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If you peruse down the flagged comment nearby you’ll see maxbond backhandedly agree that I only care about myself. I’m not one to punch people in the face, but that’s grounds to be punched in the face in any bar.

That being said, it’s perfectly reasonable not to see eye to eye regarding privacy, which is effectively what I said that started this entire thread. I personally don’t think that online privacy is the front on which discussions about abortion legislation should take place. Even Google, manufacturing Chromium, takes privacy into account to a reasonable extent [0], and I personally feel that it is enough.

[0] For example, if your machine has more than 16Gb of RAM, Chromium only reports 16 because there’s no browser application that needs to know you have more than 16, and it would instantly make your device fingerprint unique.

SirSavary 1061 days ago

If your first instinct upon hearing that you're self-centered is to maim the other person, you might be proving their point.

Kashoggi was a US citizen lured to his death by a foreign regime -- not seeing eye to eye on privacy is one thing but imo it's strange to hand wave the incident away because the average person is unlikely to end up in the exact same situation. People are stalked by their employers, exes, strangers, etc every day -- deep privacy absolutely can be valuable to the average person.

Insults in person start fights. It’s only the privacy of the internet that lets you do it here.

Kashoggi was a journalist investigating government corruption. The context of reasonable internet privacy is completely irrelevant.

What does Tor have to do with stalking? Since when has someone’s internet browsing been affected by a stalker?

> Since when has someone’s internet browsing been affected by a stalker?

I'm sorry, but you are (were) a privacy researcher though. You should know already that internet browsing can be influenced by and can contribute to stalking/doxing attempts.

An unrelated third party can’t surveil your browsing without malicious software or hardware intervening.

Yeah, this is just straight up incorrect.

You seem to react negatively when directed towards research topics above, so I'm not sure how to respond to this in a way that you won't find insulting. I have to again assume that you were a privacy researcher. If so, you should already understand that browser surveillance is absolutely possible without malware or hardware access -- at the government level, and at the corporate level, and even sometimes at the individual level.

So I'm at a loss about how you would (I assume mistakenly) make such an obviously false claim.

> I’m not one to punch people in the face, but that’s grounds to be punched in the face in any bar.

This conversation is getting a little weird, but I feel like I should just kind of generally say, that would not be in any way an appropriate or reasonable reaction to being called self-centered. In general assault is not a reasonable reaction to insults period, but it's even less of a reasonable reaction to a passing insult that's as mild as "you only care about yourself."

Well, your discomfort makes it clear you’re not American poor. Verbal confrontations, even disagreements led along insults, are enough to get shot where I’m from. Obviously nothing about that is a good thing.

My point is that the internet is already an extremely private place. I started this in reply to someone proposing privacy evangelism in the wake of ignorant sheeple, and that’s stupid and insulting.

> Well, your discomfort makes it clear you’re not American poor. Verbal confrontations, even disagreements led along insults, are enough to get shot where I’m from.

Okay that is a very weird response.

I feel like I need to state that shooting someone over a verbal disagreement is obviously wrong and obviously would be inappropriate and would obviously reflect negatively on the moral standards and character of the person doing the shooting, and it would obviously be appropriate to view someone who was willing to shoot someone over a passing insult negatively or at the very least to say they may have some issues.

And I don't like the vague insinuation here that lower-income Americans are inherently violent or that crime/violence within lower-income communities is culturally motivated.

> My point is that the internet is already an extremely private place.

Saying that you don't see a set of privacy violations as relevant or worth caring about is a lot different than saying that the Internet is private. The Internet is not private and you're not denying in any of these threads that the privacy violations people are bringing up exist -- you're saying they don't matter and that the Internet is private enough. Be careful not to confuse your personal standards about how private the Internet should be with more neutral descriptions about what risks do or don't exist online.

> and that’s stupid and insulting.

Be careful, I've been told that's apparently fighting words ;)

Your comments about violence in America are generally naive. I assume you’re a young person.

As I stated in another comment, yes, it’s ideological differences on which we differ.

danShumway 1060 days ago

> I assume you're a young person

You do seem to make a lot of casual assumptions for someone who gets offended by even just the implication that they might not be completely up-to-date on examples of privacy violations in the US, don't you? ;)

> Your comments about violence in America are generally naive.

I think I might be wasting my time at this point, but I feel the need to point out once again that older and elderly Americans don't just shoot each other over casual insults, and that would still be super-illegal and super-immoral and it would still be appropriate to morally condemn someone who felt like that was a normal thing even if they were 80.

There is not a way of phrasing this where "you think that I'm self-centered, well people have been killed for less" is a normal thing to say. That is not a normal thing for anybody to say even if they're in their 60s.