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Comment by Bluestein | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for that very thorough look into this ...

> Still, there's no time to rest, the proposal isn't dead.

I wanted to say. It will return.-

> There is a lot of "but think of the children", and zero technical expertise.

This is one of the things that irks me the most: The abusive, emotional "mislabeling". Children have nothing to do with this, and it is an abuse of public good faith to mislabel these sort of initiatives using "children" as leverage, preying upon a tech-lliterate public.-

In fact, that is also an issue here: The public needs to be brought up to speed (technically) and/or we should at least demand technical expertise from our politicians, when legislating or acting upon mainly technological issues.-

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> The public needs to be brought up to speed (technically)

Yeah this is the main thing

I think most people don't realize the value of privacy

>I think most people don't realize the value of privacy

After like 2 decades of screaming at clouds, I think it's more that most people don't care about the value of privacy.

I imagine it's easy to blame other citizens. Alternatively though, corporate interests are just far more influential than we realize.

I never really understood this line of thought. Corporate interests _are_ citizen interests right? Those corporations are made up of (a lot) of people, and if those corporate systems thrive in a certain condition, then the people within these corporate systems will largely want to maintain or create those conditions. Those citizens do vote as well, and from personal experience, a lot of people vote in their own interest rather than national or moral interest. From research, I could not find conclusive numbers regarding altruistic [0] vs self-interested voting rates.

The more people are working for these corporations, the more we create and sustain the conditions that hold these systems in place. Whether that is 'good' is another debate.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_theory_of_voting

On a sinking ship one way to get to higher ground is to go to one end and make sure that the opposite side gets more water faster.

That's just a way to sink faster. Even in the parallel.

The ship sinks faster but for a bit you rise above the others.

I don't think it's correct to treat the interest of the corporation as manifestation of the combined interest of all its employees. It would be true for shareholders, although even there I think there's a vast difference between those who hold massive amounts of voting shares and minor investors. But employees are effectively trading with the corporation (their labor for wages), and are not meaningfully represented by it.

It is not even true for shareholders, as those shareholders themselves sometimes answer to other organisations.

What's the difference? They "don't care" about it as long as they don't suffer any direct ill effects from their indifference.

Once things get to the point where every facet of our lives is actively under surveillance, and authoritarians in power start abusing their power in ways that affect those who "don't care", they'll start caring really quickly but by then it's going to be too late.

Maybe we need a good fascism scare to remind everyone why personal freedoms should be fought for instead of being taken for granted.

> Maybe we need a good fascism scare

(And, sadly, it might serve to combat "semantic satiation" and reinvigorate now oft-bandied-about terms that are losing meaning)

> Maybe we need a good fascism scare to remind everyone why personal freedoms should be fought for instead of being taken for granted.

Ironically since fascist (in the broader sense) parties and the likes don't seem to support Chat control (yet, I guess) the other parties have a harder time passing it to not lose votes to them.

It is strange how such an anti-democratic law is pushed so hard but there is still tip toeing around actually passing it.

Being a child from Portuguese revolution, and witness of how the Berlin wall went down, it is really bad that newer generations don't have any sense of what it meant to live during those days, and vote into such parties with protest votes nonsense.

>What's the difference?

They Don't Know vs. They Don't Care.

The axiom has always been that People Don't Know, Wake Up Sheeple(tm), but after so much time it's hard to believe that lack of awareness is the problem anymore.

Privacy is a very ephemeral thing.

The retail service price of Gmail, Maps, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc. together probably would exceed a couple hundred dollars a year. People would rather pocket that money, especially with how tight budgets are becoming.

> After like 2 decades of screaming at clouds, I think it's more that most people don't care about the value of privacy.

I think you've betrayed your own argument, because talking with people would have been more effective than screaming at clouds, to use your metaphor.

Just because you're putting something out there doesn't mean anyone else is receiving it. And if they're not receiving it, you can't judge whether or not they care.

Talking with people and screaming at clouds are the same thing if they hear and go about their day anyway because they don't care.

The axiom that the problem is a lack of awareness starts to defy logic because this has been going on for over 2 decades now. You bet your ass people are aware, they just don't care regardless.

Is this a good thing? Probably not. But the fact remains people don't care about privacy and specifically digital privacy. This isn't 2004 anymore, it's 2024.

> I think most people don't realize the value of privacy

Sadly, like much of everything, only once you lose it ...

> I think most people don't realize the value of privacy

That is so true.

There is one point I like to use whenever I get into a privacy debate. If they'll say "But I have nothing to hide", then I'll ask "well then give me your email password".

Originally from a TED talk, possibly from Chris Anderson.

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