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Comment by luluganeta | Hacker News Reader

Genuine question: why the need to make this point?

The "no one should be surprised" take baffles me: you clearly care about the progressive loss of privacy, and news like this are the only way to spread awareness of this problem. I cannot imagine someone running into this "news at 11" condemnation of laypeople's supposed lack of understanding, and actually becoming more interested in the issue.

This kind of comment is defeatist and demotivating, so I'm curious as to why you, as a proponent of fully open software, would be so intent in making this point.

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> This kind of comment is defeatist and demotivating

I apologize if that was the impression, I didn't want to offend anyone nor discourage anyone from hoping to see one day more people becoming aware of the lack of privacy in closed devices; actually if there's someone who is becoming discouraged it's me. I often see people complaining on the lines of "hey, I was chatting about this the other day and now I receive advertising for the same thing", and every single time either they don't care or they're convinced that the next OS/app/contract/whatever version will magically solve every privacy/security problem. How can one hope to raise awareness about the benefits in adopting open platforms if so many users either don't give a damn or can be convinced that security and privacy are a product and not a process? That doesn't mean I'm giving up, but I'm fully aware that today and in this world nobody would be insane enough to design, manufacture and distribute a fully open platform; there's just not enough incentive to do that.

How can one hope to raise awareness about the benefits in adopting open platforms if so many users either don't give a damn or can be convinced that security and privacy are a product and not a process?

this question can be read in two ways: raising awareness is hopeless because no one cares anyways, and: our attempts to raise awareness so far have not worked, so we need to ask how can we raise awareness in ways that people actually notice?

we need to focus on the latter and explore more effective methods to raise awareness.

today and in this world nobody would be insane enough to design, manufacture and distribute a fully open platform; there's just not enough incentive to do that.

this is simply not true. there is plenty of incentive, and the means to do so are becoming more and more approachable. see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39165700

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