[HN Gopher] Tell HN: We'd better step up to protect privacy
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       Tell HN: We'd better step up to protect privacy
        
       The hacker community holds the right to privacy sacrosanct, and we
       understand more than most the hard fight that we all face trying to
       protect it.  That's why it's critical that we lend our support to
       fight for the right to privacy whenever it is threatened. Today,
       that threat comes from the Supreme Court. We have a duty to step up
       join the call for privacy today, or we shouldn't expect to see the
       support of others when it's our turn.
        
       Author : couchand
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2022-05-03 20:21 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
       | transcriptase wrote:
       | We'll need to overlook for a moment that a non-trivial fraction
       | of users here work for companies that do everything they legally
       | can to collect, extract, track, scan, ping, and infer every last
       | byte of information they're able to about people who aren't even
       | vaguely aware of it.
        
       | evocatus wrote:
       | Getting too old to give a fuck, frankly.
       | 
       | I deleted Facebook some time around 08, sounding the warning bell
       | far in advance of the shitshow that we have today. I've abstained
       | from almost all social media, and suffered the consequent damage
       | to my social life.
       | 
       | All this, and now our work life is intermingled with home life,
       | and everything is online, and there's no getting away from it.
       | 
       | Perhaps if I were white I could loudly proclaim on other online
       | platforms my deletion of all my other social media accounts in
       | the year 2022 and continue to reap accolades from my peers while
       | ostensibly furthering the cause of online privacy.
       | 
       | I thought being the change you wanted to see in the world was
       | possible, until I tried swimming upstream.
        
         | solenoidalslide wrote:
         | I'm confused as to why you cannot gain the accolades of your
         | peers. Implying only white people care about privacy? That is
         | nonsensical.
        
           | evocatus wrote:
           | Implying that white liberals vociferously declare their
           | support for good, noble causes (that I generally agree with),
           | e.g. online privacy, workers' rights, discrimination, yet
           | don't seem to modify their behavior in response.
           | 
           | I guess liking a post on Tweetbook about the poors from your
           | iPhone counts as "talking about it" and "spreading the word."
           | The state, or the institutions, will fix this problem if we
           | complain loudly enough.
        
             | emptysongglass wrote:
             | You could be not-white, loudly proclaim your causes and
             | reap accolades too. This isn't an issue of color.
        
         | rg111 wrote:
         | This is profound. Thanks for sharing your experience.
         | 
         | Nowadays, actual social status is somewhat dependent on one's
         | status on Facebook, i.e. whether they frequently post pictures,
         | what they do in those pictures, whether they go to premium
         | vacation, etc.
         | 
         | I heavily dislike this. I also have seen my social status take
         | a visible hit because I abstained from Facebook.
         | 
         | This effect is more announced in economically backwards
         | geographies.
         | 
         | I don't care because I have a small circle of friends and well-
         | wishers with whom I am content, and I am comfortably employed,
         | and a man with good culture.
        
           | jen20 wrote:
           | This does not seem true among my group of mid-late 30s
           | friends who were there "at the start" - none of them use
           | Facebook, and many haven't since they started allowing non-
           | academic email addresses to sign up.
           | 
           | Perhaps it's true among older people, but it seems that
           | younger people have abandoned Facebook at an even more
           | prodigious rate. WhatsApp and Instagram are much more
           | problematic at this point.
        
         | HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
         | > there's no getting away from it
         | 
         | I remember someone on one of the comp.arch.* newsgroups
         | pointing out in 1997 that privacy was over because everyone
         | reading his post was probably already in a for-sale corporate
         | database.
         | 
         | In _1997_
         | 
         | The ship sailed a long time ago.
        
       | TimedToasts wrote:
       | We lost our bodily autonomy during the various Covid mandates,
       | not surprised to see a cascading effect from all that.
        
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       (page generated 2022-05-03 23:02 UTC)