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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

I am not providing firsthand testimony so that people can toss out half baked ideas as to how I can comply with their priorities if I am willing to jump through a few hoops as if I have the time, energy and mental space to jump through more hoops.

All future replies: pretty please address the issue raised concerning systemic problems and stop talking about me and my life.

The expectation that I need to dance around storage limits, migrate to a new service after years and years with gmail as if that is not a burden and generally care more about the upper class values and priorities of internet strangers than about my own actual needs is monstrously classist and dismissive. And it completely ignores the issues I raised.

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Why is privacy an upper class value?

It may not be one of your values, as evidenced by your choice of email provider, but it has nothing to do with class, or dismissing your own needs. You can be poor and refuse to hand over your data to big corporations, or rich and have a Gmail account and keep using Google search because of the convenience.

You are the owe that chose to bring up personal details out-of-the-blue in this discussion. There were comments showing that there are ways to ensure your online privacy without necessarily spending money. The fact you do not wish to do so, is irrelevant to your economic situation.

Poor people often cannot afford privacy on quite a lot of levels.

When I was homeless, one of the places I could get a free shower had an open bay of 8 showerheads where I could shower with up to 7 strangers. I could get showered or I could protect my privacy and dignity. I could not do both. I needed a shower more than I needed to make sure total strangers never saw me naked.

Maybe you have heard the expression Beggars can't be choosers?

I did everything in my power to make judicious choices under extremely difficult circumstances. But the most charitable read I can give of your question is that you are so privileged, you honestly don't get it. There are people who are doing everything in their power to fight the good fight in spite of poverty and myriad other burdens. And at some point, you have to make compromises. Maybe you get the free option. Or maybe you become a criminal because it pays better than the legal gigs you can find. Or you make some other compromise because there simply aren't the above board good options available to you that you wish there were. Period.

The comparison between showering as a homeless individual and choosing an email provider does not work. The choice is not Gmail or no email, the choice is Gmail and slightly less convenient alternatives that do not spy on you, which you choose depending on your personal beliefs, not economic situation.

If you have the time to post on HN, you clearly have the time to change your email provider if it aligns with your personal beliefs.

Why do you feel the need to bring up personal details about your hardships in life? Being no longer homeless, you are, globally speaking, on the upper scale of social classes yourself, being from the United States, having 6 years of university, having worked at a Fortune 200 company, and currently having enough time to post on HN.

> If you have the time to post on HN, you clearly have the time to change your email provider if it aligns with your personal beliefs.

Meh, changing email addresses is a major pain in the ass. So much so that I've hosted my own mail server for decades, including configuring sendmail, to avoid it.

Changing bank addresses (aka accounts) is comparatively easier and there is real money directly on the line, and yet banks still clearly make loads off of account stickiness.

Posting on HN is procrastination.

Why do you feel the need to bring up personal details about your hardships in life?

I speak from firsthand experience. Many people do that on a regular basis here, but their firsthand experience is as a comfortably well off male so no one has any objections to them mentioning their gender, the kind of work they do, their general social class, etc.

Suggesting I should not ever mention any of the details of my life amounts to trying to make sure no comfortably well off people need to be disturbed by the awareness that people like me exist and it de facto takes the position that my life experiences and points of view are less valid than that of people with cushier lives and fundamentally not welcome here.

And I don't only talk about my hardships, of course that fact also gets used against me. Never mind that my life is still far from comfortable, if I have time to post to HN, my life is too cushy to complain about. Wow. The denial here runs deep.

> All future replies: pretty please address the issue raised concerning systemic problems and stop talking about me and my life.

Stop adding irrelevant personal details to your comments.

Well, you don't seem to feel very strongly about privacy, so you could have safely ignored the rest of the parent comment's advice.

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