Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

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This is why I'm always confused my privacy arguments. When someone says that they want privacy the responses go like:

reference Goebbels: "I have nothing to hide, so I'm not worried"

Downplay: "They only read my emails and everything I write to sell me stuff better. Sometimes I need stuff. They're helping me!" As if it can only be used to sell and nothing else.

World revolves around self: "Well ads don't affect me." Like it doesn't matter that everyone else is affected even if you aren't.

Completely ignoring the fact that if someone can manipulate you to buy stuff they might be able to use it to manipulate you do do other things. I mean we have political ads. And Coke ads aren't there to sell you coke (they are there to make you feel better about your purchase). Frankly, to me it doesn't even matter if no one has done that yet (I'm aware of the clear evidence that people have) but that we're giving people the ability to do this in mass and in very precise ways. That just leads to a potential turn in democracy. "Just educating people" doesn't solve the problem either. Ads are still effective on smart people. So the question is "are the benefits ~~profits~~ worth the cost?" It is reasonable to think "yes", but I'm a resounding "no."

Yes, we use political ads to "manipulate democracy" and the like, but a mass statewide commercial is a very different thing than an individualized ad targeted to a specific person. At least to me these are very different (and we still have regulations on what you can say in political ads). Where do we draw the line? We talk about data a lot here and what we can model with it. What will ads look like in 20-50 years if we don't draw a line in privacy and technology continues to become more powerful? I think individualized ads will look very different. We do need to determine what level of individualization we can target with an ad, and I don't see much of that happening.

Excellent comment, you changed my thinking on the issue. I feel like liberal, educated democracies are focused on the wrong problems. It’s only going to get harder to change course the longer we keep sailing in this direction of a laissez faire, anything-goes approach to software.

Apple’s infamous walled garden solves this problem to some extent, but introduces others because it lacks due process, leading to corruption where money can solve any problem, and so apps like Tiktok get to abuse their trust with impunity.

As I see it, democracy is unstable. I like living in a democratic system (yes, a democratically elected republic is still a democratic system). But we have to recognize that it is unstable and democracies work under the pretense that the keys to power are distributed and frequently moving hands (by elective processes). So the danger to democracy is the collection of keys, or the consolidation of power. Power consolidation DOES have benefits after all. I mean a benevolent dictator is probably the best form of government, the issue is that if the next dictator isn't benevolent (or how long until that). The same is with democracy. We keep power distributed so that when a malevolent (or even just non-benevolent) ruler comes into power they aren't able to do much. Essentially as long as we don't let corruption fill the majority of roles with power, we're fine. They have to spend a lot of time and resources consolidating that power.

Essentially this is what "turnkey tyranny" is: the point at which power is consolidated to such a degree that a malevolent ruler would have the power of a tyrant.

So it has never been about having something to hide or that people aren't using a power malevolently. It is the potential for abuse and that given enough time a power is likely to be abused. Distribution makes it more difficult (but does not eliminate) to abuse power.

With HN's love for federated systems, which essentially operate under similar principles, I'm surprised this is not a more popular concept. The only difference is that we're talking about government officials instead of Moxie.

All governments are unstable. The best we can hope for is they do the most good for the longest amount of time. The better a government does, the more its population tends to assume that it’s impossible for their government to fail, and they don’t guard against it, instead choosing convenience (and properly federated government is the opposite of convenient).

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