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Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

Ben is one of the greatest thinkers in technology writing today - period.

You're only depriving yourself of an important perspective in this case.

He's open to arguments and is extremely reasonable. If you're only looking for writing that agrees with what you already believe then you might be disappointed, but if you're looking for extremely thoughtful thinking on strategy and technology then you won't find anyone better than Ben.

It's not just a blog, it's a paid publication with a ton of research and effort behind it.

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The article I referenced boils down to dismissing fears of online privacy invasion as alarmism. Exploring his own site's dependencies, Ben concludes that the third parties phoned home to for every visitor are probably harmless. He recommends that discourse focus on striking a balance between technology being convenient and secure, and not worrying too much.

This essay reflects a profound failure of imagination with respect to the present and future of online tracking, and the risk it poses to consumers and citizens. This is an issue which is at the heart of the business models and strategy of the world's most powerful corporations, so in my opinion having this blind spot (or, perhaps, degree of ethical flexibility) seriously undermines the veracity and objectivity of his analysis in many areas.

This.

Say some company found that they could pay landlords to let them borrow everyone's keys, and used them to go inside while you are out and stick an ad inside your bathroom where you will see it when you're taking a dump. Sure, the ad is harmless. But you can't just shrug it off because then you've accepted the principle that companies can pay your landlord for access to you and your house.

Wow. That is a SERIOUS mischaracterization of the article and his conculusions. The third parties in question were services like Stripe (since he monetizes with subscriptions, not advertising) or Cloudflare. His whole point was he takes privacy seriously, but fundamentalist policy punishes good and bad actors equally.

But even all that aside, by your own words, it's not his treatments of the facts but his failure to account for the worst possible hypothetical situation that you have imagined in this specific area that is most important to you that makes him an unreliable journalist on any-and-all subjects? I would challenge you that this is an unhealthy purity test for him to pass.

Except that using CDN services is a privacy hole in itself - I don't know whether Cloudflare[1] currently collects or sells tracking data on usage (including referrer information) but there is definitely a technical capability there and no legal impediment. If they don't do it now then whenever a vulture capitalist scoops them up you can be sure they'll start.

1. To be clear, I am specifically referring to cloudflare because it's the service under question. I have no opinion on Cloudflare or knowledge of any specific and current privacy issues.

Which is why that article that OP points out is such an odd outlier. In contrast to the normally wonderful and insightful reading on that site, the one on privacy stood out as total defensiveness. I’m not going to condemn the author over just that one but it was weird!

I agree, I'm pretty unfamiliar with that source personally but I did check out that article and was quite disappointed with the content of it... It didn't seem malignant but it was certainly quite ignorant of potential issues.

I think Ben is one of the greatest writers, I'm not so sure about thinkers. It's pretty easy to sound smart in a very carefully calibrated format where you get the Monday morning quarterback things that have happened after you set all the rules for the game.

He's said a few interesting things but how much of what he writes can you use to make better choices yourself? Almost nothing.

Who do you recommend reading for more actionable insight?

I was a paid subscriber for years until he started saying shit like “actually, the US giving employers control over access to healthcare is good because they can force people to work harder” and “it’s bad for China to jail ethnic populations but ok for the US because they’re good guys”.

I realized that for how insanely smart he is in analyzing business plans he ultimately worships the rich and despises collective power.

I now HN loves that kind of rhetoric but yeah, I’m not really a fan anymore.

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