The book from a year or two ago, "Means of Control," by Tau, goes into some pretty good detail on the data collection and sales from just the adtech firms - where the entire ecosystem seems to be, "You can't use our data for anything but advertising... wink wink", and everyone knows exactly who is bidding on ads, and never winning any, just to slurp up location data and sell it. Or the "companies that don't sell the government." Also, they don't vet any clients beyond "The credit card is good."
> And because giants like Meta, Google, and Apple must collect as much of your personal data as possible, there’s little they can do to protect your privacy.
I quite disagree with the "must" there. They choose to collect as much data as possible, because that's their business model.
And the good news is, it's fairly easy to opt out of quite a lot of that.
Turn location services off, turn your phone off when moving about, and pay cash without "personal tracking cards" associated with you. Just about everywhere has [local area code] 867-5309 registered, if you care.
I was watching this old British show called connections where they try to connect random things in the world together and they talk about your online persona and how the world will change because of the internet and World Wide Web. What I found interesting is that they present it all as if there will be an online version of you that you should treat, essentially, as a separate entity. It is not you, it is your representative to the digital space. That you should think of it as some agent that does things for you in that space even though in reality it’s simply a collection of data about you. But I liked that idea because it helps create a delineation between you the person and your online presence. I think what people don’t realize these days is that it is rather difficult to be anonymous online in the same way it is rather difficult to be anonymous in a room full of people you know. This is because your online profile is essentially known to any online actor who wants to know as you and the article point out. But tbh I think most people, including myself, spend too much time engaging in doing things connected to online. You don’t need slack and zoom to talk to colleagues it is possible to have in person interactions. You don’t need strava to go for a run. You don’t need your phone to go to the coffee shop and read a book.
I’m a big fan of the show. People who only use Facebook, I don’t expect them to dress their speech based on anonymity. People who actually fear a surveillance state, same deal. So how shall we depict the minority (on HN and IRC, etc) who expect anonymity as a feature?
For a couple of years now I've been using [my area code] - 555 - [a unique 4-digit pin] for dealing with otherwise "walk-in" business that look at you like you have three heads if you decline to say a phone number out loud. In the US at least, the 555 block is defacto "fictional" and typically isn't assigned out, so it lets me create a valid looking number that won't accidentally ring some random real person if they try to call it.
Minor quibble, 555 isn't fictional, it's typically reserved for teleco internal use, or at least that was the case 25 years ago, who knows what the deal is now. Used to be you could wardial 555-xxxx and end up with all kinds of weird AT&T field installations, back office numbers, switch remote command and control modem numbers, etc.
> And the good news is, it's fairly easy to opt out of quite a lot of that.
The problem is that we really need something like herd immunity. If you opt out, but the rest of the people in your life do not, then it's possible to discover most of your data most of the time. You might have location services off, but your friends and family don't, so much of the time there's a good guess where you are at. Or you might not share your phone #, but it can be collected by those that you text or call and shared that way. Creating "shadow accounts" is very advanced these days.
Not to mention, "opt out" has to be actually true and not just a facade.
Just don't bring your phone with you. With low power states and opaque software and hardware, you really can't risk it. You can never be sure it's truly off, unless it's in a Faraday bag. But is it worth it?
The magnetic field passes through a Faraday cage, so even then there are no guarantees if the phone uses unconventional modes of communication. Ultrasonic audio is another one.
The basic rule of thumb is, if a company knows something about you, then the government does too.
Which means they know everything you have posted, everywhere you've gone, everywhere you've worked, what you think politically, and almost certainly have AI profilers trying to "precog" you.
To say nothing of camera surveillance, gait analysis, facial recognition, license plate tracking, cell phone signal interceptors.
All it takes is for one authoritarian to walk in and turn the key and POOF we have perfect.
Are we in danger of that? Oh right, no politics on HN. Don't worry, be happy folks.
A one-off or series of authoritarians should be the least of your concern. They tend to be controversial and have great difficulty amassing the political will to get their things truly done and set in stone. A constantly popular government should be what keeps you awake at night. Because people who are otherwise capable of "hold a job, support myself" levels of intelligent thought will tie themselves into knots to support otherwise unjustified screwing at the hands of a government they support.
Its like expecting farm animals to keep track of how the farm works, as the farm gets more and more sophisticated in animal domestication and exploitation. The individual action argument was weak 10 years ago and its worthless today.
The is a Systemic problem. Doesn't matter what the individuals do.
The trouble is people thinking it can be fixed with the system. I've been to a few dictatorships, none of them had the slightest clue what I was doing because the government was too poor and distracted with stuff like militias at their door to take much interest in what I was doing.
Safety comes from dysfunctional governance. Surveillance is a property of functional governance. Embrace disfunction.
Plenty of ineffective dictatorships will happily line you up against the wall with bogus surveillance. And shitty surveillance states will happily fake surveillance or data to look more effective.
The danger with these types of
State organs is they are constantly trying to justify their existence and cover up their mistakes, and if you can be thrown in the gears, some places are happy to do that.
>Plenty of ineffective dictatorships will happily line you up against the wall with bogus surveillance. And shitty surveillance states will happily fake surveillance or data to look more effective.
Sure, but that's the exception. Governments have a pyramid of needs too. Governments don't throw a bunch of resources on things with poor returns, like shooting people who haven't done much wrong, when there's easier fruit to pick. Sure, you can go full jackboot on specific issues here and there but that's not sustainable on a "will I retire in peace of will I hang from the overpass" timeline. And even if you're the dictator's henchman and want to go down some rabbit hole of killing people you don't like the the fact that the dictator may have you shot for waste or as a sacrifice when that provokes unrest or dissatisfaction among the people generally keeps the government in line. And the government really doesn't want to be killing people because it needs people to do things and pay taxes.
Look at all the historically violent dictatorships that lasted a long time and for many leaders. They all provide for their people generally. They might not be competitive absolutely but they keep things generally moving in a positive direction decade over decade and keep the country doing at least as well as its peers. The ones that don't tend to fall apart after a couple bad leaders.
I really shouldn't need to be explaining this. This is how every European monarchy worked just with god and birthright as justification instead of backroom dealing and politics and false elections.
Im sure when I fought for the YPG Assad might have liked that, unfortunately all the bogus surveillance in the world is no use when your army cannot enforce their borders or sovereignty. In any case I saw guys with AKs posting to Facebook, no bogus stuff needed, they were already publicly providing all the evidence needed for the death penalty without any worry of being prosecuted.
I don’t think we’re disagreeing. My point is that while those folks shooting AKs in the air are doing their thing, some other random putz that never did anything like that is probably getting nailed to the wall by the same system.
And unlike an effective/accurate surveillance system, you can’t be safe by just not being the AK weilding guys. In fact, sometimes you’re safer because you’re more dangerous, and they’d rather find someone easier to pick on.
Third world places aren’t what they are because of a lack of rules or systems (usually), but rather because the rules and systems aren’t fit for purpose and produce the wrong outcomes.
Ah yes absolutely. Under no system is anyone safe if they're unable to bear arms to protect themselves/family, they will be systematically vulnerable or vulnerable to the next bandit. This just becomes more visible under disfunction.
It is impossible to avoid, and if you try to avoid it, you stick out. The correct maneuver is to appear normal, but selectively shutdown the system. Turn your phone on airplane and pay with cash with the moment is right. We live in a panopticon afterall.
In a country with the rule of law like the USA, the government can know you committed a crime, you know you committed a crime, society may suspect you of committing a crime, but criminal law requires a jury to convict beyond reasonable doubt. With a good lawyer this is a very tough bar, it's how organized crime gets away with so much (and despite the mafia being out of the news, they operate extremely well to this day).
So selectively you choose when to be anonymous. You pick your battles.
As a practical matter that may help the average HN normie, if you have a family you likely have life insurance. Never, ever, buy alcohol, marijuana, or cigarette / vapes / nicotine products with a credit card. Always pay cash. If you die the insurance company will go through everything to try and deny.
In the reverse case, the modern day can help you. If you drive, get a dashcam. You don't have to reveal video if you are at fault. But if not at fault, the video is gold. Put cameras around your house.
If you have rental property attached to your primary domicile, never have the internet under your own primary internet, lest you give reason for a wayward tenant to cause a search of your own home.
You aren't protecting yourself for the 99.99% time, you are prepared for the 0.01% case
Can you provide any additional context for this? I haven't heard it, and a cursory search doesn't turn up anything obvious regarding their ties to fascism.
Ironically, we told you all for years that if you abused terms like fascist, Nazi, racist, etc then they would lose their power and their impact and people would ignore them in future. You were warned what would happen if you cried wolf.
I know they're deporting people who aren't here legally (that's a whole other debate), but I'm not aware of them actively targeting anyone based on race of ethnicity regardless of their legal status.
There has also been posts from schools in Texas recommending kids on field trips keep legal documentation on them because ICE is stopping school buses for investigations.
I don't know, is it? The US has had Trump as POTUS for four weeks and he's already doing a lot of what was "promised" in [Project 2025](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025)...
The boy who cried wolf is only a meaningful story because he is eventually eaten by a wolf.
However, your third point is a bit breathless. They aren't expelling anyone based on ethnicity. They want to deport illegal aliens. It isn't their fault so many of those aliens are from one country. The Nazis were expelling and killing Jews that had been in Europe for centuries lawfully. And, yknow, the whole killing them thing! The human experiments. The slave labour camps.
You are forgetting that fascist regimes go to war with their neighbours for territory, ignore the law, suspend democracy and have secret police to enforce political orthodoxy. Trump is an isolationist and he hasn't done any of the rest, yet at least.
Also don't forget that for all the stick Trump gets about immigration, all the Democratic presidents I can remember claim that they want to control the border too, and claim they can do so better. Hardly illustrative of fascism...
Yes, ask any Canadian how they feel about their sovereignty right now. Let me know how the Riviera in Gaza is going to work out and enjoy that vacation in the Gulf of America. Do you remember when Solemeni got assassinated. I also hope your not what he calls "vermin" and end up in Guantanamo Bay. Just because they're so dumb and incompetent and incapable of accomplishing their goals(at this moment) doesn't make a spade a spade. Honestly I am not even surprised by this anymore your post describes exactly why fascism takes root, just endless justification of authoritarianism.
There is no threat towards Canadian sovereignty obviously. The Riviera in Gaza would be a lot better than the current situation in which its biggest industry is exporting rockets into Israel. Also not territorial expansion as Gaza isn't a neighbour. Imperialism? Yes. But look at the world. It functioned much better in most places when imperial powers controlled more of it. That isn't an excuse for them to invade each other, which never ended well. Also he is just using it as a negotiating tactic with Jordan and Egypt obviously.
Changing the name of some water isn't territorial expansion or authoritarianism.
Solemeni was a terrorist. A dead terrorist is a good terrorist. If you attack a sovereign country then you should expect to be targeted. Fuck around? Find out.
Obama closed Gitmo. He promised to, remember, so he must have. And he withdrew from Afghanistan, remember? He said so in between claiming that marriage was only between a man and a woman. What a hero of the left.
Feel free to tell me I am wrong when I actually am instead of just when your imagination runs wild and you see "authoritarianism" in your cereal. Killing terrorists is authoritarianism lol. And drone striking children isn't?
> There is no threat towards Canadian sovereignty obviously. The Riviera in Gaza would be a lot better than the current situation in which its biggest industry is exporting rockets into Israel.
Like there is no threat to Medicaid? Here’s the authoritarianism: Trump is clearly setting us up for a major constitutional crisis by way of his lying bullshit. Go see the way he talked to the governor of maine and tell me you dont hear the threats? You might not be a Nazi, but you’re sure damn close.
Wait until that author learns about Edward Snowden or advertisement agencies.
I used to play with Twitters firehose back in the day and there's quite a lot of personal data you derive from private accounts. We could tell the city someone likely lived if they followed a certain amount of people from a specific city, etc. Could also guess their gender with 95% accuracy with just using n-grams from their tweets. We'd test our algorithms with public accounts.
I think there's too much power and money in personal information for it to stop.
What these analyses always miss is that providers on foreign soil have even less protection against the US IC: breaking into foreign providers is literally NSA's chartered mission. That's not to say you should deliberately use US providers! Unless, that is, abuse of legal process in the US motivates your decisionmaking, in which case: an abused legal process beats no process requirements at all.
It’s not even that they have to “break in.” The government allows big tech companies to basically do whatever they want as long as big tech provides the government with an easy way to move forward with the parallel construction needed to bring case against literally anyone should officials be motivated to see that person imprisoned. Everything you’ve ever done can and will be used against you to maximum effect.
Whatever legal requirements might be at play, the fundamental difference is that a US company will comply, whereas a non-cooperative external party would still need to be broken, which is very much non-trivial in the age of strong cryptography, even if you're NSA.
It's the NSA's job to do that domestically, it's just supposed to be firewalled by some hidden kangaroo court that absolutely doesn't do its job: FBI agents have been busted stalking women/exs several times.
Has been since 9/11. Remember, there's the omnipresent neverending war on terror.
Europe has plenty of “Kangaroo courts” of their own and partnerships like five eyes encourages authorities to share information. The UK’s NSA equivalent doesn’t need to worry about infringing on an American’s 4th amendment right and technically (if you don’t think about it) the NSA has plausible deniability if the UK shares this information. And vise versa with UK citizens or any western government.
When a famous media personality was assassinated the police managed to catch the killers within hours. Turns out they really DO track every car on the highway- it wasn't just bragging.
“Surveillance state” is debatable. I would disagree, but I’ve had that debate too many times on HN recently, and don’t propose to start it again here.
However, to call the UK “totalitarian” is just an abuse of language. The country is not run by a single all-powerful party or dictator. It’s especially odd to use this word and then make a comparison to the US, which (though it is not totalitarian either by any stretch of the imagination) is currently in the midst of an executive power grab, with demands for a level of partisan loyalty from civil servants that remains unthinkable in the UK.
I don’t know what your goal is here, but if you want to persuade the average person in the UK to change their minds about the extent to which the government should be able to access surveillance data, it helps not to bundle your arguments together with wild misstatements.
You're right I shouldn't have used the adjective "totalitarian." It was the kind of mindless parroting of phrases that I dread myself, so thank you for pointing that out! The UK has extremely strict surveillance laws, which are incompatible with EU legislation by now, so it's not a typical example of European countries in that respect. That's all I meant to say.
If so, that was a judgment about legislation that is no longer current (and wasn’t when the judgment was issued). It may be that current legislation is also incompatible with EU law (IANAL, I’m not arguing that point), but AFAIK there is no court judgment to that effect.
No, I didn't talk about court judgments. Yes, I had various aspects of the Regulation of the Investigatory Powers Act and recent additions to the Investigatory Powers Act in mind.
> It may be that current legislation is also incompatible with EU law (IANAL, I’m not arguing that point), but AFAIK there is no court judgment to that effect.
Quite possibly but that wasn't my point. The point is that the UK is by far more of a surveillance state than any EU country, at least to my knowledge. UK legislation is not typical for a European country in that respect. People can go to prison in the UK for not handing over an encryption password and the UK has just effectively banned end-to-end encryption (if you put a backdoor in it, it's no longer end-to-end encryption).
I’m just responding to the specific claim regarding the incompatibility of current UK legislation with EU law. AFAIK this is not an established fact. It’s an increasingly hypothetical question, though not entirely so.
Apple does collect some of your data, but their business doesn't depend on it, and I have some degree of control over how much I participate.
I think it's a category error to include all three in the same sentence, but I don't think the author is lying. I do agree somewhat with the sentiment that such a lack of distinction calls the content into question, or at least the author's framing of it.
Disagree. All three companies exist in the set of massively international megacorps who as a matter of routine daily business collect and distribute personal information of the individuals who use their service. Being precious about what percentage of their yearly revenue is generated by this activity seems weird.
> Being precious about what percentage of their yearly revenue is generated by this activity seems weird
No one is being precious about it. They're debating whether or not the article is written in good faith. Jumping to a bad faith-based defence isn't going to change the mind of people who are concerned about things being done in bad faith.
To clarify, you're concerned that one or more arguments advanced in the article don't meet your personal definition of bad faith, bad faith is important to you, and as such the entire article is suspect? Entirely ignoring the central claims of bad faith handling of users sensitive information, we're skipping past that entirely to deconstruct a single sentence as a "gotcha"? One of us does not understand the other, clearly.
Good/bad faith isn't just about one's preference about a form of argument, but can also completely change the validity of the underlying argument.
The point here is that bad faith is doing exactly that: making the legitimacy of the argument presented by the author fundamentally questionable. Comparing the core business model of a company that has invested in capabilities like Advanced Data Protection with Meta in an article highlighting the ways authorities can get your data...seems disingenuous at best, and just plain wrong/misleading.
> we're skipping past that entirely to deconstruct a single sentence as a "gotcha"
When someone sets up a false premise, then yes, everything that comes after it is suspect.
Scott Pressler, a gay man, was almost single handedly responsible for swinging Pennsylvania, and therefore the 2024 election. He motivated 200,000 Amish to get out and vote after the FDA overeach tried to shut them down. MAGA loves their LGBT.
You are replying to someone who says they are transgender.
MAGA does not love trans people. Anti-trans rhetoric was thick during the campaign. Trans members of the military are being forced out. If you attempt to enter the US with a passport that indicates a different gender than you were assigned at birth, you might be banned from ever entering the US again. Significant effort has been taken to erase the concept of trans people from government websites and media.
A couple tokens does not change this. The actions speak for themselves.
That number can’t be true. His speciality is “legal ballot harvesting” so I suspect this story is parallel construction for where he really got 200,000 ballots.
That propaganda line is so old and stale. Specially from people who literally wanted anyone who dissented with their anti constitutional policies during COVID dead/in camps/removed from society.
But hey, you keep pushing that lie, I'm sure it will work next time you tell people to "ignore the genocide being commited because it will be worse if the the other team is the one doing it".
I love how a bunch of folks turned into Thurgood Marshall the second someone noticed that a bunch of folks were getting sick, hospitals were collapsing under workload, and maybe we should take some basic steps to pump the brakes on that.
Not quite, I still cared and I’ve personally written to congress about it. Surprisingly, I got a response. Unsurprisingly, the response I got was basically a diplomatic “We know better than you do, we don’t care what you think, we’re going to do it anyway”
Many (but not all, it's worth noting) people who work for the government live in an apartheid society inside their own heads, where they and everyone else who works for government is the superior tier of their imaginary hierarchy, and everyone else is thought of as "lesser than", with fewer rights, a different (more strict) set of rules, on the inferior tier of their imaginary hierarchy.
Next time you're observing this, try to imagine the outrage if the government official were a white South African government official talking to a black South African citizen. There's the same level of condescending animosity and supremacist ideology at play, just along a completely different axis - employer rather than skin color.
Yeah I do imagine that on a regular basis yet, something about my comment appears to be unpopular since I’m being downvoted. I usually don’t mind but this one bothers me a little bit since writing to congress is just about the only thing an average American can do to influence the legislation. Actively participating in democracy is not cool these days.
That's because the left doesn't use the same rhetoric as the right does in America.
Although they believe that capitalism is misguided and harmful, they don't treat it as fundamentally unAmerican in the way that the right does with socialism. E.g. You don't hear the left trying to start moral panics around "they are teaching kids CAPITALISM in school!!!"
The left hasn't performed ideological purges of government in the way that the right currently is. Again, much of the issue is that the right treats left wing belief not as something that they disagree with but as something to be purged from society.
The left hasn't written executive orders declaring that people they don't like don't exist the way that the right has with trans people. Again, there's the urge to attempt to eliminate the ability for groups they dislike to exist in society.
>The left hasn't written executive orders declaring that people they don't like don't exist the way that the right has with trans people.
This is a malicious lie. Nobody has said that those people do not exist. What is said is that what they claim about themselves is not true. It is a dispute about what labels are validly applied to people. It is not a debate about the existence of anyone.
Repeating this lie just makes you look like a breathless idiot to anyone that understands what words mean in their obvious context.
No there is not "urge to attempt the eliminate the ability for groups they dislike to exist in society".
Someone that says "billionaires should not exist" is not saying that for each person P, if P is a billionaire then P should not exist, but that people should not be allowed to become billionaires (through tax or communism or something). Obviously.
Why am I even engaging with your bad faith comment actually? You obviously don't believe what you said.
The hypocrisy in the comment lies in the author’s claim that others are acting in “bad faith,” while simultaneously misrepresenting the opposing argument. Specifically, the commenter criticizes the original poster for allegedly exaggerating (“malicious lie,” “breathless idiot”) when interpreting certain conservative actions as denying the existence of trans people. Yet, in doing so, the commenter engages in their own distortion—downplaying the genuine impact of policies that functionally erase or severely limit the recognition and legitimacy of transgender identities.
Moreover, the commenter clearly distinguishes between literal existence and societal allowance for billionaires, yet refuses to apply the same nuance to the original comment regarding transgender identities. This selective application of interpretative generosity constitutes the core hypocrisy.
We have to agree that Elon Musk is the ideological leader of the party now. He has arranged explanations for his own extreme and unambiguous statements. It’s noble to hold strangers on the Internet to a higher bar. But no idea in the party isn’t touched by Elon Musk.
So when he says “dead — killed by the woke mind virus” he might be trying to garner figurative sympathy as if he lost a child. It certainly coincides with a call to criminalize any facet of trans health care for trans youth.
And when he says “America will go bankrupt” without him, he might be issuing a threat or maybe just a warning. Donald Trump is no stranger to bankruptcy and certainly must see that politicians only mention debt rhetorically. His administration added more than $8T, or $5900 per capita per year.
So if we must accept only extreme solutions to things that were never problems, maybe their intention really was those urges?
The government colluded with Facebook and Twitter during the Biden administration
There's people that think this only happened during the Biden Administration?
Not Obama? Not Trump? Not Bush? Just Biden?
The gullibility of Americans in aggregate is stunning at times. If you're one of those still out preaching the quasi-religions of "left" or "right", you're honestly a large part of the problem at this point. And you're probably too submerged in the holy waters of your quasi-religion's divine scriptures to even begin to understand why.
While the OP may think that, you are assuming a lot about their thinking from those two sentences. Then somehow manage to generalize it to Americans and include religion.
I'd hazard a guess that the person you're responding to is not so naïve that they believe this was unique to the Biden administration, but rather, is frustrated at what they feel is this kind of government tyranny often only being discussed through a partisan, one-sided lens that they might characterize as emphasizing this kind of stuff when conservative administrations do it but downplaying when progressive administrations do it.
I'm not necessarily supporting or defending that position, but we should at least strive to argue against the steelman version of our opponent's position, rather than the strawman position, no?
We must have different definitions of steelman. I have always understood steelman to be the opposite of strawman. To argue with the strawman of their argument is arguing a weaker version of the argument than the one they're really making - i.e. "I assume because they didn't mention any other administrations, they must be some dumb idiot who only thinks this happened during the last administration", while arguing the steelman is arguing against the strongest version of the argument they're trying to make - i.e. "sure, that poster didn't mention other administrations, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt - if we asked them whether they'd support similar surveillance done by the Obama admin or Bush admin, I'd be willing to guess they'd say no, I bet they're just expressing frustration about the left's unwillingness to acknowledge the Biden admin's big tech collusion, even if their real qualm is with the surveillance itself, not the partisan coverage of it".
I personally detest covert surveillance and social influence operations being waged by taxpayer-funded organizations (regardless of whether public or private in nature) against their own citizenry, and I oppose this across the political aisle. I think it reeks of institutions that distrust and fear us more than they represent our collective interests, and that's an ugly mindset unbecoming of a government or enterprise that publicly paints itself as a champion of free and open democracy on the world stage, regardless of whether it's an intelligence agency or an international social media platform. But I also recognize that it's bipartisan, and that most people seem to care more about deploying force against the other side than they do about reducing the amount of force that is deployed against all of us.
ie - Strawman is to argue an easy to refute point they're not making. Whether that point is stronger or weaker is irrelevant. The key is you came prepared to refute the point. Steelman is to argue the point they're making.
But we're getting into irrelevant semantics at this point. Neither the poster's point, nor mine centered on the definitions we have of steelman or strawman.
My material point was on the tendency of people to embed what amount to using quasi-religious scripture quotations in discussions of completely non-religious problem areas. To the point of making it difficult for any, uh, "non-believers", out there to make any progress towards improvements.
> one-sided lens that they might characterize as emphasizing this kind of stuff when conservative administrations do it but downplaying when progressive administrations do it.
Conservative administrations are worst tho. That is the objective reality. And as of now, there is not left wing analogy to what conservatives are doing. Democrats are not perfect, but common, the aggression and fanatization of the actual party is not even close. It is moderate center on the "left side" vs the thing we see on the right.
One sided lens are the ones that achieve "equality" by euphemism away conservative goals and behaviors while trying to paint their opposition in worst possible light. Obama wore tan suit which totally breaks respectability of the presidency and therefore, he is equal to Trump who talks about "grabbing women by the <body part>" kind of false equality.
Leave please, rational statements on politics are not allowed here. You are only allowed to base your opinions on the contradictory, irrational rhetoric of the two dominant right-wing neoliberal political parties. You are not allowed to point out that both political parties encroach on American liberties and fundamentally work together to get it done. Your understanding of history, economics, and society must be based entirely off of vibes. "Left" and "Right" as terms must be completely devoid of real substance and refer primarily to a color and which insufferable attitude you hold.
"Both sides are the same" has no relevance anymore. Every day since Jan 20th 2025 one side has been proving they will do anything and everything they can to destroy democracy and America. The other side doesn't have any power to stop them, mainly because people didn't show up to vote.
Voting within the plurality system gave voters access only to the inputs of the Nash Equilibrium decision matrix, not the outputs. All it took was everyone being focused on winning by making the other side lose, and suddenly "we" all lose.
If instead we voted with permutations of {+1, +0.5, -0.5} assigned to a single combination of up to 3 candidates without duplication of score or candidate, we would be voting for the outcome of the decision matrix and avoiding the tragedy of the commons.
But we didn't, and won't, so we brave the new world of tragically aligned AGI known as government. If the pattern isn't recognized, real AGI (rather than the metaphor of government) would definitely learn from it and wipe out humanity at this rate.
The book from a year or two ago, "Means of Control," by Tau, goes into some pretty good detail on the data collection and sales from just the adtech firms - where the entire ecosystem seems to be, "You can't use our data for anything but advertising... wink wink", and everyone knows exactly who is bidding on ads, and never winning any, just to slurp up location data and sell it. Or the "companies that don't sell the government." Also, they don't vet any clients beyond "The credit card is good."
> And because giants like Meta, Google, and Apple must collect as much of your personal data as possible, there’s little they can do to protect your privacy.
I quite disagree with the "must" there. They choose to collect as much data as possible, because that's their business model.
And the good news is, it's fairly easy to opt out of quite a lot of that.
Turn location services off, turn your phone off when moving about, and pay cash without "personal tracking cards" associated with you. Just about everywhere has [local area code] 867-5309 registered, if you care.
I was watching this old British show called connections where they try to connect random things in the world together and they talk about your online persona and how the world will change because of the internet and World Wide Web. What I found interesting is that they present it all as if there will be an online version of you that you should treat, essentially, as a separate entity. It is not you, it is your representative to the digital space. That you should think of it as some agent that does things for you in that space even though in reality it’s simply a collection of data about you. But I liked that idea because it helps create a delineation between you the person and your online presence. I think what people don’t realize these days is that it is rather difficult to be anonymous online in the same way it is rather difficult to be anonymous in a room full of people you know. This is because your online profile is essentially known to any online actor who wants to know as you and the article point out. But tbh I think most people, including myself, spend too much time engaging in doing things connected to online. You don’t need slack and zoom to talk to colleagues it is possible to have in person interactions. You don’t need strava to go for a run. You don’t need your phone to go to the coffee shop and read a book.
I’m a big fan of the show. People who only use Facebook, I don’t expect them to dress their speech based on anonymity. People who actually fear a surveillance state, same deal. So how shall we depict the minority (on HN and IRC, etc) who expect anonymity as a feature?
For a couple of years now I've been using [my area code] - 555 - [a unique 4-digit pin] for dealing with otherwise "walk-in" business that look at you like you have three heads if you decline to say a phone number out loud. In the US at least, the 555 block is defacto "fictional" and typically isn't assigned out, so it lets me create a valid looking number that won't accidentally ring some random real person if they try to call it.
Minor quibble, 555 isn't fictional, it's typically reserved for teleco internal use, or at least that was the case 25 years ago, who knows what the deal is now. Used to be you could wardial 555-xxxx and end up with all kinds of weird AT&T field installations, back office numbers, switch remote command and control modem numbers, etc.
> And the good news is, it's fairly easy to opt out of quite a lot of that.
The problem is that we really need something like herd immunity. If you opt out, but the rest of the people in your life do not, then it's possible to discover most of your data most of the time. You might have location services off, but your friends and family don't, so much of the time there's a good guess where you are at. Or you might not share your phone #, but it can be collected by those that you text or call and shared that way. Creating "shadow accounts" is very advanced these days.
Not to mention, "opt out" has to be actually true and not just a facade.
Just don't bring your phone with you. With low power states and opaque software and hardware, you really can't risk it. You can never be sure it's truly off, unless it's in a Faraday bag. But is it worth it?
The magnetic field passes through a Faraday cage, so even then there are no guarantees if the phone uses unconventional modes of communication. Ultrasonic audio is another one.
The basic rule of thumb is, if a company knows something about you, then the government does too.
Which means they know everything you have posted, everywhere you've gone, everywhere you've worked, what you think politically, and almost certainly have AI profilers trying to "precog" you.
To say nothing of camera surveillance, gait analysis, facial recognition, license plate tracking, cell phone signal interceptors.
All it takes is for one authoritarian to walk in and turn the key and POOF we have perfect.
Are we in danger of that? Oh right, no politics on HN. Don't worry, be happy folks.
A one-off or series of authoritarians should be the least of your concern. They tend to be controversial and have great difficulty amassing the political will to get their things truly done and set in stone. A constantly popular government should be what keeps you awake at night. Because people who are otherwise capable of "hold a job, support myself" levels of intelligent thought will tie themselves into knots to support otherwise unjustified screwing at the hands of a government they support.
Or an authoritarian propped up by popular and powerful monopolistic corporations to which otherwise capable people depend on for their jobs.
Isn't that basically what every modern government is regardless of dictatorship vs democracy?
Priority #1 seems to be defending state moneymaking interests and state adjacent/intertwined BigCos
Priority #2 seems to be expanding their own power
Priority #3 seems to be micromanaging in social issues at the behest of various special interests to distract from #1 and #2
Keeping us all from keeling over from heavy metal poisoning or whatever is way, way, way down the list unless it bleeds up to #3 for whatever reason.
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Its like expecting farm animals to keep track of how the farm works, as the farm gets more and more sophisticated in animal domestication and exploitation. The individual action argument was weak 10 years ago and its worthless today.
The is a Systemic problem. Doesn't matter what the individuals do.
The trouble is people thinking it can be fixed with the system. I've been to a few dictatorships, none of them had the slightest clue what I was doing because the government was too poor and distracted with stuff like militias at their door to take much interest in what I was doing.
Safety comes from dysfunctional governance. Surveillance is a property of functional governance. Embrace disfunction.
Eh, that’s overly rosy.
Plenty of ineffective dictatorships will happily line you up against the wall with bogus surveillance. And shitty surveillance states will happily fake surveillance or data to look more effective.
The danger with these types of State organs is they are constantly trying to justify their existence and cover up their mistakes, and if you can be thrown in the gears, some places are happy to do that.
>Plenty of ineffective dictatorships will happily line you up against the wall with bogus surveillance. And shitty surveillance states will happily fake surveillance or data to look more effective.
Sure, but that's the exception. Governments have a pyramid of needs too. Governments don't throw a bunch of resources on things with poor returns, like shooting people who haven't done much wrong, when there's easier fruit to pick. Sure, you can go full jackboot on specific issues here and there but that's not sustainable on a "will I retire in peace of will I hang from the overpass" timeline. And even if you're the dictator's henchman and want to go down some rabbit hole of killing people you don't like the the fact that the dictator may have you shot for waste or as a sacrifice when that provokes unrest or dissatisfaction among the people generally keeps the government in line. And the government really doesn't want to be killing people because it needs people to do things and pay taxes.
Look at all the historically violent dictatorships that lasted a long time and for many leaders. They all provide for their people generally. They might not be competitive absolutely but they keep things generally moving in a positive direction decade over decade and keep the country doing at least as well as its peers. The ones that don't tend to fall apart after a couple bad leaders.
I really shouldn't need to be explaining this. This is how every European monarchy worked just with god and birthright as justification instead of backroom dealing and politics and false elections.
Im sure when I fought for the YPG Assad might have liked that, unfortunately all the bogus surveillance in the world is no use when your army cannot enforce their borders or sovereignty. In any case I saw guys with AKs posting to Facebook, no bogus stuff needed, they were already publicly providing all the evidence needed for the death penalty without any worry of being prosecuted.
I don’t think we’re disagreeing. My point is that while those folks shooting AKs in the air are doing their thing, some other random putz that never did anything like that is probably getting nailed to the wall by the same system.
And unlike an effective/accurate surveillance system, you can’t be safe by just not being the AK weilding guys. In fact, sometimes you’re safer because you’re more dangerous, and they’d rather find someone easier to pick on.
Third world places aren’t what they are because of a lack of rules or systems (usually), but rather because the rules and systems aren’t fit for purpose and produce the wrong outcomes.
Ah yes absolutely. Under no system is anyone safe if they're unable to bear arms to protect themselves/family, they will be systematically vulnerable or vulnerable to the next bandit. This just becomes more visible under disfunction.
My personal favorite is 281-330-8004.
Who?
It is impossible to avoid, and if you try to avoid it, you stick out. The correct maneuver is to appear normal, but selectively shutdown the system. Turn your phone on airplane and pay with cash with the moment is right. We live in a panopticon afterall.
In a country with the rule of law like the USA, the government can know you committed a crime, you know you committed a crime, society may suspect you of committing a crime, but criminal law requires a jury to convict beyond reasonable doubt. With a good lawyer this is a very tough bar, it's how organized crime gets away with so much (and despite the mafia being out of the news, they operate extremely well to this day).
So selectively you choose when to be anonymous. You pick your battles.
As a practical matter that may help the average HN normie, if you have a family you likely have life insurance. Never, ever, buy alcohol, marijuana, or cigarette / vapes / nicotine products with a credit card. Always pay cash. If you die the insurance company will go through everything to try and deny.
In the reverse case, the modern day can help you. If you drive, get a dashcam. You don't have to reveal video if you are at fault. But if not at fault, the video is gold. Put cameras around your house.
If you have rental property attached to your primary domicile, never have the internet under your own primary internet, lest you give reason for a wayward tenant to cause a search of your own home.
You aren't protecting yourself for the 99.99% time, you are prepared for the 0.01% case
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Have been using proto mail for a few years now and highly recommend it. You will ever have a cute @pm.me address!
Many people I know are switching away from them because of their alleged support of fascism.
I think they are mixing up who is supporting fascism…
Can you provide any additional context for this? I haven't heard it, and a cursory search doesn't turn up anything obvious regarding their ties to fascism.
Their CEO made some comments in support of Trump. https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-tru...
Ah yes. Everything I don't like is fascism.
Ironically, we told you all for years that if you abused terms like fascist, Nazi, racist, etc then they would lose their power and their impact and people would ignore them in future. You were warned what would happen if you cried wolf.
Sometimes there actually is a wolf, though.
MAGA is a right-wing political movement that:
-seeks to return the nation to a mythical superior past, by
-empowering an extraordinary leader who represents the will of the people, in order to
-expel inferior/unworthy ethnicities, and
-expunge left/“Marxist” influences from art and culture.
These are all characteristics of Fascism specifically, not the authoritarian actions that people casually call fascist.
> expel inferior/unworthy ethnicities
Is this happening? Or a stated goal?
I know they're deporting people who aren't here legally (that's a whole other debate), but I'm not aware of them actively targeting anyone based on race of ethnicity regardless of their legal status.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/native-americans-say-tribal...
There has also been posts from schools in Texas recommending kids on field trips keep legal documentation on them because ICE is stopping school buses for investigations.
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-school-district-bus-immigrati...
At what point do you pull your head out of the sand and stare into reality.
Yes, they are currently targeting Venezuelans and Haitians who have legal status
I don't know, is it? The US has had Trump as POTUS for four weeks and he's already doing a lot of what was "promised" in [Project 2025](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025)...
The boy who cried wolf is only a meaningful story because he is eventually eaten by a wolf.
However, your third point is a bit breathless. They aren't expelling anyone based on ethnicity. They want to deport illegal aliens. It isn't their fault so many of those aliens are from one country. The Nazis were expelling and killing Jews that had been in Europe for centuries lawfully. And, yknow, the whole killing them thing! The human experiments. The slave labour camps.
You are forgetting that fascist regimes go to war with their neighbours for territory, ignore the law, suspend democracy and have secret police to enforce political orthodoxy. Trump is an isolationist and he hasn't done any of the rest, yet at least.
Also don't forget that for all the stick Trump gets about immigration, all the Democratic presidents I can remember claim that they want to control the border too, and claim they can do so better. Hardly illustrative of fascism...
Yes, ask any Canadian how they feel about their sovereignty right now. Let me know how the Riviera in Gaza is going to work out and enjoy that vacation in the Gulf of America. Do you remember when Solemeni got assassinated. I also hope your not what he calls "vermin" and end up in Guantanamo Bay. Just because they're so dumb and incompetent and incapable of accomplishing their goals(at this moment) doesn't make a spade a spade. Honestly I am not even surprised by this anymore your post describes exactly why fascism takes root, just endless justification of authoritarianism.
There is no threat towards Canadian sovereignty obviously. The Riviera in Gaza would be a lot better than the current situation in which its biggest industry is exporting rockets into Israel. Also not territorial expansion as Gaza isn't a neighbour. Imperialism? Yes. But look at the world. It functioned much better in most places when imperial powers controlled more of it. That isn't an excuse for them to invade each other, which never ended well. Also he is just using it as a negotiating tactic with Jordan and Egypt obviously.
Changing the name of some water isn't territorial expansion or authoritarianism.
Solemeni was a terrorist. A dead terrorist is a good terrorist. If you attack a sovereign country then you should expect to be targeted. Fuck around? Find out.
Obama closed Gitmo. He promised to, remember, so he must have. And he withdrew from Afghanistan, remember? He said so in between claiming that marriage was only between a man and a woman. What a hero of the left.
Feel free to tell me I am wrong when I actually am instead of just when your imagination runs wild and you see "authoritarianism" in your cereal. Killing terrorists is authoritarianism lol. And drone striking children isn't?
> There is no threat towards Canadian sovereignty obviously. The Riviera in Gaza would be a lot better than the current situation in which its biggest industry is exporting rockets into Israel.
Like there is no threat to Medicaid? Here’s the authoritarianism: Trump is clearly setting us up for a major constitutional crisis by way of his lying bullshit. Go see the way he talked to the governor of maine and tell me you dont hear the threats? You might not be a Nazi, but you’re sure damn close.
What about threatening to annex Canada and Greenland, eliminating birthright citizenship or expanding the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp?
Actually I think the message that people should get is that folks LIKE fascism.
Germans loved Hitler until Stalingrad.
What I’ve heard is that hosting in Switzerland concerns right-leaning people.
I would love a privacy-friendly (e.g. Proton or similar-supplied) log in option on lots of websites. Log in with Google is what keeps me using Gmail.
Proton has Proton Pass, even supports passkeys if you're into that.
Yeah, that looks quite good! Not quite a log in with Google, but an interesting alternative.
Wait until that author learns about Edward Snowden or advertisement agencies.
I used to play with Twitters firehose back in the day and there's quite a lot of personal data you derive from private accounts. We could tell the city someone likely lived if they followed a certain amount of people from a specific city, etc. Could also guess their gender with 95% accuracy with just using n-grams from their tweets. We'd test our algorithms with public accounts.
I think there's too much power and money in personal information for it to stop.
He wrote about Snowden as late as last year: https://proton.me/blog/us-warrantless-surveillance and corporate role in surveillance state before that https://proton.me/blog/privacy-user-data-requests
What these analyses always miss is that providers on foreign soil have even less protection against the US IC: breaking into foreign providers is literally NSA's chartered mission. That's not to say you should deliberately use US providers! Unless, that is, abuse of legal process in the US motivates your decisionmaking, in which case: an abused legal process beats no process requirements at all.
It’s not even that they have to “break in.” The government allows big tech companies to basically do whatever they want as long as big tech provides the government with an easy way to move forward with the parallel construction needed to bring case against literally anyone should officials be motivated to see that person imprisoned. Everything you’ve ever done can and will be used against you to maximum effect.
Whatever legal requirements might be at play, the fundamental difference is that a US company will comply, whereas a non-cooperative external party would still need to be broken, which is very much non-trivial in the age of strong cryptography, even if you're NSA.
It's the NSA's job to do that domestically, it's just supposed to be firewalled by some hidden kangaroo court that absolutely doesn't do its job: FBI agents have been busted stalking women/exs several times.
Has been since 9/11. Remember, there's the omnipresent neverending war on terror.
I mean, sure, stipulate that. But there isn't even a kangaroo court for a service hosted in Europe.
Europe has plenty of “Kangaroo courts” of their own and partnerships like five eyes encourages authorities to share information. The UK’s NSA equivalent doesn’t need to worry about infringing on an American’s 4th amendment right and technically (if you don’t think about it) the NSA has plausible deniability if the UK shares this information. And vise versa with UK citizens or any western government.
I think OP meant the EU. The UK is known to be a totalitarian surveillance state and has been less free than the US in that respect for a long time.
When a famous media personality was assassinated the police managed to catch the killers within hours. Turns out they really DO track every car on the highway- it wasn't just bragging.
Every rich country is a surveillance state.
“Surveillance state” is debatable. I would disagree, but I’ve had that debate too many times on HN recently, and don’t propose to start it again here.
However, to call the UK “totalitarian” is just an abuse of language. The country is not run by a single all-powerful party or dictator. It’s especially odd to use this word and then make a comparison to the US, which (though it is not totalitarian either by any stretch of the imagination) is currently in the midst of an executive power grab, with demands for a level of partisan loyalty from civil servants that remains unthinkable in the UK.
I don’t know what your goal is here, but if you want to persuade the average person in the UK to change their minds about the extent to which the government should be able to access surveillance data, it helps not to bundle your arguments together with wild misstatements.
You're right I shouldn't have used the adjective "totalitarian." It was the kind of mindless parroting of phrases that I dread myself, so thank you for pointing that out! The UK has extremely strict surveillance laws, which are incompatible with EU legislation by now, so it's not a typical example of European countries in that respect. That's all I meant to say.
Are you referring to this? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/gchq-data-co...
If so, that was a judgment about legislation that is no longer current (and wasn’t when the judgment was issued). It may be that current legislation is also incompatible with EU law (IANAL, I’m not arguing that point), but AFAIK there is no court judgment to that effect.
No, I didn't talk about court judgments. Yes, I had various aspects of the Regulation of the Investigatory Powers Act and recent additions to the Investigatory Powers Act in mind.
> It may be that current legislation is also incompatible with EU law (IANAL, I’m not arguing that point), but AFAIK there is no court judgment to that effect.
Quite possibly but that wasn't my point. The point is that the UK is by far more of a surveillance state than any EU country, at least to my knowledge. UK legislation is not typical for a European country in that respect. People can go to prison in the UK for not handing over an encryption password and the UK has just effectively banned end-to-end encryption (if you put a backdoor in it, it's no longer end-to-end encryption).
I’m just responding to the specific claim regarding the incompatibility of current UK legislation with EU law. AFAIK this is not an established fact. It’s an increasingly hypothetical question, though not entirely so.
There are EU countries with key disclosure laws. See e.g. France and Ireland on this list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law
Where was that nightmare GDPR letter template again?
>giants like Meta, Google, and Apple must collect as much of your personal data as possible
Stopped reading there. If someone tries to sell a lie like that in their first five sentences, I can't trust anything they say.
Just fuck off if you are not going to add anything
Is it a lie?
Meta and Google must collect your data.
Apple does collect some of your data, but their business doesn't depend on it, and I have some degree of control over how much I participate.
I think it's a category error to include all three in the same sentence, but I don't think the author is lying. I do agree somewhat with the sentiment that such a lack of distinction calls the content into question, or at least the author's framing of it.
Disagree. All three companies exist in the set of massively international megacorps who as a matter of routine daily business collect and distribute personal information of the individuals who use their service. Being precious about what percentage of their yearly revenue is generated by this activity seems weird.
> Being precious about what percentage of their yearly revenue is generated by this activity seems weird
No one is being precious about it. They're debating whether or not the article is written in good faith. Jumping to a bad faith-based defence isn't going to change the mind of people who are concerned about things being done in bad faith.
To clarify, you're concerned that one or more arguments advanced in the article don't meet your personal definition of bad faith, bad faith is important to you, and as such the entire article is suspect? Entirely ignoring the central claims of bad faith handling of users sensitive information, we're skipping past that entirely to deconstruct a single sentence as a "gotcha"? One of us does not understand the other, clearly.
Good/bad faith isn't just about one's preference about a form of argument, but can also completely change the validity of the underlying argument.
The point here is that bad faith is doing exactly that: making the legitimacy of the argument presented by the author fundamentally questionable. Comparing the core business model of a company that has invested in capabilities like Advanced Data Protection with Meta in an article highlighting the ways authorities can get your data...seems disingenuous at best, and just plain wrong/misleading.
> we're skipping past that entirely to deconstruct a single sentence as a "gotcha"
When someone sets up a false premise, then yes, everything that comes after it is suspect.
Google have stopped recording location history (opt-in) server side at all.
but it's the truth. where is the lie?
Must they really collect as much data as possible?
Hmmm... Perhaps an Apple fan, upset that the company's Not Quite As Bad policies aren't being celebrated?
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The government colluded with Facebook and Twitter during the Biden administration to censor and control Americans.
When liberals are in charge and it's hidden from the public, we don't see any of these articles and nobody seemed to even care.
I do care about privacy but only one party wants me dead for being transgender
Scott Pressler, a gay man, was almost single handedly responsible for swinging Pennsylvania, and therefore the 2024 election. He motivated 200,000 Amish to get out and vote after the FDA overeach tried to shut them down. MAGA loves their LGBT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Presler
You are replying to someone who says they are transgender.
MAGA does not love trans people. Anti-trans rhetoric was thick during the campaign. Trans members of the military are being forced out. If you attempt to enter the US with a passport that indicates a different gender than you were assigned at birth, you might be banned from ever entering the US again. Significant effort has been taken to erase the concept of trans people from government websites and media.
A couple tokens does not change this. The actions speak for themselves.
That number can’t be true. His speciality is “legal ballot harvesting” so I suspect this story is parallel construction for where he really got 200,000 ballots.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/oct/29/tweets/cla...
They may be OK the first three initials, but they treat the fourth as a kind of insanity.
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That propaganda line is so old and stale. Specially from people who literally wanted anyone who dissented with their anti constitutional policies during COVID dead/in camps/removed from society.
But hey, you keep pushing that lie, I'm sure it will work next time you tell people to "ignore the genocide being commited because it will be worse if the the other team is the one doing it".
Sorry you were asked to care about your fellow human beings for a few months by wearing a mask and not going out much.
I love how a bunch of folks turned into Thurgood Marshall the second someone noticed that a bunch of folks were getting sick, hospitals were collapsing under workload, and maybe we should take some basic steps to pump the brakes on that.
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Did the government kill those?
Nah, I'm pretty sure that Musk in particular genuinely hates trans folk at this point, and he's certainly a major part of "THEY" with actual power.
Not quite, I still cared and I’ve personally written to congress about it. Surprisingly, I got a response. Unsurprisingly, the response I got was basically a diplomatic “We know better than you do, we don’t care what you think, we’re going to do it anyway”
Many (but not all, it's worth noting) people who work for the government live in an apartheid society inside their own heads, where they and everyone else who works for government is the superior tier of their imaginary hierarchy, and everyone else is thought of as "lesser than", with fewer rights, a different (more strict) set of rules, on the inferior tier of their imaginary hierarchy.
Next time you're observing this, try to imagine the outrage if the government official were a white South African government official talking to a black South African citizen. There's the same level of condescending animosity and supremacist ideology at play, just along a completely different axis - employer rather than skin color.
I'm pretty sure this is just inside YOUR own head.
Yeah I do imagine that on a regular basis yet, something about my comment appears to be unpopular since I’m being downvoted. I usually don’t mind but this one bothers me a little bit since writing to congress is just about the only thing an average American can do to influence the legislation. Actively participating in democracy is not cool these days.
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I didn’t want to believe that at first but that became crystal clear after the responses I got.
That's because the left doesn't use the same rhetoric as the right does in America.
Although they believe that capitalism is misguided and harmful, they don't treat it as fundamentally unAmerican in the way that the right does with socialism. E.g. You don't hear the left trying to start moral panics around "they are teaching kids CAPITALISM in school!!!"
The left hasn't performed ideological purges of government in the way that the right currently is. Again, much of the issue is that the right treats left wing belief not as something that they disagree with but as something to be purged from society.
The left hasn't written executive orders declaring that people they don't like don't exist the way that the right has with trans people. Again, there's the urge to attempt to eliminate the ability for groups they dislike to exist in society.
>The left hasn't written executive orders declaring that people they don't like don't exist the way that the right has with trans people.
This is a malicious lie. Nobody has said that those people do not exist. What is said is that what they claim about themselves is not true. It is a dispute about what labels are validly applied to people. It is not a debate about the existence of anyone.
Repeating this lie just makes you look like a breathless idiot to anyone that understands what words mean in their obvious context.
No there is not "urge to attempt the eliminate the ability for groups they dislike to exist in society".
Someone that says "billionaires should not exist" is not saying that for each person P, if P is a billionaire then P should not exist, but that people should not be allowed to become billionaires (through tax or communism or something). Obviously.
Why am I even engaging with your bad faith comment actually? You obviously don't believe what you said.
4.5 has our back:
The hypocrisy in the comment lies in the author’s claim that others are acting in “bad faith,” while simultaneously misrepresenting the opposing argument. Specifically, the commenter criticizes the original poster for allegedly exaggerating (“malicious lie,” “breathless idiot”) when interpreting certain conservative actions as denying the existence of trans people. Yet, in doing so, the commenter engages in their own distortion—downplaying the genuine impact of policies that functionally erase or severely limit the recognition and legitimacy of transgender identities.
Moreover, the commenter clearly distinguishes between literal existence and societal allowance for billionaires, yet refuses to apply the same nuance to the original comment regarding transgender identities. This selective application of interpretative generosity constitutes the core hypocrisy.
We have to agree that Elon Musk is the ideological leader of the party now. He has arranged explanations for his own extreme and unambiguous statements. It’s noble to hold strangers on the Internet to a higher bar. But no idea in the party isn’t touched by Elon Musk.
So when he says “dead — killed by the woke mind virus” he might be trying to garner figurative sympathy as if he lost a child. It certainly coincides with a call to criminalize any facet of trans health care for trans youth.
And when he says “America will go bankrupt” without him, he might be issuing a threat or maybe just a warning. Donald Trump is no stranger to bankruptcy and certainly must see that politicians only mention debt rhetorically. His administration added more than $8T, or $5900 per capita per year.
So if we must accept only extreme solutions to things that were never problems, maybe their intention really was those urges?
HN has been full of privacy and critical-of-government-surveillance articles regardless of the presidency for over a decade.
Most obviously, who was President when Snowden leaked things?
Methinks you are overly sensitive on behalf of your chosen boss.
OR you are trying to deflect from the surveillance by making it a partisan thing.
The government colluded with Facebook and Twitter during the Biden administration
There's people that think this only happened during the Biden Administration?
Not Obama? Not Trump? Not Bush? Just Biden?
The gullibility of Americans in aggregate is stunning at times. If you're one of those still out preaching the quasi-religions of "left" or "right", you're honestly a large part of the problem at this point. And you're probably too submerged in the holy waters of your quasi-religion's divine scriptures to even begin to understand why.
While the OP may think that, you are assuming a lot about their thinking from those two sentences. Then somehow manage to generalize it to Americans and include religion.
Maybe go outside and take a breath of fresh air?
I'd hazard a guess that the person you're responding to is not so naïve that they believe this was unique to the Biden administration, but rather, is frustrated at what they feel is this kind of government tyranny often only being discussed through a partisan, one-sided lens that they might characterize as emphasizing this kind of stuff when conservative administrations do it but downplaying when progressive administrations do it.
I'm not necessarily supporting or defending that position, but we should at least strive to argue against the steelman version of our opponent's position, rather than the strawman position, no?
Steelman is "they meant what they said."
ie - no reinterpretation at all.
But even taking your reinterpretation at face value, it still couches the issue in terms of the "left" and "right" quasi-religions, no?
We must have different definitions of steelman. I have always understood steelman to be the opposite of strawman. To argue with the strawman of their argument is arguing a weaker version of the argument than the one they're really making - i.e. "I assume because they didn't mention any other administrations, they must be some dumb idiot who only thinks this happened during the last administration", while arguing the steelman is arguing against the strongest version of the argument they're trying to make - i.e. "sure, that poster didn't mention other administrations, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt - if we asked them whether they'd support similar surveillance done by the Obama admin or Bush admin, I'd be willing to guess they'd say no, I bet they're just expressing frustration about the left's unwillingness to acknowledge the Biden admin's big tech collusion, even if their real qualm is with the surveillance itself, not the partisan coverage of it".
I personally detest covert surveillance and social influence operations being waged by taxpayer-funded organizations (regardless of whether public or private in nature) against their own citizenry, and I oppose this across the political aisle. I think it reeks of institutions that distrust and fear us more than they represent our collective interests, and that's an ugly mindset unbecoming of a government or enterprise that publicly paints itself as a champion of free and open democracy on the world stage, regardless of whether it's an intelligence agency or an international social media platform. But I also recognize that it's bipartisan, and that most people seem to care more about deploying force against the other side than they do about reducing the amount of force that is deployed against all of us.
Where does your definition of steelman come from?
Model UN
ie - Strawman is to argue an easy to refute point they're not making. Whether that point is stronger or weaker is irrelevant. The key is you came prepared to refute the point. Steelman is to argue the point they're making.
But we're getting into irrelevant semantics at this point. Neither the poster's point, nor mine centered on the definitions we have of steelman or strawman.
My material point was on the tendency of people to embed what amount to using quasi-religious scripture quotations in discussions of completely non-religious problem areas. To the point of making it difficult for any, uh, "non-believers", out there to make any progress towards improvements.
Or, put another way, being the problem.
> one-sided lens that they might characterize as emphasizing this kind of stuff when conservative administrations do it but downplaying when progressive administrations do it.
Conservative administrations are worst tho. That is the objective reality. And as of now, there is not left wing analogy to what conservatives are doing. Democrats are not perfect, but common, the aggression and fanatization of the actual party is not even close. It is moderate center on the "left side" vs the thing we see on the right.
One sided lens are the ones that achieve "equality" by euphemism away conservative goals and behaviors while trying to paint their opposition in worst possible light. Obama wore tan suit which totally breaks respectability of the presidency and therefore, he is equal to Trump who talks about "grabbing women by the <body part>" kind of false equality.
Leave please, rational statements on politics are not allowed here. You are only allowed to base your opinions on the contradictory, irrational rhetoric of the two dominant right-wing neoliberal political parties. You are not allowed to point out that both political parties encroach on American liberties and fundamentally work together to get it done. Your understanding of history, economics, and society must be based entirely off of vibes. "Left" and "Right" as terms must be completely devoid of real substance and refer primarily to a color and which insufferable attitude you hold.
"Both sides are the same" has no relevance anymore. Every day since Jan 20th 2025 one side has been proving they will do anything and everything they can to destroy democracy and America. The other side doesn't have any power to stop them, mainly because people didn't show up to vote.
Voting within the plurality system gave voters access only to the inputs of the Nash Equilibrium decision matrix, not the outputs. All it took was everyone being focused on winning by making the other side lose, and suddenly "we" all lose.
If instead we voted with permutations of {+1, +0.5, -0.5} assigned to a single combination of up to 3 candidates without duplication of score or candidate, we would be voting for the outcome of the decision matrix and avoiding the tragedy of the commons.
But we didn't, and won't, so we brave the new world of tragically aligned AGI known as government. If the pattern isn't recognized, real AGI (rather than the metaphor of government) would definitely learn from it and wipe out humanity at this rate.
Twitter published a big of gov interference. I distinctly remember most reactions were just nothing-burger. Just partisan politics.
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