Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

Pirate Party needs to start learning from the alt-right and the the politicians with other totalitarian tendencies. Instead of maksimalist goals that "must be achieved at once or we are doomed", better find something analogous of "think of the children" instrument which is used by the bureaucrats to gain power and aim for gradual steps in a similar way that the alt-right is doing it. Marine Le Pen in France become a credible candidate by distancing herself from maximalist and extreme ambitions(that she probably still holds) and aim for issues that large number of people want addressed(not just elitist niches). Populism is fine, up to a point.

Equating the "Not everything that we wanted was implemented" with "We lost everything, they won" sounds toxic to me. It's also arrogant t believe that you have the perfect solution for everything, you are pure and all knowing when the others are corrupt and stupid.

I like having pirate parties as a voice but the I would never vote for them, they are extremist and maksimalist IMHO.

"Think of the children" is used to pre-emptively attack any opposition to what is being proposed, i.e. "you are against this? you don't care about children?". It is despised by privacy advocates and I wouldn't support any group who used a tactic like that.

Kids' privacy seem like a very valid use-case for that. Because kids and adults are not necessarily easy to distinguish, bingo bango bongo, privacy for everyone by default.

I think you have mixed up the real idea behind "think of the children." It can be used as a fig leaf for things the politically powerful wish to do but are specifically unpopular. It can be used to do things that certain politicians want to do that the politically powerful are, as a class, indifferent to.

Where it doesn't work is to do things that are popular among the electorate but that the politically powerful are opposed to. No catchphrase will help you with that, unfortunately.

No I did not mixed it up, I'm suggesting that proponents of something unpopular need to obtain a tool that works to defend their positions. Not an awful lot of people are into the stuff that Pirate Party advocates, maybe they should find something to push for that an awful lot of people are interested in. "Save the kids" so far has been a very effective tool, the only time it failed as far as I remember is the Apple's auto-policing for CSAM proposal. The internet privacy and freedom advocates need to have something like that.

I used to argue against this line of thinking, but as time progressed, I have become progressively more jaded and cynical. I wonder if I am effectively becoming what I previously fought against ('think of the children' line of argumentation), but as time have shown time and time again, it simply works and I am kinda done letting technical illiterates dictate my life.

Maybe we don't have to lower ourselves to exactly that argument, but surely there are other popular takes.

IMHO, intellectual debates and making people go vote for you are different things.

You don’t need a position of power to discuss stuff and come to conclusions.

So, something like "Europe and America will turn into China-style mass surveillance states if we don't demand a change in direction immediately"?

Has the benefit of being relatively true as well. Google leadership was all too eager to get in on the Chinese censorship machine (Dragonfly) as I recall:

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/google-dragonfly-china-cen...

You've convinced me. Here's a sensible compromise I can imagine:

1. Make a panel of concerned parents to review abuses by recommendation engines and to stop tracking abuses. Think of the children!

2. Give law enforcement the tools they need to deanonymize the abusers and criminals who are trafficking our kids. We don't want them to go dark-- think of the children!

What do you think? I sure hope you're the type of person who really cares about the children, and not the kind of opportunist who would reflexively argue against #2.

And, scene.

If you've got legitimate concerns about the children with well-documented evidence, let's hear it. Otherwise you're going to be out of your league.

I'm confused. Did I give you the impression that I believe that "save the children" is a legitimate concern for controlling the internet?

This whole bill is things that are popular with citizen and that companies opposed. They didn’t have to start writing a digital services act, and it’s building on privacy protections that were already better than anywhere else on earth. The assumption that big business has all the power and always gets everything it wants is prima facie disproven here.

The Czech Pirate Party, now in government, has basically abandoned its focus on digital topics and concentrates on power, lawmaking and who is going to get which seat on what ministry.

A huge disappointment. Their once-core positions are now good for lip service only. Even the Pirate Party Forum (an open discussion forum) is now basically concentrated on power politics and discussions about such important agendas have atrophied.

Do you have a recommendation of where I could read more about how the Czech Pirate Party has done in government, either national or local (eg mayor of Prague)? I don't see anything skimming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Pirate_Party and very little reading the Czech version autotranslated.

I'm under the impression that at least one of their MEPs (Marcel Kolaja; edit: indeed, quoted in the article which I hadn't read before commenting, shame on me!) does substantial work on digital issues, but I guess the incentives faced by MEPs are very different from those in national or local office. Is that right?

Kolaja is pretty much the last one standing that is still interested in digital rights. Unfortunately the MEPs aren't that important in the party (any party): spending a lot of time in Brussels means being far away from the local headquarters, where the real decisions are being made.

For an impression of how the party is ticking now, just register in their phpBB run forum: forum.pirati.cz and run the discussions through the automatic translator.

I cannot recommend any truly neutral sources about people like mayor of Prague. There is an election coming soon, he will likely lose his seat. One of the reasons is that cost of living has gone through the roof. Many people move to Prague, but almost no new housing is being built. The prices are 2,5x as high as ten years ago. People draw unfavorable comparisons to Warsaw, which is very dynamic and at the time still affordable to the middle class.

Well yeah, that's how politics works. When you are elected, you are a power broker.

Most single-issue parties fail precisely because they don't want to broker power, they just want to get the one thing they're angry about out of the way. Most people are expecting the party they vote for to have an answer on every issue imaginable, and merely shrugging your shoulders and saying "I was elected to legalize copyright infringement, not to decide what our external immigration policy should be" is not an option. If you don't play power broker, you do not get your agenda done.

You're right, but up to a point. If you concentrate on power for power's sake and stop upholding your original political ideas, you will lose support.

There is a fine balance between Realpolitik and idealism. Ideally, you do not want to go full tilt in either direction.

You are projecting, the update is not so defeatist. It starts with listing achievements, then says that overall the new document does not deserve the name of 'digital constitution' and an opportunity was wasted.

Not the opportunity. More will come and I got an impression that PP will keep fighting. I would vote for PP if I could.

any powerful persuasion, even if disingenuous, is worth the outcomes?

Nope, just that people who want to gain power in a democracy and change something need to realize that they need to have tools to make large number of people vote for them.

You can't write JavaScript in a C compiler and complain that nothing compiles.

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