Comment by ajb
10 hours ago
Do you want to help stop that, or do you just want to feel smarter than other people? If you happened to have seen my comments in other threads, you'd know I'm against all this. But telling people they are idiots isn't going to win them over. This is not just a criticism of your comment, it's widespread in these discussions.
Opposing this requires:
* Linking to specific harms, which the public can emotionally resonate with. For example, scanning billions of photos for suspicions of child abuse will result in false positives that cause innocent people's kids to be taken away.
* Not seeming like an overheated conspiracy theorist. Feeling angry about this is legitimate, but it's not necessary to communicate in the same emotional register that you are feeling, even if it feels inauthentic not to. The public are saturated with people being publicly angry, much of which is purely performance. Deep concern may work better.
* Have plausible reasons for why this is happening. Yes, a few individuals like Thiel want to create a digital Stasi, but this would still be happening without them. Mostly this is driven by companies that want to make money, and officials who have a bias towards centralised processes, and are tunnel-visioned with respect to some issue. And people who are genuinely concerned about kids and haven't been given another convincing solution.
* Get facts straight. (Eg, rent/job IDs aren't a future threat. They are here)
And this is why we are where we are
I'm not a big fan of the "my way is the right way to oppose things, your way of opposing it is wrong" routine.
You can each make a difference in your own way and report back in a year who changed the world more. No need to alienate allies.
I think we can already conclude that the current approach is failing. I'm suggesting reasons why I think that is the case. Of course, my diagnosis may be wrong. But it's implausible that doing what we've done during 20 years of erosion of privacy is going to suddenly turn things around.
As for not alienating allies: if it's this easy to piss off people to agree with you, maybe it's also worth thinking about how to talk to those you want to win over.
The current approach includes people doing it your way, and people doing it GP's way, and people doing it many other ways. There's not a great way to draw conclusions from that, absent more data.
And if you're so eager to shake off allies who don't agree with all your ideas, maybe it's worth everyone thinking about how to talk to those we want to win over.