dipping their fingers at every possible data jar, are an outlier, a dissonance. How and when this could resolve into something more stable its not obvious. Politicians can go being immoral and look the other way for a long time. But you cant buy all the politicians all the time. If we start by clearly separating what is really free (because its a commmon public good paid by all), from what is paid by users to private companies for real services provided in competitive markets and with respects to their clients (not product) we'll be on a good path. National security related privacy is another can of worms altogether. You really dont want a repeat of 20th century dictators dissolving democracy and exterminating whomever they managed to cast as the enemy with the ruthless efficiency of an AI guided panopticon. I mean these things are pretty basic. Only when we give up on common sense will dystopia become a reality.

nologic01 3y ago

I cant deny any of that. Its more or less my experience. Ultimately it boils down to fundamental optimism or pessisism that is not necessarily linked causally to empirical data. To me the commingled business models of big tech as we have come to know them, dipping their fingers at every possible data jar, are an outlier, a dissonance. How and when this could resolve into something more stable its not obvious. Politicians can go being immoral and look the other way for a long time. But you cant buy all the politicians all the time. If we start by clearly separating what is really free (because its a commmon public good paid by all), from what is paid by users to private companies for real services provided in competitive markets and with respects to their clients (not product) we'll be on a good path. National security related privacy is another can of worms altogether. You really dont want a repeat of 20th century dictators dissolving democracy and exterminating whomever they managed to cast as the enemy with the ruthless efficiency of an AI guided panopticon. I mean these things are pretty basic. Only when we give up on common sense will dystopia become a reality.