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Comment by like_any_other | Hacker News Reader

That's a bad argument - people trust the government differently than each-other. They also (should) mistrust the government differently. Voting is secret for a reason. How much of a chance do you think we have of meaningfully changing a government, if they can guess with 80% degree accuracy how everyone voted, based on their chats and social networks? When they know ahead of time who is assembling a new political party? When they know all of their friend's friends dirty secrets, and will tactically leak them to the press? Or simply prosecute them for spreading hate/antisemitism/homosexual propaganda/some other vague crime?

Knowledge is power. Does it feel like the balance of power is currently tilted too far in favor of individuals?

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> How much of a chance do you think we have of meaningfully changing a government, if they can guess with 80% degree accuracy how everyone voted, based on their chats and social networks

This doesnt really detract from your overall point, but you may be underestimating how easy it already is for the government to tell how you will vote, without use of networking information. Just knowing someone’s educational level and zip code is enough to guess their voting preferences to a high degree of accuracy (the latter component being the reason why gerrymandering is so effective).

The people in the government branches with access will be random individuals. It's the exact same as giving a stranger your phone unlocked, except that you should say "pls don't leak"

But they're often not a "random stranger" though - there's plenty of people who many would trust to do exactly that due to expectations of reputation etc. "The Government" is arguably just another.

I suspect the vast majority of people on the street would absolutely unlock their phone at request when taking their phone to be repaired. But really, I doubt many actually personally know the people involved, will likely never see them ever again, and their judgement of the company involved and their hiring practices limited to "They have a decent enough looking storefront that says "Screen Repair" on it".

Weather they should do that is another discussion, but I can't imagine a working society if every position of trust like that breaks down. I can't buy groceries from someone I haven't personally vetted the farming practices of. I have to check every time I drink water for contaminants. There's a lot of outsourcing of trust already in society, and it kinda mostly works.

Yes, technically it is, but the feeling of it is entirely different. Same thing with cloud services: people upload (or don't care) about a good bunch of stuff, to whatever cloud backend the app is using, but sending each other stuff is a different thing.

We’re already living in a world where FB and Google know this. Probably many others. No point adding to the list, but still. That ship sailed.

"The ship is already leaking, so we may as well drill more holes and make it illegal to plug them, instead of plugging the existing holes."

As I said, “no point adding to the list”

So I am not suggesting drilling holes. I am pointing out the obvious.

You're right.

Better to just wait for ship to sink naturally. From the holes.

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