Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

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I think what we're seeing on this forum at times is more emotion than rationality.

Regarding the original list, it's likely only 2 and 5 would pass muster as being issues that antitrust laws would actually be able to deal with effectively. Number 3? Might be an issue if you can frame the argument in a manner more consistent with antitrust concerns. 1 and 4 are probably just emotional frustration leading the poster to say, "These must be illegal because I don't like them."

We need to focus on real issues if we want to be taken seriously. Right now privacy and security activists just sound shrill and unconvincing. Part of that lack of credibility is the tendency to focus on things that are not true issues from a legal perspective as opposed to the slam dunk type issues that stare us in the face.

This is why these issues are so hard to build a consensus around in the larger population, because lawyers hear the complaints of some activists, and they just laugh. Then those lawyers go off and work on things that actually have a chance in Hell of working. So I applaud the move to have an antitrust investigation, but we shouldn't be under the impression that every little thing some guy doesn't like is part of it. There are very specific families of issues that are reviewed for propriety, and if action needs to be taken, it is.

Doesn't mean we should waste the time of these states looking into why some guy's youtube account was cancelled. That, and other ridiculously trivial issues like it, are not what this is about. So we shouldn't even set up those expectations. Particularly not in lieu of getting the word out to the larger society about real antitrust issues. (Of which Google and FB are the main offenders.)

> We need to focus on real issues if we want to be taken seriously. Right now privacy and security activists just sound shrill and unconvincing.

No offense, but honestly just look around. Those activists are killing it nationally in the PR game and have been consistently for the past year.

I honestly think you might want to consider the very real possibility that we, on HN, are in a bit of an echo chamber. Where I live in opioid infested fly over country, if you ask the average person the name of a single privacy concern, security concern, or even a single celebrity privacy activist, you would get a blank stare. The slightly more informed, or slightly more criminal depending on how you want to look at it, would probably say that his phone was a security concern because the cops can use it against him when he goes to see his weed man. (Or worse.) But that's about the extent of it.

Compare that with other issues. How many people around here know all about the #MeToo issue? How many people around here know the ins and outs of all the immigration stuff? You may have disagreements with them as to what should be done about these issues, but they definitely know them. Even more esoteric issues, something like prison reform or the trade war. They definitely know what it means for them and are all about making sure things go their way on those issues. They know Trump is about the trade war. They know Kim K and Trump are about prison reform. They largely support both. (Again, I'm not making an argument about whether or not they are on the right side, just pointing out the difference in familiarity with the issues.)

The only people around here who know about security and privacy issues are the meth dealers, the few techies, and the usual bedfellows of child porn lovers/racist ideologues. We have to get the average teacher in, say, Markesan or wherever, talking about privacy and security in the classroom the same way they talk about Kim K's prison reform push, or the trade war.

I'm respectfully suggesting that this is something that is just not happening right now. Definitely not around here.

I don't think that is the case because I see this outside of HN in my day to day life. Your mistake is assuming that opinion in opioid infested fly over country is what determines Facebook regulation, rather than a targeted PR campaign towards elites that impact policy.

On the coasts (which is half the country at least), people are certainly talking about FB and privacy.

#MeToo requires a cultural shift, not a legislative shift.

Part of the purpose of activism is to exploit current laws for immediate change, but the other part is to create support for changing the laws to provide better protections.

The idea that you could disappear completely from anyone using modern technology (which is what getting accounts banned from communication services will amount to) with no legal recourse or transparency is horrifying, even if it's technically legal, because the laws were written at a time when the tools of communication were widely distributed and could only be feasibly disrupted by governments.

In the short term, the lawyers matter. In the long term, we need to create laws and conventions which ensure that the lawyers of the future are focusing on the right issues.

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