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Comment by kcb | Hacker News Reader

We can't let people install the applications they choose because my grandma. Is a pretty prevailing opinion

Just because an opinion is common doesn’t make it prevailing.

Yes there are many commenters here who say that, but I bet if we could somehow take a poll they would not be the majority.

I don’t know when people started expecting everyone on a given site to share the same opinion, but it is tiring.

Of course it didn't prevail. We live in an age where Russia and China demand VPNs get removed from the App Store. The US Government removed ICEBlock from all mobile storefronts. The worst-case scenario is staring us right in the face.

It's downright appalling that HN entertained these arguments against sideloading. No self-respecting software engineer can look at the centralized architecture of a billion-dollar software business and surmise that it wouldn't be used against them. The detractors against sideloading deliberately (or foolishly) ignored an outsized, glaringly obvious threat to their personal freedoms that was repeatedly emphasized by their opposition.

Oppression, censorship and surveillance are HN's just deserts.

Congratulations on completely ignoring what I said.

In perhaps clearer terms: HN is not a monolith. There are a variety of opinions here and intense disagreement. It’s very difficult to claim that any particular position is supported by a majority of users, given the arguments that erupt on nearly every topic.

(Or perhaps you are claiming that 100% of a site’s users are responsible for every opinion that is aired on a site, even if they disagree with it.)

I never claimed that the majority of HN shared that opinion, or that they should. You manifested both of those ideas from wholecloth.

The common opinion is still harmful, and it's enabled the harms to scale to the point we see them today. For an analog in modern politics, look at minority opinions like "think of the children" or "unnamed terrorist threat" and their role in manufacturing consent for tyranny.

> It's downright appalling that HN entertained these arguments against sideloading.

> Oppression, censorship and surveillance are HN's just deserts.

What is this if not an implication that a majority, or all, of HN users share this opinion and are thus responsible/deserving of the fallout?

A statement of fact? We share a common fate, switching to Linux or protesting Meta doesn't exempt you from the rule of law.

Edit: Oppression, censorship and surveillance are not a hypothetical consequence. The "justness" might be debatable, but the existence of it is objective.

It’s actually not a statement of fact, “just desserts” (implying that one is deserving of punishment or suffering) is a moral argument. Moral arguments are not statements of fact, although this does not make them necessarily invalid.

Speaking of which, HN arguably entertains executing censorship as much as any government, corporation, or organization. Often what is seen or presented, so people can think that's the prevailing view, is not a complete view. It's controlled and manipulated.

... and one that has quite the merit. A few hours worth of watching Scammer Payback will do that to anyone.

The thing is, wide parts of the population are extremely IT illiterate. The governments didn't act to protect them (say, by threatening the host countries of the scammers aka India in the case of the US or Turkey/Bulgaria/Romania in the case of Europe), so private companies had no other choice.

And hell even the best of us like Brian Krebs can fall victim to attacks [1].

I'm really out of ideas how we can reconcile the needs of the 99% vs the needs of the 1% without making life hell for the other group.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/security-journalist-brian-kr...

... of course, the EU has the power to get the banks to block those money transfers. Hell, central banks have to be involved in those scams (hopefully/probably unaware). But they CAN shut it down, HARD. They're not doing that, at all.

> so private companies had no other choice.

Because Microsoft has demonstrated how it's done on their platforms? Obviously governments, EU or otherwise, have quite serious tolerance for scams.

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