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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Are you sure about this? 20 years ago I was running a then-novel Linux machine with my own email etc. etc. but eventually I stopped because on the whole it wasn't worth all the effort.

I know perfectly well, from experience, that I could vastly increase my privacy (or reduce the huge volume of information that I choose or passively accept liability for sharing, eg by having a FB account and not logging out of it every time I go to another tab etc. etc.). But how much of my time do I want to spend on opsec?

I don't want to be in a defensive posture for the rest of my life, hiding from bad actors and constantly worrying about some overlooked chink in my digital armor. Frankly, if the future is endless low-grade cyberwarfare I'd rather be on the offensive and steal other people's data for my own advantage than be endlessly upgrading my door locks.

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Well, have you checked out the platforms I linked? This is the whole point of the self-hosting platforms. They don't want you to put in the effort any more than buying a phone. You install apps and leave the security to the platform. At this point, this is really about how good the platform gets in insulating the user. If you feel like an early adopter, go try those platforms.

I will and I appreciate the effort and care you took to explain them.

I guess I'm just jaded because I've been through so many cycles of 'this will automate your security needs' followed by 'every system can be gamed' a couple of years later - much as Phil Zimmerman commented The natural flow of technology tends to move in the direction of making surveillance easier, and the ability of computers to track us doubles every eighteen months.

Nowadays I worry less about my privacy on the assumption that it's probably hopelessly compromised anyway, and more about being able to hold an unpopular position or opinion without official interference. For example I think it's far more important that gay people enjoy full civil rights, be able to marry etc. than they had better privacy tools that would allow them to remain in the closet indefinitely.

>For example I think it's far more important that gay people enjoy full civil rights, be able to marry etc. than they had better privacy tools that would allow them to remain in the closet indefinitely.

That's like saying that having 100% uptime and zero failures is more important than having backups. Sure the former would be ideal but in reality that answer doesn't cut it. Sure civil rights and free speech and personal autonomy are ideal, but over here in the real world there are a lot of people who still have to hide to avoid bad stuff happening to them.

I also don't think you can use 'automate' and 'security' like in the previous paragraph and expect good results.

To clarify: many concepts that we today accept as part of the natural order of things would get you killed if discussed in earlier times. We don't know what things that could get you in trouble today will turn out to be facts taken for granted in future cultures, but in order for that evolution to take place, there must be a safe way to discuss unpopular (especially to the extent of being dangerous) ideas. If the people behind any great historical revolution had been unable to discuss their ideas safely, it's reasonable to assume it might never have happened.

You should learn to multi-task :-) But seriously, we all prioritize and fight for things what we care deeply about. In the end, I live in a better world thanks to people like you who fight for civil rights.

Thanks, though I don't want to present myself as any kind of leader in this area.

Consider that without privacy, people fighting for civil rights may be unable to safely coordinate and organize themselves well enough to make progress.

I'm not arguing that privacy isn't important, but if I have to make a choice, it's not my highest priority in every context.

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