Communicating the importance of privacy to idiots

Sorry if this belongs on /hum/; please move it if so. I came up with this the other day: If you are okay with almost anyone viewing whatever stuff you have, imagine the most hysterical mom looking through all your files. Imagine someone who emotionally, chemically CANNOT take a joke and refuses to acknowledge them if they don't suit her tastes. What about an overly-conservative dad? What about anyone who isn't literally you or the people you chose to share these files with? A lack of privacy increases your personal thoughts' audience to people who essentially want to slander you, much like a lawyer. You don't even need to commit a crime to get in trouble with these people. Don't rely on people to know what's going on in your own head. Another thing that I've noticed is that the thought around privacy has flip-flopped in the last two decades. It used to be that someone needed a good reason to not have his information out everywhere accessible to anyone, not it seems that people are operating on the assumption that you need a reason to have what used to be a normal level of privacy; that's not how it works; that's not how it should work. Add your own.

>>27760 "I have nothing to hide but I have nothing I want to show you, either" works fairly well. Also: > "Just because you have nothing to hide doesn't mean that everyone else is the same way" > "There's been an uptick in identity theft related scams, staying private helps in the long term" > "I'm concerned about the rise in fascism lately, and having too much information publicly available could be used against me at some point" (I don't care about your political leanings or outlook - the point is, use a common boogeyman/fear as justification)

This post on (I assume) 4/g/ eloquently summarizes the fallacies of the argument that, "If you've done nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide." Particularly the part about how "It's the people watching you, not you, who decide if you've done anything wrong, and their definition of 'wrong' is much more broad than yours." The thing about the normal user aversion to privacy is that it is largely an extension of the network effect. They don't get as much utility from switching to secure platforms as they do from staying on mainstream social media, and logically justify it after the fact to themselves with things like, "Oh, privacy isn't important, you're a schizo, it'll never happen to me, etc." This is because 90% of people are lazy, medicated social media zombies who do what they're told. This is just the nature of civilization, and no amount of enlightenment values will change that. To convince them to make the switch, you have to show them, or make them feel, that they get less utility from staying on social media than they do from using secure platforms. This means, like any good salesman or politician, you have to use logic, supported by an appeal to the prejudices and sensibilities of your audience, to make them realize they need what you're selling - security and freedom, rather than a new Buick or a surveillance state apparatus. >>27761 already made some good arguing points on the subject: Demonstrate that they're not safe. Demonstrate and quantify the harm being done to them by mainstream social media. This is not an invitation to start a flame war but the situation in the United States where mainstream social media platforms are handing over the personal information of people who criticize and threaten (personnel of) Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a good example of this demonstrable harm. It also serves as a good example of how a rhetor can use the same situation to appeal to two diametrically opposed prejudices: For leftards, it's obvious: social media is going to send the Trump-SS death squads to your house, so you should stop using it. For rightards, you can point out the historicity of the situation: the Obama administration not only refused to repeal the Patriot Act of the Bush Administration, but expanded it into the surveillance state we all know and hate today, and made use of it to go after whistleblowers and political dissidents. So, even if it's "your guys" benefiting now, when there's a democrat president, that president will use the precedent of the Trump administration to compel social media platforms to hand over personal information on ITS critics - people like YOU. Future harm to be done, and evidence of why you need to make the switch to a secure platform.

It's not as hopeless as you think. I've been gauging the public sentiment about the recent Discord push into internet ID and the majority of the people hate the upcoming changes. What's lacking in free software alternatives are trifold: good leadership, robust community collaboration and user experience research. Open source community is terribly fragile, and there are more than a few bad actors sabotaging the community efforts. Concern trolling and political polarization are sticking issues. People who are poisoning the well should be immediately derezzed. We also need to understand that Discord wasn't built overnight and that there are many of their employees are not programmers. You can have the best product but zero users if nobody knows or understands your software. You cannot and should not advise your average kid to use IRC instead. That's missing the point. That doesn't work. They want their emojis and gifs and voice chat and shiny UI. What needs to happen is that we need to somehow get a bunch of teenagers in front of computers and tell them to set up group chats and play with their friends on {insert open source Discord alternative here} and observe them. Take feedback. Note what they like/hate. Which parts of the program are difficult to use/understand. Return the feedback to software engineers and designers and iterate on the product. We need security engineers, networking engineers, cryptographers. Then we need to get people who understand marketing and advertise the polished free software product. The issue is nobody gets paid for this enormous effort, otherwise you need to turn to venture capital and become yet another extractive platform. This has to be a volunteer effort. Can we convince many people from many backgrounds who has to work on a professional manner in their free time and cooperate (not fight) until the very end?

>>27766 >It's not as hopeless as you think. It is hopeless. People are too stupid for tech, to defend their freedom, protect IQ levels and fertility of their kids. There is nothing that can't be done to these idiots. In a few generations people won't be able to talk or think like you. All countries will be third world tier. Majority never could think. Now nobody will except Satan worshiping elites who enslaved us and make us suffer. You said it yourself, people can't use IRC, they can't self host anything or join a self hosted server, they're that stupid. They'll always look for someone to save them, but nobody will because Discord is part of mass surveillance, they're rich, they actively buy or kill all threats. There are no free markets, not that it would help. Protocols and apps can't save people anymore because everyone's running Recall on their phones. It's over.

>>27766 >You cannot and should not advise your average kid to use IRC instead Why not? It's better. Kowtowing to big emoji isn't helping anyone

>>27761 >"I have nothing to hide but I have nothing I want to show you, either" works fairly well. I prefer "If you have nothing to hide, you should be ashamed of yourself"

>>27760 Ask them whether they really think that Three Letter Agencies protect his/her data better than their cyberweapons that got leaked by the Equation Group? Another good questions is to ask them whether there shouldn't be free speech just because he/she doesn't have anything to say? Tell them that the need for privacy is a basic need for human beings. Tell them about pig cops accessing police data systems to stalk their ex gf or ex bf -- Would they trust absolutely $anyone with their private data? Lastly, simply ask them: who would build a police state, if he/she really cared about democracy or free elections? Would he/she really make a social credit system to "protect democracy"? The most simple explanation is that he/she is very power hungry and wants to end the democracy.

>>27813 > you should be ashamed of yourself ...but why should they? >>27817 >cyberweapons that got leaked by the Equation Group? people who don't care about privacy aren't going to know what those are and most likely wont care either

>>27767 >people are too stupid for tech It's even worse. Now everyone is essentially telling chatbots all their inner most daily thoughts and you don't even know who. Even if you used secure tools to have a conversation - if the other person doesn't then it doesn't matter (most don't). Now imagine having a conversation in real life one on one and the other person updating their chat model putting everything about the conversation with you into their AI chat.

>>27760 i go for examples. I'm against things like facial recognition because of cases like Angela Lipps. That's how i explain my ideas, by "proving them". People tend to have a shiny smooth brain that prevents them from proceeding complex concepts and large nebulae of ideas, so i go for simple explanations with evidence as back-up to convince them. Simplistic but efficient

>>27761 You know what also works if someone says they have nothing to hide? If you're attractive, you can retort with "then show me your tits/dick" and do an awkward dance. Mocking people and using crude humor is highly effective for convincing normal users to change their worldviews. Most people are creeped out by the idea of someone watching everything they do, and need an emotional response to bring ideas out of their subconscious.

more like majority of people are too stupid for the basics of opsec to be honest and arent really interested in learning. They consider it too complicated. To be fair most people don’t do anything illegal, so they see no use for privacy or opsec. Just like many others have mentioned across many boards the government is abusing their power and censoring the voices of the people and tracking people.

>>27760 theres a guy that has an interesting position on this. he had his own wiki called Less Retarded Wiki where he expressed his opinions. seems he had to take it "underground" because of his views on pedophilia. so now lrw is only accessible from git.coom.tech where he still maintains it. heres the link to the article on privacy: https://git.coom.tech/drummyfish/less_retarded_wiki/src/branch/master/privacy.md i partly agree with him. do note that he doesnt filter emotions so the article may feel ragebaity

Just tell them to look at what's been happening since they criminalized abortion in the land of the free. A good half of us can be forcibly turned into either a criminal or a slave against our will, with the logs we use for convenience, in good faith, serving as their evidence. Even more, like the other guy said, they can misinterpret them and decide to punish you for a murder that never happened of a being that never existed. All while the hypocrites continue to do what they do best.

If they are idiots I don't know why anything you said it will work. They will switch A per B but they don't own nothing and keep getting ads about buy soykaf, how you are sure service B not soykaftiffy later ? . Interestingly , a lot of people around me has switched to alternate services , hosted by me. For some reason they found interesting how they knowing me trust more the service and it runs better than gdrive or discord. Invite them to a well deployed nextcloud instance and show them they not need a soykaf from google, and will be much more cheaper. Even being now more costly than even , it pays itself.