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Covid-19’s impact on Tor

blog.torproject.org

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Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#141

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

zipwitch wrote: post #137
tchaffee wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies Who would decide what is fake news? The federal government? Perhaps a free speech Czar appointed by the president of the US? The current president of the US certainly does talk about fake news a lot. But no thanks.

The facile answer is, "have an educated public who can make those decisions themselves". But it seems clear to me that the "educated public" approach has failed . The spread of memetic hazards has risen to the level where a significant segment of the public have been robbed of their ability to think critically, and the post-Enlightenment consensus that objective reality exists is under attack. Beyond fighting a Fabia…

> "And that means talking (and doing something) about the 'propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies'"

The problem with your viewpoint is that, unless you plan to remove the ability of large swaths of the population who have been "robbed of their ability to think critically" to vote, ending democracy as we know it, whichever authority you construct to define what is "true" may not remain under the control of you and people who think as you do and then it will become Orwell's Ministry of Truth in all but name. Game over; civilization loses.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" as they say. Forgive us old-school liberals if we choose not to follow you down that road.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#142

Post by tchaffee »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #138
tchaffee wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies Who would decide what is fake news? The federal government? Perhaps a free speech Czar appointed by the president of the US? The current president of the US certainly does talk about fake news a lot. But no thanks.

We have a system to filter "real" information from "fake" information where distributing fake information is a lucrative business. It is called peer review, and it can be applied to news as well as science, and doesn't require some nefarious government czar.

Peer review of news by citizens is already done in an informal way based on what they click on and share. Even when you point someone to Snopes showing a news article is false, people will respond saying Snopes is run by lefties and cannot be trusted. All you are suggesting is mob rule - the majority decides what is fake news.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#143

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

zipwitch wrote: post #137
tchaffee wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies Who would decide what is fake news? The federal government? Perhaps a free speech Czar appointed by the president of the US? The current president of the US certainly does talk about fake news a lot. But no thanks.

The facile answer is, "have an educated public who can make those decisions themselves". But it seems clear to me that the "educated public" approach has failed . The spread of memetic hazards has risen to the level where a significant segment of the public have been robbed of their ability to think critically, and the post-Enlightenment consensus that objective reality exists is under attack. Beyond fighting a Fabia…

I disagree to an extent, but it is a compelling argument. Can you elaborate on Fabian struggle? I never heard the expression used.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#144

Post by tchaffee »

zipwitch wrote: post #137
tchaffee wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies Who would decide what is fake news? The federal government? Perhaps a free speech Czar appointed by the president of the US? The current president of the US certainly does talk about fake news a lot. But no thanks.

The facile answer is, "have an educated public who can make those decisions themselves". But it seems clear to me that the "educated public" approach has failed . The spread of memetic hazards has risen to the level where a significant segment of the public have been robbed of their ability to think critically, and the post-Enlightenment consensus that objective reality exists is under attack. Beyond fighting a Fabia…

I am not confident the danger is an existential threat. I think it's an interesting problem that markets are doing a poor job of solving. But since I don't want any government in charge of deciding what is fake news and you haven't sugeested a concrete solution so we can compare the cure to the illness, then what we have now will have to be sufficient.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#145

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

projektfu wrote: post #21
mc32 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you’re right and it’s a shame that in this time when a few governments are taking advantage of the situation they don’t have their ears perked and tuned to ensure governments (local, state, fed) aren’t going overboard, impinging rights, or looking to erode them. I mean this affects the whole US constituency.

I think the protestors are being stupid, but if they get arrested I would like to see the ACLU help defend them. Even though I think established law would put them in the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" camp, unless the courts are willing to reverse that precedent.

I am personally sympathetic. My beef with my local variant is that they protested by driving around my neighborhood honking in morning and afternoon. It gets attention, but does not exactly garner support. It those terms it reminds me of BLM blocking a highway. Whatever happened to protesting where actual decision makers are?

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#146

Post by mr_woozy »

Quanttek wrote: post #110
Renaud wrote: post #19

They are too dependent on government sponsorship. 80% of their funding comes from the US government in some shape. I would imagine that a project of that importance deserves to be able to be self-sufficient. A US$2M budget/year is not that much, (m|b)illionaires making their money from the Internet could easily sponsor the project. Better yet, having grass-root sponsorship is even more important. Maybe they need mark…

> (m|b)illionaires making their money from the Internet could easily sponsor the project. The thing is: When you're the kind of person that is able to amass m-/billions, you're unlikely to be very altruistic. Most of these people had to, excuse my language, fuck over people (workers, customers, investors, the larger public) along the way in various ways. You simply can't be a billionaire without some kind of severe e…

fuck off with your generalizations.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#147

Post by mr_woozy »

fapjacks wrote: post #134
andrepd wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with the concept of "tin-pot shithole". >have, can, and will always find some new "threat" with which to justify taking away civil liberties. So slippery slope, is what you're arguing? "First they make a completely reasonable and temporary restriction of right of physical assembly, next we'll be off to the gulags." Isn't really an interesting argument, is it?

Nice use of quotation marks there, considering that is not what I said.

which part didn't you say exactly?

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#148

Post by zipwitch »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #141
zipwitch wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The facile answer is, "have an educated public who can make those decisions themselves". But it seems clear to me that the "educated public" approach has failed . The spread of memetic hazards has risen to the level where a significant segment of the public have been robbed of their ability to think critically, and the post-Enlightenment consensus that objective reality exists is under attack. Beyond fighting a Fabia…

> " And that means talking (and doing something) about the 'propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies' " The problem with your viewpoint is that, unless you plan to remove the ability of large swaths of the population who have been "robbed of their ability to think critically" to vote, ending democracy as we know it, whichever authority you construct to define what is "true" may not remain under the control of yo…

I reject the presumptions that the only possible response is a unitary authority and that we shouldn't do anything in response because any such response is automatically going to be bad. Come, on, this is Hacker News!

Why do we have to have a single central authority? We ought to at least be willing to speculate about AI-mediated Blockchains of Truth that reward factually accurate reporting. Or about ways to smoothly tell users how accurate the source they're reading has been in the past, or how to implement smart filtering of information streams to protect our own minds so that we can avoid wasting time on cognitive hazards.

The point is that we have options beyond just sitting back and giving up. The problem is real, as are the risks to responding poorly. But that doesn't justify not responding at all.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#149

Post by 13415 »

93po wrote: post #63
mikeg8 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist isn’t a tech company. It’s a website. Not trying to disrespect them as I’m sure they do some impressive stuff behind the scenes to handle scale, I just don't feel they’re innovating in a way to be called “tech”.

Craiglist was innovative when it started.

It seems to me that Craigslist must have made some monumental misjudgment when they didn't expand internationally. I for one, for example, only know of them from hearsay as some kind of obscure US-only classified ads site.

Re: Covid-19’s impact on Tor

#150

Post by chance_state »

andrepd wrote: post #98
goodrubyist wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, took me some time to digest this -- "contextualize liberties" must be the most Orwellian phrase in existence, only thing that might come close is another phrase you used, "civil rights absolutism."

It really is not. Right to physical assembly is something that should be restricted in the middle of a global pandemic , since that right cannot trump the right of life of hundreds of thousands of people. Same for the right to travel. Rights such as free speech or right to private property may be broken in more extreme cases such as war. Pretending that nuanced reality doesn't exist is the definition of "rights absol…

Could not disagree more.

The entire point of enumerating rights in the constitution and it's amendments is so that they are _not_ subject to changing circumstances.

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