6 ms·

People who are generally ambivalent on TOR are the ones that we need to convert. I believe the message needs to be that anonymity is not only desirable but mand

by pkoird 3y ago

People who are generally ambivalent on TOR are the ones that we need to convert. I believe the message needs to be that anonymity is not only desirable but mandatory as well, especially because of the rise of platforms that literally track each and every possible metric about your daily life and habits. Besides, even if someone says that TOR is used for illegal purposes, we all need to remind them that legality is distinct from morality and is always defined by those currently in power.

mikece 3y ago
"Tor is only used for illegal purposes" is as valid as saying "only criminals use cash so they can buy things without a digital trail." I pay cash -- and refuse to use affinity/shopper cards because I would rather pay for my privacy which is worth more to me than 4 cents/gallon off on gasoline.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pixelpoet 3y ago
  Cash is still king in Germany, and it always weirds tourists out. Personally I think it's great, and just like you do much of my shopping in cash because I don't want my bank knowing everything about my diet etc.
  - solarkraft 3y ago
    Every time I think about leaving Germany I think about some small things we have that are really nice. That said ... paying electronically is so convenient, damn it.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    The opposite here, whenever I encounter a cashless-only shop it really weirds me out. Like, legal tender anyone?? (haven't been to Germany)
    - nulbyte 3y ago
      >Like, legal tender anyone?? For debts. Steal it, get caught, be ordered to pay restitution. Then your legal tender argument will make sense.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        Could you unpack it? Of course if I steal your cash I would be guilty etc, how does that make OK not accepting currency that is legal tender in country?
        nulbyte 3y ago
        I did, in the first two words: For debt. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/legal_tender https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/legal_tender Various laws may exist elsewhere enforcing a requirement to accept cash (or not, depending on the jurisdiction). But an appeal to "legal tender" isn't going to cut it. Legal tender for what? For debt.
        throwaway290 3y ago
        You may be misinterpreting a technical term. "Debt" is everything in economy. You make me a coffee, I am in debt to you for $1, take my note if you accept legal tender. Which I assumed you must if you are a legal business.
        iggldiggl 3y ago
        That only applies if you've already entered into a contract at that point – that's certainly true anywhere you'll only have to pay after having already been furnished with the desired goods and/or services [1], like in restaurants and cafés with table service, gas stations (depending on local traditions), etc. etc. In most other regular shops on the other hand, you'll only enter into the actual contract the moment you pay for the goods, so unless your jurisdiction has a specific law mandating the acceptance of cash in that kind of situation (like e.g. New York city I think?), the merchant is perfectly free to simply refuse entering into a contract with you. [1] With the caveat that depending on the jurisdiction the shop owner may fully legally put up a sign along the lines of "No cash payment" and in that case it's you who are in breach of contract in the first point. Maybe if you then get sued for non-payment you can pay cash through the court system, but that certainly wouldn't be a pleasant way of paying by cash.
  - tosihakkeri 3y ago
    > I don't want my bank knowing everything about my diet etc. Germans have a certain paranoia. I understand where it comes from but how are you ever going to move on if you hold these beliefs so tightly?
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      I find it odd to phrase it as "move on" given the direction much of the rest of the world is headed. Anytime things become digitized, the centuries of civil and social rights, rights which people fought and died for, end up getting completely thrown to the wayside. The exact same would happen to money. In some ways we're already seeing the foreshadowing of this in some of the previously most liberal places on Earth, like Canada. Even if one may not agree with what the truckers were protesting about, it seems unconscionable to freeze people's bank accounts as punishment for engaging in, or supporting, a completely and genuinely peaceful protest. [1] [1] - https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/trudeau-freeze-freedom-convoy-bank-accounts-canada-covid-protest-emergency-powers/ https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/trudeau-freeze-freedom-convoy...
      - tosihakkeri 3y ago
        How is cash helping with this? Should we start storing the notes under our mattresses or? Sorry I’m not sure I understand your point.
        philwelch 3y ago
        People got their bank accounts frozen because they contributed to fundraisers for the trucker protest. If they could contribute to the protesters using a more private method of payment, they wouldn't be subject to these authoritarian retributions from the government.
    - xkcd-sucks 3y ago
      In the 1930s, "Progress" was the replacement of a relatively free society with Nazi authoritarianism. In the 1940s, "Progress" (for half of the country) was the replacement of Nazi authoritarianism, where the secret police mostly targeted ethnic/political/sexual minorities, with Soviet authoritarianism, where the secret police targeted literally everyone and everything. So perhaps that is an object lesson in the value of not "moving on" from a relatively good situation
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    Covid drastically increased the uptake of cards in Germany. Cash only places became a lot more scarce. Japan though, now there's a place where cash only shops are still prevalent.
    - apricot 3y ago
      Even Japan is changing. Non contact payment is becoming popular.
      - TulliusCicero 3y ago
        I was there a few weeks ago and cash-only places were still very common, I'd say at least 10x as common as Germany at the end of COVID. (Though granted, some places might only take EC-Karte) We were hitting cash only places all the time there, whereas in Germany I found that cash only became rare during the pandemic. Hell, even recharging the IC cards in Japan had to be done using cash at a machine. Why can't you use a debit card? Who knows.
  - TacticalCoder 3y ago
    > Cash is still king in Germany, and it always weirds tourists out. I love it. I drove to Germany to have the maintenance done, change the tires and renew the extended manufacturer warranty for two years on my german car (extended warranty which I need to pay for) and it was a hefty bill. I pulled a bit more than 3 000 EUR in cash and they were just used to it. As in: a totally normal occurrence. I did it basically to test if it was true that cash was king in Germany: I had credit and debit cards in backup just in case. But cash just worked.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Cash is fighting back in the USA, lots of restaurants and even shops (including mechanics, etc) have a surcharge for credit cards now, but if you pay cash or debit (or even check at some of them) - no surcharge.
    - brewdad 3y ago
      The concert venue I went to last weekend is cards only now. There seems to be a bifurcation in the market where some vendors take cards grudgingly and others want nothing to do with cash.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        There certainly is - the smaller vendors are trying to avoid raising prices as best they can whilst the big ones are trying to reduce cash handling costs.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > worth more to me than 4 cents/gallon off on gasoline. The stores are getting wiser about this. My local Fred Meyer (a Kroger brand now) has a fuel rewards program -- for every $100 you spend, you get 10 cents off per gallon on your next fillup. Given how expensive groceries are, a lot of people are saving more like 50 cents per gallon, not 4. They've also started doing instant discounts at the register, which was something that Safeway aggressively did from the beginning. FM isn't quite that aggressive yet, but when I scan the shopper card just before paying, it isn't unusual for it to knock $20-30 off a $150 purchase. If it really were just 4 cents a gallon, I expect less people would bother. But it's not. The stores are steadily increasing the penalty for shopping without a loyalty card.
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    > They've also started doing instant discounts at the register, which was something that Safeway aggressively did from the beginning. FM isn't quite that aggressive yet, but when I scan the shopper card just before paying, it isn't unusual for it to knock $20-30 off a $150 purchase. It's a shitty psychological trick that Fred Meyer pulled off. People think shopper cards save money, and while it's technically true, it's the wrong framing of what's happening. What's really happening is that the store requires the card to get sale prices. In other words, Fred Meyer creating the shopper card did not create additional savings. It just started gatekeeping sales behind data collection.
    - notpushkin 3y ago
      Yeah. Or here's another way to frame that: stores started punishing you for not providing your information by giving you higher prices. Or another one: when you use a savings card, you trade some of your data for a couple bucks off. (While on that note: in many countries – pretty much everywhere I've been, actually – you can just get a new savings card every couple months, or get a few and round-robin them and replace every couple months etc. Just fill out the sign up form with some garbage data and you're good to go.)
      - bombcar 3y ago
eternityforest 3y ago
The right to access anonymity is desirable,but so is preserving a society in which it doesn't really matter for most people. Everyone should know how to use Tor, but we shouldn't have to, at least not all the time.
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  Preserve implies we have that society now. People's data is being farmed and their identity leaked and sold on the dark web, and they're probably not educated enough to care. That's what you want to preserve?
  - nottorp 3y ago
    > identity leaked and sold on the dark web You mean, after it's sold and resold by the likes of facebook or google in open transactions?
    - hiatus 3y ago
      Are Facebook and Google opening bank accounts with people's identities or stealing from their paypal accounts? Not sure what point you're making here.
      - nottorp 3y ago
        I'm in an area of the world where that doesnt quite work so I just thought of entities trading your personal information for marketing profit...
      - anigbrowl 3y ago
        No, they and other large vendors are just selling data that enables that. The fraudsters couldn't work without the industrial torrent of personal data that is an object of avid commerce. It weirds me out any time I open YouTube on the TV and the first thing I see is an ad related to some recent online purchase, however obscure.
      - 3y ago
Shish2k 3y ago
> I believe the message needs to be that anonymity is not only desirable but mandatory as well, especially because of the rise of platforms that literally track each and every possible metric about your daily life and habits Normal people don’t care if their metrics are being tracked - that is happening to practically everybody all day every day, and very few people are experiencing any direct and measurable negative consequences. In their defence, why should they weigh the hypothetical-risk above the real-benefits of giving up privacy (ie, convenience and price)? I believe if the message of privacy advocates is to have any effect at all on normal people, we really need to start focussing on things that normal people care about, not hypothetical and philosophical arguments
- pkoird 3y ago
  It's a frog in a steadily boiling water problem. People not caring about their privacy enables certain actors to increasingly encroach it and then suddenly you find that these actors know everything there is to know about you including what you buy, eat, use, discard etc. This is not just a hypothetical scenario. For instance, look at any digitally capable dictatorial regime. No one now has the power to speak up in these regimes because everything they say is tracked and can be traced back to them and they themselves gave the regime this power happily in the past.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

by pkoird 3y ago

mikece 3y ago

"Tor is only used for illegal purposes" is as valid as saying "only criminals use cash so they can buy things without a digital trail." I pay cash -- and refuse to use affinity/shopper cards because I would rather pay for my privacy which is worth more to me than 4 cents/gallon off on gasoline.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pixelpoet 3y ago
Cash is still king in Germany, and it always weirds tourists out. Personally I think it's great, and just like you do much of my shopping in cash because I don't want my bank knowing everything about my diet etc.
- solarkraft 3y ago
  Every time I think about leaving Germany I think about some small things we have that are really nice. That said ... paying electronically is so convenient, damn it.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  The opposite here, whenever I encounter a cashless-only shop it really weirds me out. Like, legal tender anyone?? (haven't been to Germany)
  - nulbyte 3y ago
    >Like, legal tender anyone?? For debts. Steal it, get caught, be ordered to pay restitution. Then your legal tender argument will make sense.
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      Could you unpack it? Of course if I steal your cash I would be guilty etc, how does that make OK not accepting currency that is legal tender in country?
      - nulbyte 3y ago
        I did, in the first two words: For debt. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/legal_tender https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/legal_tender Various laws may exist elsewhere enforcing a requirement to accept cash (or not, depending on the jurisdiction). But an appeal to "legal tender" isn't going to cut it. Legal tender for what? For debt.
        throwaway290 3y ago
        You may be misinterpreting a technical term. "Debt" is everything in economy. You make me a coffee, I am in debt to you for $1, take my note if you accept legal tender. Which I assumed you must if you are a legal business.
        iggldiggl 3y ago
        That only applies if you've already entered into a contract at that point – that's certainly true anywhere you'll only have to pay after having already been furnished with the desired goods and/or services [1], like in restaurants and cafés with table service, gas stations (depending on local traditions), etc. etc. In most other regular shops on the other hand, you'll only enter into the actual contract the moment you pay for the goods, so unless your jurisdiction has a specific law mandating the acceptance of cash in that kind of situation (like e.g. New York city I think?), the merchant is perfectly free to simply refuse entering into a contract with you. [1] With the caveat that depending on the jurisdiction the shop owner may fully legally put up a sign along the lines of "No cash payment" and in that case it's you who are in breach of contract in the first point. Maybe if you then get sued for non-payment you can pay cash through the court system, but that certainly wouldn't be a pleasant way of paying by cash.
- tosihakkeri 3y ago
  > I don't want my bank knowing everything about my diet etc. Germans have a certain paranoia. I understand where it comes from but how are you ever going to move on if you hold these beliefs so tightly?
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    I find it odd to phrase it as "move on" given the direction much of the rest of the world is headed. Anytime things become digitized, the centuries of civil and social rights, rights which people fought and died for, end up getting completely thrown to the wayside. The exact same would happen to money. In some ways we're already seeing the foreshadowing of this in some of the previously most liberal places on Earth, like Canada. Even if one may not agree with what the truckers were protesting about, it seems unconscionable to freeze people's bank accounts as punishment for engaging in, or supporting, a completely and genuinely peaceful protest. [1] [1] - https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/trudeau-freeze-freedom-convoy-bank-accounts-canada-covid-protest-emergency-powers/ https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/trudeau-freeze-freedom-convoy...
    - tosihakkeri 3y ago
      How is cash helping with this? Should we start storing the notes under our mattresses or? Sorry I’m not sure I understand your point.
      - philwelch 3y ago
        People got their bank accounts frozen because they contributed to fundraisers for the trucker protest. If they could contribute to the protesters using a more private method of payment, they wouldn't be subject to these authoritarian retributions from the government.
  - xkcd-sucks 3y ago
    In the 1930s, "Progress" was the replacement of a relatively free society with Nazi authoritarianism. In the 1940s, "Progress" (for half of the country) was the replacement of Nazi authoritarianism, where the secret police mostly targeted ethnic/political/sexual minorities, with Soviet authoritarianism, where the secret police targeted literally everyone and everything. So perhaps that is an object lesson in the value of not "moving on" from a relatively good situation
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  Covid drastically increased the uptake of cards in Germany. Cash only places became a lot more scarce. Japan though, now there's a place where cash only shops are still prevalent.
  - apricot 3y ago
    Even Japan is changing. Non contact payment is becoming popular.
    - TulliusCicero 3y ago
      I was there a few weeks ago and cash-only places were still very common, I'd say at least 10x as common as Germany at the end of COVID. (Though granted, some places might only take EC-Karte) We were hitting cash only places all the time there, whereas in Germany I found that cash only became rare during the pandemic. Hell, even recharging the IC cards in Japan had to be done using cash at a machine. Why can't you use a debit card? Who knows.
- TacticalCoder 3y ago
  > Cash is still king in Germany, and it always weirds tourists out. I love it. I drove to Germany to have the maintenance done, change the tires and renew the extended manufacturer warranty for two years on my german car (extended warranty which I need to pay for) and it was a hefty bill. I pulled a bit more than 3 000 EUR in cash and they were just used to it. As in: a totally normal occurrence. I did it basically to test if it was true that cash was king in Germany: I had credit and debit cards in backup just in case. But cash just worked.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Cash is fighting back in the USA, lots of restaurants and even shops (including mechanics, etc) have a surcharge for credit cards now, but if you pay cash or debit (or even check at some of them) - no surcharge.
  - brewdad 3y ago
    The concert venue I went to last weekend is cards only now. There seems to be a bifurcation in the market where some vendors take cards grudgingly and others want nothing to do with cash.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      There certainly is - the smaller vendors are trying to avoid raising prices as best they can whilst the big ones are trying to reduce cash handling costs.
rootusrootus 3y ago
> worth more to me than 4 cents/gallon off on gasoline. The stores are getting wiser about this. My local Fred Meyer (a Kroger brand now) has a fuel rewards program -- for every $100 you spend, you get 10 cents off per gallon on your next fillup. Given how expensive groceries are, a lot of people are saving more like 50 cents per gallon, not 4. They've also started doing instant discounts at the register, which was something that Safeway aggressively did from the beginning. FM isn't quite that aggressive yet, but when I scan the shopper card just before paying, it isn't unusual for it to knock $20-30 off a $150 purchase. If it really were just 4 cents a gallon, I expect less people would bother. But it's not. The stores are steadily increasing the penalty for shopping without a loyalty card.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  > They've also started doing instant discounts at the register, which was something that Safeway aggressively did from the beginning. FM isn't quite that aggressive yet, but when I scan the shopper card just before paying, it isn't unusual for it to knock $20-30 off a $150 purchase. It's a shitty psychological trick that Fred Meyer pulled off. People think shopper cards save money, and while it's technically true, it's the wrong framing of what's happening. What's really happening is that the store requires the card to get sale prices. In other words, Fred Meyer creating the shopper card did not create additional savings. It just started gatekeeping sales behind data collection.
  - notpushkin 3y ago
    Yeah. Or here's another way to frame that: stores started punishing you for not providing your information by giving you higher prices. Or another one: when you use a savings card, you trade some of your data for a couple bucks off. (While on that note: in many countries – pretty much everywhere I've been, actually – you can just get a new savings card every couple months, or get a few and round-robin them and replace every couple months etc. Just fill out the sign up form with some garbage data and you're good to go.)
    - bombcar 3y ago

eternityforest 3y ago

The right to access anonymity is desirable,but so is preserving a society in which it doesn't really matter for most people. Everyone should know how to use Tor, but we shouldn't have to, at least not all the time.

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
Preserve implies we have that society now. People's data is being farmed and their identity leaked and sold on the dark web, and they're probably not educated enough to care. That's what you want to preserve?
- nottorp 3y ago
  > identity leaked and sold on the dark web You mean, after it's sold and resold by the likes of facebook or google in open transactions?
  - hiatus 3y ago
    Are Facebook and Google opening bank accounts with people's identities or stealing from their paypal accounts? Not sure what point you're making here.
    - nottorp 3y ago
      I'm in an area of the world where that doesnt quite work so I just thought of entities trading your personal information for marketing profit...
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      No, they and other large vendors are just selling data that enables that. The fraudsters couldn't work without the industrial torrent of personal data that is an object of avid commerce. It weirds me out any time I open YouTube on the TV and the first thing I see is an ad related to some recent online purchase, however obscure.
    - 3y ago

Shish2k 3y ago

> I believe the message needs to be that anonymity is not only desirable but mandatory as well, especially because of the rise of platforms that literally track each and every possible metric about your daily life and habits Normal people don’t care if their metrics are being tracked - that is happening to practically everybody all day every day, and very few people are experiencing any direct and measurable negative consequences. In their defence, why should they weigh the hypothetical-risk above the real-benefits of giving up privacy (ie, convenience and price)? I believe if the message of privacy advocates is to have any effect at all on normal people, we really need to start focussing on things that normal people care about, not hypothetical and philosophical arguments

pkoird 3y ago
It's a frog in a steadily boiling water problem. People not caring about their privacy enables certain actors to increasingly encroach it and then suddenly you find that these actors know everything there is to know about you including what you buy, eat, use, discard etc. This is not just a hypothetical scenario. For instance, look at any digitally capable dictatorial regime. No one now has the power to speak up in these regimes because everything they say is tracked and can be traced back to them and they themselves gave the regime this power happily in the past.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]