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Comment by ballenf | Hacker News Reader

For this to work, it would have to become illegal to use VPNs or even do anything on internet logged out. Also probably need to eliminate the address bar from the browser -- you can only get to sites from a search.

Actually it wouldn't be illegal to have privacy, it would just become so expensive only the very wealthy could afford it. So the internet would mirror the real world ever more.

Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but it really does feel like the powerful are chipping away at every aspect of the internet and its empowering of the common person.

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It wouldn't have to become illegal, they would just have to penalize you for not knowing anything about you. Most people wouldn't be able to afford the privacy

TBH it already works that way somewhat. I think I got rejected for a credit card application for B&H payboo card because I forgot to turn off the VPN.

A lot of stuff in the name of anti-fraud / anti-bot is also anti-privacy. Try buying or subscribing (ex: patreon) to many things online with a prepaid card of some sort, you'll find out you cannot. Try accessing etsy from a data center or VPN IP and they just serve you a blank page. Make your browser hard to fingerprint and it looks like automated chromium and you hit bot wall after bot wall.

I think a reason why it isn't like this already is because many old people just don't use the internet that much at all, so there isn't that much data to rate them with, but they are valuable customers so they keep the legacy and more private way of doing things open for them. In 20 or 30 years, that might not be available anymore as the last of the people who didn't learn how to use desktop computing in the 90s die off.

It doesn't sound too hard to get a bot to automatically make "good" search queries for you.

> Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but it really does feel like the powerful are chipping away at every aspect of the internet and its empowering of the common person.

It's not just you; that definitely seems to be the trend. Already, privacy is only really available for the wealthy or technical.

It’s not even available to the wealthy. You have basically zero privacy using Android, and almost zero privacy using iOS; and indirectly, using stuff like Waze for which there is no “wealthy” alternative puts you on the Google radar - and apparently the FB one as well, because Waze were lazy and used the FB SDK before the google acquisition (and don’t seem to cars enough to remove it).

It’s only available to technical people with good understanding and the will to pay in convenience and time (which the wealthy do not have excess of either)

Wealthy people can afford multiple single-app semiburner phones, technical consultants for vpns/firewalls/piholes/etc, and assistants that will do the app installation and ordering on their own phones.

A lot of the privacy invasion stuff assumes you don't have multiple devices or multiple platform accounts. It's just a matter of cost to have 2-4 different devices and accounts and vpn routers if you want to keep from being tracked across platforms and use cases.

I have multiple phones- one for Waze, one for WhatsApp, another one for calls. The extra phones cost me $100 each at the time I bought them new - not flagship, but definitely workable. This does not require any real wealth - most western HN reader can afford an amortized $100/year for privacy (half that or less if you buy 2nd hand). I also have multiple emails.

Where I pay dearly, and it’s a cost even billionaires can’t avoid, is convenience. carrying 5 phones around, or remote controlling one from the others, is far from convenient.

Consultant can only take you so far. If you have an aid carrying the 5 phones so they are always available to you, then you have no privacy in a different way.

I have worked with some extremely high wealth individuals, and none of them practices any better OPSec than your average person; some of them inquired but balked at the non-monetary cost (e.g. seeing me with multiple phones, often off until use so they are harder to correlate, etc). These are people who would easily buy 10 iPhone12 max per year if it gave them convenient privacy. But it doesn’t.

Are there alternative 'internets' that are better than AMPRnet? Is TOR/I2P/freenet the only way to not have a toxic (if smooth) user experience at the expense of themselves?

"I have nothing to hide."

Hence the irony of the throwaway.

I'm paraphrasing the average user - not my statement.

i guessed that, but it is comedic irony from my perspective. no intention to gouge you, just having a saturday. cheers man.

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