Comment by camgunz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by camgunz | Hacker News Reader

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But, again, the premise is not that "as a file format, PDF is better than HTML". The premise is: because HTML is two-way, it enables surveillance capitalism and allows bad actors to monopolize the attention economy. The author wrote it thus:

> Sure, you can write good HTML. I won’t argue with that. And if you’re writing good HTML, good for you. But HTML is a dual-use technology, the bad guys are dual-using it an awful lot, and I feel that the stone age still has a part to play in the progression of the information age.

The part where you engage with this is where you write:

> I'm sorry, the more I think about this the dumber I feel. The web is useful because it's 2-way. I am excited by the web because I can interact with other people. I come to hacker news to engage with thinkers, not to just read a published article from one single author. I want to read ad-hoc opinions and user submitted content. PDF web, really?

Which is interesting! Do you have thoughts on creating peer-to-peer systems that don't enable surveillance capitalism?

> > Sure, you can write good HTML.

A key here is that it's easier to write good HTML docs than good PDF docs, and much harder to deal with the harmful aspects of PDF docs given present technology.

> Which is interesting! Do you have thoughts on creating peer-to-peer systems that don't enable surveillance capitalism?

I don't know about the other person's ideas, but decentralization plus better anonymization and pseudonimization, with always-on strongest-reasonably-posible encryption, seems like the direction to go.

> A key here is that it's easier to write good HTML docs than good PDF docs, and much harder to deal with the harmful aspects of PDF docs given present technology.

Oh, yeah I'm not on the PDF train. That's wild. I'm more of a Markdown or Gemtext advocate, or even LaTeX.

> I don't know about the other person's ideas, but decentralization plus better anonymization and pseudonimization, with always-on strongest-reasonably-posible encryption, seems like the direction to go.

Yeah, projects like IPFS (which you reference above) are working towards this, but JavaScript still works over IPFS. Plus, fingerprinting techniques are pretty bonkers. Most of it comes down to JS and various state you keep on your local machine (cookies, flash cookies, etc.), but I think you need that. How do you maintain a session with a peer without some kind of token/cookie?

> Do you have thoughts on creating peer-to-peer systems that don't enable surveillance capitalism?

Yes, it's call TOR. However, legislation is where we should start. Crippling/abandoning an incredibly useful technology which works very well just because it's often used nefariously seems to be a bit of an overreaction.

Until then, stop using social platforms, use an ad blocker, and use VPN if you really care about "surveillance capitalism".

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