Comment by notepad0x90

> A post-American Internet that is possible because Trump has mobilized new coalition partners to join the fight on our side.

I'm sorry, was the pre-trump era more pro-privacy or respectful of European's sovereignty? Is Snowden forgotten now? What about the State department cable leaks?

I didn't know people relied on governments being friendly for internet security so much.

> In politics, coalitions are everything.....That's where Trump came from: a coalition of billionaires, white nationalists, Christian bigots, authoritarians, conspiratorialists, imperialists, and self-described "libertarians" who've got such a scorching case of low-tax brain worms that they'd vote for Mussolini if he'd promise to lower their taxes by a nickel.

Ok, inflammatory wording aside, this isn't wrong, but the item over which a coalition is built is important. Building a coalition because of some group membership will always result in toxic cesspools in my opinion. But coalitions build around policy can be productive. quid-pro-quo coalitions of "I'll support you on X if you support me on Y" is also how political parties start and they result in terrible results for regular people.

A lot of anti-privacy law these days is also coming out of Europe (recent one: Chat control). I think current politics and trump are good recruitment tools, but they're not effective in terms of getting things done. For example, I disagree on just about everything with trumpers, but I guarantee you can build a coalition that includes many trumpers/MAGAts when it comes to stopping things like chat control. Point being, if you have a goal, stick to it. Build coalitions and policies around it. Thinking like this does more harm than good, now it is a social/cultural/national warfare. If I didn't know better, I would feel like I should oppose this person simply as a result of being an American myself.

How can you talk about coalitions and make a point about excluding people from your coalition. Your coalition in other words is built not around policy, or enacting change but around opposing groups of people. It's worded and crafted as if supporters of this cause must view it as a means to opposing other people, instead of making changes.

Even something as simple as "let's stop using Microsoft office" makes sense, we can then talk about funding something that can compete with it. But if you worded it as "let's oppose america" umm..ok, I guess people that don't really care about america either way probably don't have a place in your coalition?

That's one thing I'm disliking heavily, the nationalization of open source and privacy related things.