I'm so tired. I wish we didn't have to keep going through constant attacks on our privacy. I know they're hoping that people will give up after a point out of weariness, and I'm afraid when it comes to many people they're right.
Now many of the same websites (eg Reddit) are owned by large entities who don't care. Probably because they've made their money, so who needs a free Internet?
Onerous regulations are a kind of regressive tax on businesses, favoring very large firms with big budgets and lobbyists over upstarts and small business.
Not only do they not care, they benefit from these laws, because they have the resources to implement new requirements while smaller sites don't.
Today we're back to pointing to governments abusing data to target minority children or immigrants to show this. And of course, governments oppose any limiting of the scope of their data collection by pointing out "security issues" (we can't have CHILDREN communicate privately! Look! 3 out of 5 million children got seduced with drugs to go into prostitution!).
Of course, governments' collection of data is not even effective, the government GOT it's data collection wishes from 10 years ago that it said was going to use for prevention (police can now access both comments from teachers AND medical reports on any kid) ... and yet the number of children ... went up, not down.
And of course, nobody wants to point out that 3 out of 3 of those children ran away from government help first chance they got. Nobody seems to feel this might indicate that perhaps something is wrong with the government, and the government's reputation, that needs to be fixed first. They are of course arguing the solution to their reputation problem is to collect more information on EVERYONE, and use more violence against children for less and less reasons, where any small excuse can be found (because 3 children were actually confirmed to have this happen to them ... the government locked up over 300 children, generally against both their own and their parents wishes. Somehow this didn't make any difference in the numbers at all, and frankly I find it very, very hard to believe the number would have risen 100 TIMES without them doing this)
Good times make weak men.
Weak men make bad times.
Bad times make strong men.
Strong men create bad times.
Bad times create strong men.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclical_theory_(United_States...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#Secular_cy...
Certain locales like Japan are dealing with the reality that newer generations forget history. Specifically for this example the history of WW2, and Japan's desire to not take a part in instigating WW3.
As the saying goes, those who forget history (read: weak men) are doomed to repeat it (read: create bad times).
Hell, we're seeing it in our own little techie corner of the world: People have forgotten (read: weak men) the consequences of a browser monopoly (read: IE6), and have ushered in the age of a Chrome monopoly (read: doomed to repeat history).
Asabiyyah is strongest in the nomadic phase, and decreases as the civilization advances as the ruling class begins to focus more on maintaining their wealth/power individually at the expense of the group, which covers the Strong Men and Good Times phase. As decadence increases group solidarity decreases Weak men and bad times occurs, which readies the cycle to start anew with additional strong men, which matches with Khaldun's period of 3 generations per cycle.
It's a pretty bare bones social cycle theory by modern standards but the core idea common to both seems to be that history is a cycle of barbarians conquering decadent civilizations, only to eventually become fragmented, self serving and vulnerable themselves at some point. The applicability to the modern world seems to depend on whether the underlying causes have been eliminated, in a "The End of History and the Last Man" sort of sense.
Those Who Remain: A Postapocalyptic Novel is not an academic work of sociology.
i put my pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else, anyone who wants to look through my window in the morning can verify that for themselves. shame is defeated by coming out of your shell, not hiding inside it. i draw the shades and recede to my private world only when i want to remove stimuli for the sake of deep focus. or when i'm fearful of this abstract mass of power hanging always above me at every moment and threatening to destroy me if i'm honest about how i enjoy the "wrong" drugs, or about how i embrace a moral compass which guides me to not fund the machine that takes my brothers away from me and pits them in armed conflict against my sisters, come tax season.
!
as far as i can tell that's the only "good" reason to embrace privacy: that in this crazy contradiction it's impossible to be authentic if the wrong people know you as you are. i don't think it's good to use that as a basis on which to idealize privacy in the abstract. i think it's deeply disturbing and we should use it as a basis to fight all these real things which make one fear authenticity. privacy is a necessary stopgap: negating power imbalances is the most proximate thing to a solution.
kudos to the young and bold who seek to find themselves among others. praise to the old and scarred who fight to make that possible.
Shortly after they came forward, I read an article stating gathering so much data on so many people essentially allowed any real terrorist (domestic or foreign) to essentially hide in plain view because of the amount of data being collected could not be sifted through fast enough to flag any person or group before they were able to carry out an attack.
Yes, I'm very much on your side in terms of the constant attacks on our privacy and rights. While at the same time, I acknowledge that there is some inherit defense to them gathering too much data which in some sense allows us to maintain some level of privacy in the meantime.
I would say that the US and China are both fantastic examples of why you don't want to allow the construction of a surveillance infrastructure - privatized and public, respectively. We pity each other partially thanks to the propaganda - but I think more importantly because we really are pitiable.
As romantic as it sounds, the one single purpose for for-profit companies is to produce shareholder value, and very few of them see shareholder value in keeping a legal department specifically designed for fighting constant and endless attacks on our privacy.
Much more profitable to do anything else instead.
but a hundred years from now i do think “have to go live in a cabin in the woods” will be more like “get to”. because if that was something everyone could easily manage, i have no doubt i’d find myself in some cabin-in-the-woods community full of all the other wackos like me.
Alone? No chance whatsoever.
Bundy standoff worked, after all. Of course it has the prerequisite of being willing to die for the cause, which I doubt many people have, aside from the very select few for whom the most important mission in life is to live free.
Me? I thoroughly admire such "wackos", but I enjoy the finer things in life way too much for this to be a feasible option for me.
If they did, Google and Meta would be out of business. The only thing they really offer is for advertisers to target really, really specific groups of people thanks to the data they collect from those groups (EVERYONE, except a handful of HN readers and other dissidents) which everyone voluntarily hands over, because they simply don't care.
Of course, it's just a symptom of the problem.
Refuse to believe all you want, but have a deep think and consider whether the average person cares about his privacy. Even if they say they do.
Freedom doesn't sell anymore. Outsourcing virtually every single aspect of your life to a corporation that Just Knows Better(tm) does. Everything is a service. Most of the tech you own is a service, not a physical item.
And both things can't be true simultaneously, you can't crave freedom while outsourcing absolutely everything to someone else. Freedom requires you to take over the responsibility over your life, which far too many people simply aren't willing to do. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this is where the society has ended up in.
Over the years I've received so many odd looks when I bring up privacy that I've stopped and just accepted that my vote or email to my representative is all I can do. I hate to be cynical, but this train isn't derailing anytime soon. EFF is doing God's work here, but the American citizen will continue to be hypnotized until things get bad enough for them to care, in which it will already be too late.
This is just yet another attempt at Lawful Interception[0], only this time, on steroids. They will continue to try and erode privacy, and therefore, erode democracy. But we do have tools to combat this at our disposal. My only worry is the outright banning of such tools, then we're royally fucked.
If there is anything I have learned is that persistence will eventually pay off. Louis Rossmann [1] has been fighting the good fight for right to repair for so many years and while it isn't quite there yet and there have been lots of downs, there have also been lots of ups [2]. Nothing's infallible.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@rossmanngroup [2] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/11/apple-announces-self-...
E.g., I stopped giving money to Mozilla because I was dissatisfied by where that money was going, what it wasn't being spent on, what it was being spent on instead, and how ineffective they were.
Great that Rossmann got results, but is the methodology that the EFF is using the same as what Rossmann has used? Is it even an appropriate comparison when one is a threat from government, and the other is a matter of anti-consumer ethics with corps?
there's a reason early central governments were all symbolized by a stick.
This whole clusterfuck is a result of old people not knowing their ass from a pihole.
Of course, then the posts just get kicked down the line to the next new tech that nobody groks, but at least perhaps we can stop fighting this specific one so hard and so frequently.
Though I guess it's depressing that people in their 20s and 30s can't afford kids now.
And that's just the sponsors, not the people who will vote for it. Some on that list do belong in nursing homes, but age is not a factor. It's mostly just the political establishment and newcomers hoping to join that establishment.