BraveSnoo1028

Serious question. Since this is going to be enabled by default by Chrome 86, is there any way to block Javascript from using the API? Or force it to ask for permissions? Because it seems like anything that uses the API by default has full access to my filesystem (at least based on the demo on that page). That seems insane. I don't even want anything JS-based to see my filesystem. That's a huge breach of privacy.

Are you sure you read his blog entry?

> The second reason is more prosaic: some people want to kill me or ruin my life, and I would prefer not to make it too easy. I’ve received various death threats. I had someone on an anti-psychiatry subreddit put out a bounty for any information that could take me down (the mods deleted the post quickly, which I am grateful for). I’ve had dissatisfied blog readers call my work pretending to be dissatisfied patients in order to get me fired. And I recently learned that someone on SSC got SWATted in a way that they link to using their real name on the blog. I live with ten housemates including a three-year-old and an infant, and I would prefer this not happen to me or to them. Although I realize I accept some risk of this just by writing a blog with imperfect anonymity, getting doxxed on national news would take it to another level.

He doesn't name cancel culture, but it's obvious it's a part of what he's worried about.

Scott didn't take down his blog just because of his relationship with his patients. It's one of his core arguments, yes, but it's tied with modern cancel culture, where speaking your mind if it deviates from accepted norms and ideas can result in significant personal and professional consequences, even if your intent isn't to oppress, spread hate speech, promote racism, etc. and even if the ideas you express are valuable in some way. It's dangerous nowadays to toe the line of what's "acceptable", where what's acceptable is decided by what people happen to feel on any particular day and how something can be spun into something it's not. Any number of character assassinations we've seen (such as the attempt on Stallmann) show that there are risks to being visible if some people suddenly decide they don't like you. Which connects with his other concern, that he may become too much of a liability for the place he works if some group or other finds something he's said controversial and tries to punish him or his employers for it.

> I think most would agree that if there were a globally connected (meaning countries are not silos)

The best solution to this would be regional alternatives operating on a shared standard. This would avoid the problem of values not reflecting your culture's values, not having to moderate billions of people, etc.

> I'm personally not a huge fan of governments messing with competition

I'm not a fan of the US's bizarre mix of laissez-faire "fuck you" capitalism and systems of regulatory capture. If all you value is rewarding any one company with an entire market because "they're successful", then fine. But the point of markets isn't to enrich a single company to the detriment of everybody else. It's to benefit the population.

> While there are other monetisation paths many people are actually ok with the trade of their data for features and should have this choice

There is no choice being made here. People aren't aware of how much of their date is being collected by companies like Facebook.

> The larger tech companies probably have some of the most well organised and privacy aware advertising platforms

I can't take you seriously. You must be joking.

> I understand that bashing on facebook is a popular narrative here and they have made significant mistakes but it can hardly be argued the platform doesn't bring value to a significant share of people.

You don't think other sites can provide the same kind of value, while being far more respectful of your privacy and better reflecting the values of a country's culture? I sure as hell would prefer a German Facebook rather than the Facebook we have now that drowns out all other alternatives while allowing hate speech to spread unabated and trampling all over my right to privacy and to control my data. It's not even the fact that an alternative needs to be state-backed. It would be enough for a government to ban Facebook to allow local alternatives to grow a user base.