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The problem with bifurcated trust is the ongoing efforts to force people into carrying a “trusted” pocket spy. Cashless payments, mobile train tickets, and digi

The problem with bifurcated trust is the ongoing efforts to force people into carrying a “trusted” pocket spy. Cashless payments, mobile train tickets, and digital ID are making it extremely difficult to live without a pocket spy in some places. If my bank requires me to use a phone for transfers (mine doesn’t), it might be acceptable to leave one in a desk drawer powered off as you would do with a hardware authentication token. It’s a special device for occasionally accessing a service. Fine. But when governments and industry collude to force citizens to carry these devices in order to live life normally, that’s not OK. My intent is to be as stubborn and obnoxious as possible in resisting this until they either give up and provide an alternate path or lock me away for noncompliance. Fortunately there is still an alternate path available for most things, primarily thanks to elders who have trouble with new tech. (Thank you elders!)

gjsman-1000 1y ago
Then get a law passed. Today. Or… acknowledge this is a fear of a future 30, 40, 50 years away that may never happen, which is never an argument. It’s like saying the government, because they have power, and the SCOTUS, because they have power, could decide to kill all children. Yes, they could. No, it’s absurd to let that power keep you up at night, or say the solution is to abolish their power.
- iamnothere 1y ago
  > Then get a law passed. Today. Ha! Let me know how to achieve that and I will. I’ve advocated, donated, and volunteered for years on behalf of a number of causes, some with excellent organizations promoting them, and yet things continue to get worse. The only minor victories have been temporary delays of bad policy. No, the best response for the average citizen is stubborn noncompliance and constant passive resistance. Drag your feet until the whole thing comes crashing down. And encourage your friends to do it too! (But don’t stop trying through conventional politics, maybe one day it will work. Just don’t get your hopes up.)
  - gjsman-1000 1y ago
    You can’t pass a law; because you have almost no bad examples to point to. Emulators, something that happened on the other side of the world, and piracy aren’t arguments. The banning of Parler did more for activism and awareness regarding platform control than all FOSDEM. Of course, HN happily piled on in favor of this decision, missing the moment to build common ground on platform control, for the sake of political expediency. If the government, or tech, starts regulating out things people actually care about, then you’ll have your sway. The rush to technical solutions seems to imply we already internally agree tech and government aren’t going to do anything the average person cares about - as it assumes the “bad future” can happen without a national policy discussion anywhere.
    - iamnothere 1y ago
      It may be across an ocean, but Europe isn’t exactly the other side of the world geographically or culturally. Many of the ideas being trialed there are working their way into parts of the US. The frog is being boiled slowly, but the heat is rising more quickly in big cities. > HN happily piled on in favor of this decision HN is not a monolith with a single opinion. The loudest users at the time (not just here, all over the internet) were pro-censorship political activists, so maybe that caused you to interpret things that way. > If the government, or tech, starts regulating out things people actually care about, then you’ll have your sway. The public will not respond until the groundwork has been laid to make effective protest impossible. Only then will important things be regulated out. Until then it will just be “nerd stuff”.
      - gjsman-1000 1y ago
        > HN is not a monolith This is a lazy argument, as I can safely say that 80% or more of HN has the same political bent, and every community ever has said “but not everyone.” Read the comments on the Parler deplatforming. See what was upvoted. See what the consensus was. Nobody cares about the principles, even here, when rubber hits the road. Imagine if the undesirables, on either side, started actively using all the decentralized censorship-resist tech for their cause. Would the builders and commentators here be saying “working as designed,” or would there be a sense of fury, a sense of “not like that?” A sense of “that was supposed to enable my cause, not yours?” Suppose Proud Boys coordinated their Jan 6 activities on Signal and Tor. Suppose Truth Social was built on ActivityPub and MAGA developers were the loudest voices at FOSDEM advocating for censorship-resistant protocols. How do you feel? Are we still citing the same principles? If not, we never believed them. > The public will not respond until the groundwork has been laid to make effective protest impossible. Only then will important things be regulated out. Until then it will just be “nerd stuff”. I’m looking at history and noticing that 99.9% of revolutions did not have the internet required to be successful.

gjsman-1000 1y ago

Then get a law passed. Today. Or… acknowledge this is a fear of a future 30, 40, 50 years away that may never happen, which is never an argument. It’s like saying the government, because they have power, and the SCOTUS, because they have power, could decide to kill all children. Yes, they could. No, it’s absurd to let that power keep you up at night, or say the solution is to abolish their power.

iamnothere 1y ago
> Then get a law passed. Today. Ha! Let me know how to achieve that and I will. I’ve advocated, donated, and volunteered for years on behalf of a number of causes, some with excellent organizations promoting them, and yet things continue to get worse. The only minor victories have been temporary delays of bad policy. No, the best response for the average citizen is stubborn noncompliance and constant passive resistance. Drag your feet until the whole thing comes crashing down. And encourage your friends to do it too! (But don’t stop trying through conventional politics, maybe one day it will work. Just don’t get your hopes up.)
- gjsman-1000 1y ago
  You can’t pass a law; because you have almost no bad examples to point to. Emulators, something that happened on the other side of the world, and piracy aren’t arguments. The banning of Parler did more for activism and awareness regarding platform control than all FOSDEM. Of course, HN happily piled on in favor of this decision, missing the moment to build common ground on platform control, for the sake of political expediency. If the government, or tech, starts regulating out things people actually care about, then you’ll have your sway. The rush to technical solutions seems to imply we already internally agree tech and government aren’t going to do anything the average person cares about - as it assumes the “bad future” can happen without a national policy discussion anywhere.
  - iamnothere 1y ago
    It may be across an ocean, but Europe isn’t exactly the other side of the world geographically or culturally. Many of the ideas being trialed there are working their way into parts of the US. The frog is being boiled slowly, but the heat is rising more quickly in big cities. > HN happily piled on in favor of this decision HN is not a monolith with a single opinion. The loudest users at the time (not just here, all over the internet) were pro-censorship political activists, so maybe that caused you to interpret things that way. > If the government, or tech, starts regulating out things people actually care about, then you’ll have your sway. The public will not respond until the groundwork has been laid to make effective protest impossible. Only then will important things be regulated out. Until then it will just be “nerd stuff”.
    - gjsman-1000 1y ago
      > HN is not a monolith This is a lazy argument, as I can safely say that 80% or more of HN has the same political bent, and every community ever has said “but not everyone.” Read the comments on the Parler deplatforming. See what was upvoted. See what the consensus was. Nobody cares about the principles, even here, when rubber hits the road. Imagine if the undesirables, on either side, started actively using all the decentralized censorship-resist tech for their cause. Would the builders and commentators here be saying “working as designed,” or would there be a sense of fury, a sense of “not like that?” A sense of “that was supposed to enable my cause, not yours?” Suppose Proud Boys coordinated their Jan 6 activities on Signal and Tor. Suppose Truth Social was built on ActivityPub and MAGA developers were the loudest voices at FOSDEM advocating for censorship-resistant protocols. How do you feel? Are we still citing the same principles? If not, we never believed them. > The public will not respond until the groundwork has been laid to make effective protest impossible. Only then will important things be regulated out. Until then it will just be “nerd stuff”. I’m looking at history and noticing that 99.9% of revolutions did not have the internet required to be successful.