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Comment by op03 | Hacker News Reader

Feels like the last decade has shown Leaking to the General Public is not very productive. As in outcomes are poor.

There is always something else lined up every 2 minutes to pull attention away from the leak.

I am not sure if anyone studies "leaking effectiveness" but I am guessing in info tsunami conditions larger the leak less impact it has. Cause no one knows whose network of power is going to get impacted so everyone does nothing.

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So now more and more mainstream OS have storage encryption easily enabled, everyone in tech seems to need to communicate about how much their product is privacy friendly and you would still say that the last decade of tech leaks hasn't been very productive? I'm not saying that it changed everything and that we're now safe, far from that. But at least that topic is now unavoidable.

Valid point about technical changes. But most of the big leaks were sold as if they would lead to social/political/economic changes.

Technology doesn't exist in its own bubble isolated from society, politics, and economy. Changes in mainstream OSs and mainstreaming privacy concerns are absolutely the result of social, political, and economic change.

Keep in mind the companies involved in these technological changes make up a huge portion of our economy, and their users affected by their app store changes, for example, touch every sector. These changes come due to social pressure--these companies aren't doing this out of the goodness of their heart. And particularly with regards to Facebook, political pressure is being placed on them to self-regulate with regard to user data to avoid government regulation.

I am not accusing you of being anti-leaking (or pro-leaking), but it does sound like you've fallen for an anti-leaking narrative here.

I was just wondering about effectiveness of large leaks in a environment of info overload. Not in any camp...more like a layman passing through :)) I get your point about it all being interconnected though and thanks for making it.

Is this a joke? We have an innocent man in prison and war criminals beyond reproach. I am for setting realistic goals, but letting this fly will have severe long term repercussions.

Maybe? It's true that the outcomes have not been what I'd have hoped for, but I'm not sure we can say that leaking has had no impact. It's hard to A/B test what the outcome would be if the leaks hadn't occurred. Things might be worse. Hard to imagine how, exactly, but it's possible the leaks had enough positive impact to be worthwhile...

The fact that the media is largely refusing to give proper attention to the few primary sources we have on government affairs, preferring to print statements and tweets is the real problem here. If journalism looked the way it is often pictured in movies, this would go vastly differently.

What I think is actually worse is that the majority of people dont even care, actually. Not a very woke world we live in

How is hiding information help. There will always be distracting news.

> Feels like the last decade has shown Leaking to the General Public is not very productive. As in outcomes are poor.

Who cares about "productivity" or outcomes? I am in for the truth. And WikiLeaks really helped.

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