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If you have engineering or product skills, now is the time to take a hard look in the mirror, inventory your interests and concerns, and figure out how to fight

If you have engineering or product skills, now is the time to take a hard look in the mirror, inventory your interests and concerns, and figure out how to fight fire with fire. We need to be proliferating alternative, humanistic, empathetic software in the world and putting it into people's hands. It's easier than ever for us to independently build a wealth of defensive infrastructure for the common people.

giantg2 2y ago
We already have the tools. The problem is marketing, FOMO, etc. We can use stuff like Cloudflare restrictive DNS, a Pihole with additonal lists (like social media), a VPN, screen time or app usage timers, etc. Will and self-control are what's lacking.
- soulofmischief 2y ago
  The problem isn't marketing or FOMO. The problem is the average person barely understands what you just said, and we can't expect them all to become domain experts, especially when many people lack the fundamental research skills and experience needed to intuitively grok these technologies. We have to use our intelligence and expertise to make applications which take care of users and their privacy, without them needing to suddenly become overnight computer experts. Most of the tooling I see today has (understandably) massive UX issues and is largely relegated to at least the mildly technical. We need new and open Facebooks, TikToks, calendars, operating systems, etc. which protect and empower people but don't complicate their lives and stress them out, which leads to security and privacy fatigue. Even my current operating system, macOS, is so intensely user-hostile and obfuscated off the happy path, despite being heralded as a champion of human-oriented design. We need a modern GNU-like organization but focused on building the social/web tooling that most people today are using.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    Almost anyone who cares about their privacy should be able to Google how to improve it, find an article about VPNs, and sign up for Nord VPN (pretty user friendly and commercials everywhere). Dive just slightly deeper and you can find information on DNS and set the VPN to use the DNS you were recommended. Most people don't care enough to even ask the questions. Creating competing services were the value differentiation is privacy (likely at the trade off of cost or quality) is bound to fail for that same reason.
    - soulofmischief 2y ago
      You're proving my point, that users have to be protected by software engineers in the same way that pedestrians know nothing of civil engineering but trust that bridges are safe to walk on, and aren't to blame when they fail. It's not a marketing or FOMO issue, it's a matter of culture within our profession and way of life as engineers.
      - giantg2 2y ago
        No, that would be a matter of law. Bridges aren't safe because some group of engineers wants safe bridges. They have to meet safety standards set by the government, the engineers need license issued by the government, etc. If you want privacy, you need to change the law to grant it. Trying to make some end-run around market forces is futile. People en masse aren't going to pay for a service with privacy when they can get a free version that does the same stuff but blasts them with ad trackers.
        soulofmischief 2y ago
        Okay, you can work on changing the law, and the rest of us can work on just building infrastructure now and not waiting for the law to catch up. I don't know about you, but in my current country I have absolutely zero representation with the current oligarchy. > Trying to make some end-run around market forces is futile Market forces and the law are two different things, which one are you arguing? > People en masse aren't going to pay for a service with privacy when they can get a free version that does the same stuff but blasts them with ad trackers I never suggested anyone pay for anything, this is a straw man argument. I don't understand your aggressive stance against engineers building better, open alternatives to current offerings. The market is getting hungrier for it, and if a product is genuinely better, "market forces" will do their thing, no run-around needed.
        giantg2 2y ago
        You are mischaracterizing my stances. Please go back and read the comments.

giantg2 2y ago

We already have the tools. The problem is marketing, FOMO, etc. We can use stuff like Cloudflare restrictive DNS, a Pihole with additonal lists (like social media), a VPN, screen time or app usage timers, etc. Will and self-control are what's lacking.

soulofmischief 2y ago
The problem isn't marketing or FOMO. The problem is the average person barely understands what you just said, and we can't expect them all to become domain experts, especially when many people lack the fundamental research skills and experience needed to intuitively grok these technologies. We have to use our intelligence and expertise to make applications which take care of users and their privacy, without them needing to suddenly become overnight computer experts. Most of the tooling I see today has (understandably) massive UX issues and is largely relegated to at least the mildly technical. We need new and open Facebooks, TikToks, calendars, operating systems, etc. which protect and empower people but don't complicate their lives and stress them out, which leads to security and privacy fatigue. Even my current operating system, macOS, is so intensely user-hostile and obfuscated off the happy path, despite being heralded as a champion of human-oriented design. We need a modern GNU-like organization but focused on building the social/web tooling that most people today are using.
- giantg2 2y ago
  Almost anyone who cares about their privacy should be able to Google how to improve it, find an article about VPNs, and sign up for Nord VPN (pretty user friendly and commercials everywhere). Dive just slightly deeper and you can find information on DNS and set the VPN to use the DNS you were recommended. Most people don't care enough to even ask the questions. Creating competing services were the value differentiation is privacy (likely at the trade off of cost or quality) is bound to fail for that same reason.
  - soulofmischief 2y ago
    You're proving my point, that users have to be protected by software engineers in the same way that pedestrians know nothing of civil engineering but trust that bridges are safe to walk on, and aren't to blame when they fail. It's not a marketing or FOMO issue, it's a matter of culture within our profession and way of life as engineers.
    - giantg2 2y ago
      No, that would be a matter of law. Bridges aren't safe because some group of engineers wants safe bridges. They have to meet safety standards set by the government, the engineers need license issued by the government, etc. If you want privacy, you need to change the law to grant it. Trying to make some end-run around market forces is futile. People en masse aren't going to pay for a service with privacy when they can get a free version that does the same stuff but blasts them with ad trackers.
      - soulofmischief 2y ago
        Okay, you can work on changing the law, and the rest of us can work on just building infrastructure now and not waiting for the law to catch up. I don't know about you, but in my current country I have absolutely zero representation with the current oligarchy. > Trying to make some end-run around market forces is futile Market forces and the law are two different things, which one are you arguing? > People en masse aren't going to pay for a service with privacy when they can get a free version that does the same stuff but blasts them with ad trackers I never suggested anyone pay for anything, this is a straw man argument. I don't understand your aggressive stance against engineers building better, open alternatives to current offerings. The market is getting hungrier for it, and if a product is genuinely better, "market forces" will do their thing, no run-around needed.
        giantg2 2y ago
        You are mischaracterizing my stances. Please go back and read the comments.