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I think it would be helpful to engage with the possibility that they are neither stupid nor ignorant, rather that they simply have different values and prioriti

by tqi 7mo ago

I think it would be helpful to engage with the possibility that they are neither stupid nor ignorant, rather that they simply have different values and priorities than the early internet users.

sillysaurusx 7mo ago
I’m not sure it’s possible to have different priorities without being stupid or ignorant of history. Once you concede a certain right, such as a right to privacy, you rarely if ever get it back. Most people seem not to care about this, despite ample evidence that it’s something worth caring about. Stupid is the obvious term for it, though obtuse could work as well. Of course, I don’t blame them. They haven’t lived in a context where they need to care. All of the reasons they’ve heard to care have come from stories of people who lived before them. But ignoring warnings for no good reason is still dumb. A better thing to engage with is whether we can meaningfully change the situation. It might still be possible, but it requires an effective immune response from everybody on this particular topic. I’m not sure we can, but it’s worth trying to.
- Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
  > They haven’t lived in a context where they need to care. You might believe you don't need opsec, and then new laws are passed, or your national supreme court overturns the case that gave you your rights, or someone invades; and now suddenly you're wanted for anything from overstaying a visa, outright murder, or simply existing. USA, right now, peoples lives are being destroyed because the wrong people got their data. Lethal consequences exist in Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran. Certain professions per definition: Journalists, Lawyers, Intelligence, Military. Certain Ethnicities. (Jewish, Somali) ; Faiths... It doesn't need to be quite this dramatic though. But you might accidentally have broken some laws and don't even know about it yet. Caught a fish? Released a fish? Give the wrong child a bowl of soup [1]. Open the door, refuse to open the door. Signed a register; didn't sign a register. The list of actual examples is endless. The less people know about you, the less they can prosecute. [1] A flaw in the Dutch Asylum Emergency Measures Act (2025) that would have criminalized offering even a bowl of soup to an undocumented person. The Council of State confirmed this reading. A follow-up bill was needed to fix it.
  - closeparen 7mo ago
    There is no world where a totalitarian government’s law enforcement ambitions on some object-level question are thwarted by the same government’s enforcement of privacy law. Countries with GDPR that are thinking of rounding up and kicking out the refugees know perfectly well who and where the refugees are.
    - Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
      You're not entirely wrong; ultimately if they put enough resources towards it they can probably catch quite a number of people. But governments have limited resources and really don't track everyone all the time. Not even in 2026 are they able to do that yet. It helps if you maintain some level of opsec. If they really want to get you, they can get close, but see eg Ed Snowden; who managed to stay ahead of the US government just long enough to reach relative safety (FSVO).
      - nandomrumber 7mo ago
        Snowden’s experience doesn’t generalise to, well, anyone really.
        Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
        Well, I wouldn't personally recommend single-handedly taking on the most powerful nation on earth, myself. But turns out that if your opsec is decent, and even using mostly publicly available tools like Snowden did, you might survive even that. In the nuanced case, normal people applying more normal opsec can handle more normal things, would seem to follow.
    - gzread 7mo ago
      The law is irrelevant in that case but the actual situation is not. If people have never put their personal information online, the bad government can't get it from online. A new phone coming out during the time of the bad government, that says the government requires you to enter your name and address, will not be received as well as if it comes out during good government times.
- closeparen 7mo ago
  I have the right to my own senses, my own observations, my own memories. I have the right to photograph what I can see with my eyes, and to write down what I can remember. Unless enjoined by a specific duty of care (doctor/patient, attorney/client, security clearance, etc) I have the right to discuss my memories with others. This obtains even when using electronic tools and even when working in association with others. I don’t intend to give up or accept limitations on these rights because you consider yourself to have “privacy rights” or ownership interests in my records, my memories, my perceptions, or the reality in front of me. I find the notion of the government or another person interfering in this process, the perception and recollection of reality, to be creepy and totalitarian by itself. In 1984, it is not only that the government is aware of Winston, but that it routinely tampers with or destroys evidence of the past & demands to control the perception of the present. I do not think we should let a government do that, even for a good reason like “protect your privacy” any more than we should let it destroy general purpose computing “for the children.”
  - Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
    I'm actually fine with that; so long as that is restricted to your own senses, observations, and memories; and doesn't somehow spill over and somehow pertain to mine. Basically the typical freedom to swing your fists ends at the tip of my nose argument. This is probably a solvable problem between reasonable people; give or take.
  - fc417fc802 7mo ago
    It can remain legal to operate a security camera while being illegal to upload unencrypted footage to any third party. I'm not worried about individuals, only about big business and the government. > This obtains even when using electronic tools and even when working in association with others. I think it is reasonable to place limits on public "speech" (ex uploading videos of people) without interfering with private (in the case of electronics E2EE) communications.
- gzread 7mo ago
  There are many people rights people don't have and they're okay with that and even support not having the right to stab people, not having the right to steal from a store, not having the right to take nude pictures of children... What if this one is like that?
Levitz 7mo ago
And what would those values and priorities be? Because it doesn't seem to me that they align with what they actually do. For example, it seems to me there is a whole lot of worry around megacorporations, often related to capitalism and the inequalities it brings. In that context, if you don't place privacy as a priority, how are you not either stupid or ignorant? Is my premise just wrong?
- ndriscoll 7mo ago
  You can be in favor of privacy while simultaneously thinking porn, gambling, and advertisers shouldn't be targeting children. The age verification bills I've read have steep penalties for retaining information, so that seems fine since that's literally more protection than you get in person. It's really more just concluding that those corporations should be liable for their behavior. It also has nothing to do with "the Internet" which is largely unaffected. Except of course ideas for forcing OS behavior coming out of California which are obviously bad. I actually think things could be a lot simpler if we just made the laws like alcohol: it's illegal (with criminal liability) for a non-parent adult to provide <restricted thing> to a child. Simple enough. Seems to work fine as-is for Internet alcohol purchases. Businesses dealing in restricted industries can figure out how to avoid that liability. That's entirely compatible with making it illegal for businesses to stalk everyone, which we should also do!
  - fc417fc802 7mo ago
    If you implemented that simple solution the expected outcome is businesses collecting ID at the door. But unlike the age verification bills there'd be no prohibition of or penalty for misuse of the collected information. It's a strictly worse outcome. You can make intentional targeting illegal without criminalizing the accidental. And mandating self categorization of content by service providers would enable standardized filtering that was broadly effective. The above won't get kids off of social media and it won't serve the purposes of the surveillance state but it will meet the stated goals of those pushing these measures. Keeping children off of social media is a much trickier problem. I think we'd be better served by banning certain sorts of algorithmic feeds.
micromacrofoot 7mo ago
they are saddled with more problems that they can reasonably care about and broader issues like privacy drop off of their radars because they've never had it
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

by tqi 7mo ago

I think it would be helpful to engage with the possibility that they are neither stupid nor ignorant, rather that they simply have different values and priorities than the early internet users.

sillysaurusx 7mo ago

I’m not sure it’s possible to have different priorities without being stupid or ignorant of history. Once you concede a certain right, such as a right to privacy, you rarely if ever get it back. Most people seem not to care about this, despite ample evidence that it’s something worth caring about. Stupid is the obvious term for it, though obtuse could work as well. Of course, I don’t blame them. They haven’t lived in a context where they need to care. All of the reasons they’ve heard to care have come from stories of people who lived before them. But ignoring warnings for no good reason is still dumb. A better thing to engage with is whether we can meaningfully change the situation. It might still be possible, but it requires an effective immune response from everybody on this particular topic. I’m not sure we can, but it’s worth trying to.

Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
> They haven’t lived in a context where they need to care. You might believe you don't need opsec, and then new laws are passed, or your national supreme court overturns the case that gave you your rights, or someone invades; and now suddenly you're wanted for anything from overstaying a visa, outright murder, or simply existing. USA, right now, peoples lives are being destroyed because the wrong people got their data. Lethal consequences exist in Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran. Certain professions per definition: Journalists, Lawyers, Intelligence, Military. Certain Ethnicities. (Jewish, Somali) ; Faiths... It doesn't need to be quite this dramatic though. But you might accidentally have broken some laws and don't even know about it yet. Caught a fish? Released a fish? Give the wrong child a bowl of soup [1]. Open the door, refuse to open the door. Signed a register; didn't sign a register. The list of actual examples is endless. The less people know about you, the less they can prosecute. [1] A flaw in the Dutch Asylum Emergency Measures Act (2025) that would have criminalized offering even a bowl of soup to an undocumented person. The Council of State confirmed this reading. A follow-up bill was needed to fix it.
- closeparen 7mo ago
  There is no world where a totalitarian government’s law enforcement ambitions on some object-level question are thwarted by the same government’s enforcement of privacy law. Countries with GDPR that are thinking of rounding up and kicking out the refugees know perfectly well who and where the refugees are.
  - Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
    You're not entirely wrong; ultimately if they put enough resources towards it they can probably catch quite a number of people. But governments have limited resources and really don't track everyone all the time. Not even in 2026 are they able to do that yet. It helps if you maintain some level of opsec. If they really want to get you, they can get close, but see eg Ed Snowden; who managed to stay ahead of the US government just long enough to reach relative safety (FSVO).
    - nandomrumber 7mo ago
      Snowden’s experience doesn’t generalise to, well, anyone really.
      - Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
        Well, I wouldn't personally recommend single-handedly taking on the most powerful nation on earth, myself. But turns out that if your opsec is decent, and even using mostly publicly available tools like Snowden did, you might survive even that. In the nuanced case, normal people applying more normal opsec can handle more normal things, would seem to follow.
  - gzread 7mo ago
    The law is irrelevant in that case but the actual situation is not. If people have never put their personal information online, the bad government can't get it from online. A new phone coming out during the time of the bad government, that says the government requires you to enter your name and address, will not be received as well as if it comes out during good government times.
closeparen 7mo ago
I have the right to my own senses, my own observations, my own memories. I have the right to photograph what I can see with my eyes, and to write down what I can remember. Unless enjoined by a specific duty of care (doctor/patient, attorney/client, security clearance, etc) I have the right to discuss my memories with others. This obtains even when using electronic tools and even when working in association with others. I don’t intend to give up or accept limitations on these rights because you consider yourself to have “privacy rights” or ownership interests in my records, my memories, my perceptions, or the reality in front of me. I find the notion of the government or another person interfering in this process, the perception and recollection of reality, to be creepy and totalitarian by itself. In 1984, it is not only that the government is aware of Winston, but that it routinely tampers with or destroys evidence of the past & demands to control the perception of the present. I do not think we should let a government do that, even for a good reason like “protect your privacy” any more than we should let it destroy general purpose computing “for the children.”
- Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
  I'm actually fine with that; so long as that is restricted to your own senses, observations, and memories; and doesn't somehow spill over and somehow pertain to mine. Basically the typical freedom to swing your fists ends at the tip of my nose argument. This is probably a solvable problem between reasonable people; give or take.
- fc417fc802 7mo ago
  It can remain legal to operate a security camera while being illegal to upload unencrypted footage to any third party. I'm not worried about individuals, only about big business and the government. > This obtains even when using electronic tools and even when working in association with others. I think it is reasonable to place limits on public "speech" (ex uploading videos of people) without interfering with private (in the case of electronics E2EE) communications.
gzread 7mo ago
There are many people rights people don't have and they're okay with that and even support not having the right to stab people, not having the right to steal from a store, not having the right to take nude pictures of children... What if this one is like that?

Levitz 7mo ago

And what would those values and priorities be? Because it doesn't seem to me that they align with what they actually do. For example, it seems to me there is a whole lot of worry around megacorporations, often related to capitalism and the inequalities it brings. In that context, if you don't place privacy as a priority, how are you not either stupid or ignorant? Is my premise just wrong?

ndriscoll 7mo ago
You can be in favor of privacy while simultaneously thinking porn, gambling, and advertisers shouldn't be targeting children. The age verification bills I've read have steep penalties for retaining information, so that seems fine since that's literally more protection than you get in person. It's really more just concluding that those corporations should be liable for their behavior. It also has nothing to do with "the Internet" which is largely unaffected. Except of course ideas for forcing OS behavior coming out of California which are obviously bad. I actually think things could be a lot simpler if we just made the laws like alcohol: it's illegal (with criminal liability) for a non-parent adult to provide <restricted thing> to a child. Simple enough. Seems to work fine as-is for Internet alcohol purchases. Businesses dealing in restricted industries can figure out how to avoid that liability. That's entirely compatible with making it illegal for businesses to stalk everyone, which we should also do!
- fc417fc802 7mo ago
  If you implemented that simple solution the expected outcome is businesses collecting ID at the door. But unlike the age verification bills there'd be no prohibition of or penalty for misuse of the collected information. It's a strictly worse outcome. You can make intentional targeting illegal without criminalizing the accidental. And mandating self categorization of content by service providers would enable standardized filtering that was broadly effective. The above won't get kids off of social media and it won't serve the purposes of the surveillance state but it will meet the stated goals of those pushing these measures. Keeping children off of social media is a much trickier problem. I think we'd be better served by banning certain sorts of algorithmic feeds.

micromacrofoot 7mo ago

they are saddled with more problems that they can reasonably care about and broader issues like privacy drop off of their radars because they've never had it

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]