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Comment by colpabar | Hacker News Reader

I think this battle has been lost already. Pretty much all of the non-tech people I know firmly believe the "why do I need anonymity if I'm not doing anything wrong" line of thinking. The powers that be really don't like online anonymity, and the public at large just doesn't care enough to do anything. Maybe this will change some minds, but I'm doubtful it'll be enough.

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> "why do I need anonymity if I'm not doing anything wrong"

These people didn't do anything wrong either:

"They Told Their Therapists Everything. Hackers Leaked It All"

A mental health startup built its business on easy-to-use technology. Patients joined in droves. Then came a catastrophic data breach.

https://www.wired.com/story/vastaamo-psychotherapy-patients-...

I hold onto hope that an alternative system of privacy-protecting internet (e.g. Freenet) takes hold to a bigger tech-nerd audience, and then eventually bleeds out to mainstream just like the internet was doing in the early 90s. At which point, the government will be completely incapable of all the bullshit they do today, and will be as powerless over that system as they are over crypto.

> as powerless over that system as they are over crypto

I see this claim made a lot, and I don't understand it. When the canadian trucker protest (please don't make this discussion about that, I am not saying it was good or bad, I am just using it as an example) switched to crypto after the gov froze their bank accounts, the gov also froze those crypto wallets. That seems like the opposite of powerless.

I think it's really naive to think that the gov won't just be able to bully any type of new system into submission, like they always do. If there are people running the system, then those people can be coerced.

Those crypto wallets were custodial wallets stored on a centralized service operated by a private company. Cryptocurrency can't help you if you don't use it the way you're supposed to -- that is, keeping your wallet on your own hardware with your own keys.

> Cryptocurrency can't help you if you don't use it the way you're supposed to -- that is, keeping your wallet on your own hardware with your own keys.

So for most people this can just be shortened to "Cryptocurrency can't help you".

I agree, but it kinda sucks that we're about a decade into the Cryptocurrency Future and it's still too hard for random angry truckers to use it correctly

That's why we need to stop being purely defensive. Blocking trackers and personal data is not enough; browsers need to start providing "noise" to websites to render tracking/profiling results useless.

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