To me this seems extremely elitist. Non-technical people deserve to have their personal data stolen because they don't know about javascript for example?
Technical defenses are never perfect. In a sense they provide security through obscurity, as evinced by the comments above regarding Stallman's use of wget. If everyone applied technical defenses equally then workarounds would quickly be found, and everyone would be equally vulnerable. So privacy is a scale, and being in the minority provides its own defense. If in aggregate each individual is equally valuable, then the value of breaching a minority's technical defenses is some inverse multiplier of the minority's size. Personally my threat model is to put in just enough work to never be the juiciest target.
I run a similar setup as the OP when browsing the modern web, but i think it is in a way our responsibility as professionals to help the less tech inclined to navigate the sea of monsters the modern web has become.
For example: I have set up the systems of family members for whom i am some sort of digital janitor with a nice collection of firefox plugins to get rid of the worst offenders.
If you continue to willingly use socials like FB, TikTok, et al, your complaints about stolen personal data fall on deaf ears. Show me that you don't have those apps installed or do not visit their websites, then we can talk about being serious on deserving to not have data stolen.
Right, it probably is. But the issue of stolen personal data has been around for so long that nontechnical people have had years to develop political lobbying and to swing elections to put a stop to it.
The fact is that most people don't give a damn about such matters, if most did then the problems would be behind us by now.
Thus, unfortunately, with the internet it's every man and woman for him or herself. QED!
Have you ever tried to talk to "non-technical" people about this subject? They treat you like you're one of those tinfoil hat crazies.
At this point I'm 100% OK with us being the only ones able to protect ourselves. We warned them and they didn't care. Allow them to remain uncaring. We don't have to help everyone. People must want to be helped.
"Allow them to remain uncaring. We don't have to help everyone. People must want to be helped."
When people don't understand the implications or full ramifications then governments and lawmakers have to step in as they have a duty of care to protect citizens. It's one of the principal reasons for having government.
There are any number of examples, regulating the use of poisons, putting protection fences around cliff top lookouts, specifying the breaking strain of elevator cables, aircraft compliance design, removing lead from petroleum, and so on.
Unfortunately, governments have failed to act despite many warnings about these privacy matters.
Incidentally, there's an uncanny parallel between this example of governments failing to act even when in presence of the facts and my last example. In 1923 when Thomas Midgley and cohorts—engine makers and petroleum companies—sought permission to put tetraethyllead in fuel governments already knew the dangers of lead poisoning. Not only did they ignore all scientific warnings about the dangers of using the additive but also they embraced Big Business and approved the move at the citizenry's great expense.
What they want is things to be easy and require a low to non existent cognitive load. You start confusing them with details of what could happen etc and all the gyrations they have to do to avoid it, they tune out and look at you like a tinfoil hat crazy (are you sure they aren’t right?)
As the techno elite, it’s actually our job to create the underlying reality everyone else participates in when using technology. So, it is our responsibility to care, if you care. It’s not theirs - they’re just here for the party. But that doesn’t mean they’re sheep for slaughter, because there are plenty of folks ready to slaughter them for money.
It’s our ability to understand the issues and to actually improve them that uniquely makes it important for us to care. But we can’t expect people to turn off the cat video for long enough to listen to us nerd at them, and we really can’t expect them to do something complex to avoid something they don’t understand or care about. What our challenge is is - how do we improve internet technologies sufficiently that everyone enjoys what we know is important but we don’t require them to care? That’s how you build a better emergent reality.
I’m glad to have had a hand in the Netscape and Mozilla’s launch and have watched Firefox for years with pride. They are the closest to a mainstream any man product that even remotely cares. WebKit safari is a close second. I hope we all find ways to develop the tech platforms that protect as well.
Yes, I'm absolutely sure. Do I really need to justify myself here on HN of all places? On a thread about the fingerprinting implements of the surveillance capitalism industry?
> that doesn’t mean they’re sheep for slaughter
Welp. If they don't want to be slaughtered like sheep, they better start caring then. I'm done with that.
At this point what I really care about is strengthening my own privacy by having more users in the anonymity set. The more indistinguishable users there are, the more effectively we are protected. I figure that if they're apathetic enough to allow corporations to exploit them with absolute impunity, they're also apathetic enough to join the anonymity set. Browsers just need to make that choice for them. It needs to be the new default.
> we can’t expect people to turn off the cat video for long enough to listen to us
I can and I do. What we're saying about this matter is important. People should listen, join the discussion even. When we reach out to people about matters we consider important, we do it with the best of intentions. We expect they'll at least put some thought into it. If not that, we expect they'll at least treat us with some respect, not like some schizophrenic off his meds. Can't expect anyone to continue caring after multiple instances of that.
> What our challenge is is - how do we improve internet technologies sufficiently that everyone enjoys what we know is important but we don’t require them to care?
Someone's gonna need to have the balls to make the choice for them. I don't have the resources to just make a better browser though. I do what I can by installing uBlock Origin on every single browser I come across. Everyone loves it and tells me that the web "feels" much better, though they can't quite explain why.
"On the other hand if you insist on using JS, Gmail, Google search, Facebook etc. then you're fair game and you only have yourself to blame if your personal data is stolen."
... okay, I reread it for a third time and you're right. Not sure how I managed to miss it the first two times I read the comment. Yeah, that's nonsense.
Yeah? If they don't know how to operate a computer then they shouldn't be operating one. The same I would feel if someone without a licence crashed their car.
But when my mechanic tells me that the grinding noise while braking means I need to have the brakes fixed doesn't excuse me from continuing to drive without fixing the brakes and it doesn't really magically get fixed by turning up the radio until the noise goes away. To further your comparison, devs would be the mechanics, and devs have been screaming that operating browsers without blockers is similar to not getting the squeaking noises fixed. Everyone just keeps turning up the volume until the underlying noise goes away.
Thank you! I thought I was alone in thinking like this.
I hate Atlassian Bamboo with a passion but it is the only CI/CD system I remember coming across that actually has a concept of deploying a built artifact.
