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> We want e2ee. But we also recognize that e2ee is not going to deploy itself, and that the business incentives in place currently do not allow for the kind of

> We want e2ee. But we also recognize that e2ee is not going to deploy itself, and that the business incentives in place currently do not allow for the kind of broad privacy protections I believe we need. When the crypto wars of the 90s came around, I used to think technologies like e2ee and PKE would be something useful for a better world. Now it seems to me that with every new technology like Signal always has an opposing force against it (corporate control of the internet) that makes the system always slightly net negative in terms of benefits to humanity. I think we should scrap the whole thing and start over.

pixl97 2y ago
Scrap billions in infrastructure and software. You can see why this won't happen, right?
- dr-detroit 2y ago
  [dead]
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  What I can see is that it won't be an immediate action by the current power structure. But what I can also see is that it is leading to a corporate-controlled oligopoly that is also fundamentally unstable. So while no one in today's big-tech society will scrap the internet, it may also come down regardless due our inability to make wise societal decisions that transcend micro-moves restricted to the insane, current economic options.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - XorNot 2y ago
    What I see is platitudes and not a plan. What is the internet you want look like? How does it work? How is it funded? "The corporate internet is bad" - is it? Or is it the result of giving people what they want. Or is your experience of it a problem with you and not anything fundamental at all? (e.g. the absurd number of people who complain their smart phones are distraction machines but won't uninstall or mute the apps which send them too many notifications).
0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
There's no point in starting over from scratch if you can't explain how things would go differently. And if you can explain how things would go differently, it's worth considering whether that could be a patch on the existing system, instead of paying the cost to rebuild from scratch and possibly introduce a new set of problems. I suspect many who advocate for burn-it-all-down utopianism are not interested in solving problems for their own sake. It's the same impulse that inspires engineers to rewrite perfectly good software just because they don't like some aesthetic details of the code. That's fine if you do it on your own time. Go ahead, create a small-scale utopia and see if it works as well as predicted. Even if it fails, it can serve as a valuable data point for the rest of us.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  > I suspect many who advocate for burn-it-all-down utopianism are not interested in solving problems for their own sake. At least for me, the internet is both necessary and a horrible experience. So actually it is motivated from a personal perspective to have something better.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
    Perhaps approach it as a personal problem, to improve or restrict your own internet use?

pixl97 2y ago

Scrap billions in infrastructure and software. You can see why this won't happen, right?

dr-detroit 2y ago
[dead]
vouaobrasil 2y ago
What I can see is that it won't be an immediate action by the current power structure. But what I can also see is that it is leading to a corporate-controlled oligopoly that is also fundamentally unstable. So while no one in today's big-tech society will scrap the internet, it may also come down regardless due our inability to make wise societal decisions that transcend micro-moves restricted to the insane, current economic options.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- XorNot 2y ago
  What I see is platitudes and not a plan. What is the internet you want look like? How does it work? How is it funded? "The corporate internet is bad" - is it? Or is it the result of giving people what they want. Or is your experience of it a problem with you and not anything fundamental at all? (e.g. the absurd number of people who complain their smart phones are distraction machines but won't uninstall or mute the apps which send them too many notifications).

0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago

There's no point in starting over from scratch if you can't explain how things would go differently. And if you can explain how things would go differently, it's worth considering whether that could be a patch on the existing system, instead of paying the cost to rebuild from scratch and possibly introduce a new set of problems. I suspect many who advocate for burn-it-all-down utopianism are not interested in solving problems for their own sake. It's the same impulse that inspires engineers to rewrite perfectly good software just because they don't like some aesthetic details of the code. That's fine if you do it on your own time. Go ahead, create a small-scale utopia and see if it works as well as predicted. Even if it fails, it can serve as a valuable data point for the rest of us.

vouaobrasil 2y ago
> I suspect many who advocate for burn-it-all-down utopianism are not interested in solving problems for their own sake. At least for me, the internet is both necessary and a horrible experience. So actually it is motivated from a personal perspective to have something better.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
  Perhaps approach it as a personal problem, to improve or restrict your own internet use?