[liberationtech] On Privacy, Trending Today

[Marc Sunet]

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I still prefer a public and forever-archived
mailing list even after having considered everything else. It's just
that some people these days seem to forget that human language is
contextual, particularly those that dwell in the sharp-edged plains of
social media.

Signal has group chats and they work well. I just don't think they are a
good mailing list replacement, particularly because they are
invite-only; you can't "subscribe" to a group (you don't even get to
list or see groups).

On 10/3/20 9:07 AM, Yosem Companys wrote:
> These are all excellent points.
>
> BTW, you might remember there was much debate over whether the list
> should be private or public, but the decision was made to make it
> public because otherwise it would have granted an illusion of privacy
> that would not have protected vulnerable populations from adversaries
> seeking to hack the list.
>
> Things have changed since then, and there are now apps available like
> Signal that could be used for this purpose. Are any of these set up to
> function as large "mailing" lists?
>
> On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 4:34 PM Marc Sunet <msunet at shellblade.net
> <mailto:msunet at shellblade.net>> wrote:
>
>     It's a good one, here is a related one that talks about the social
>     effects:
>
>     https://www.socialcooling.com/
>
>     To me, part of the problem is that online communications are
>     constantly creating a permanent record, like Snowden puts it. This
>     list, for example, should really be regarded as private, a
>     conversation with the liberation folks. But it's actually public
>     by virtue of having an eternal record of everything said here made
>     available on a discoverable part the Web. Any joke, criticism or
>     statement can then be taken out of context and copy-pasted
>     somewhere else; in the worst case, this results in a public
>     lynching of the author. The lack of privacy then leads to a
>     chilling effect, to self-censorship; every word must be carefully
>     measured, even the email address you send this from and other
>     metadata must be considered.
>
>     On the other hand, if the mailing list record just self-destructed
>     after a while (Signal does this with messages), then the problem
>     would not be as bad. Copy-pasting something out of context and
>     lynching the author would now have to be a targeted attack as
>     opposed to something you can do retroactively any day and any
>     time. Most people would not bother unless you were a high-profile
>     target. The same arguments Snowden makes about the NSA collecting
>     a permanent record to then retroactively find crime as opposed to
>     looking for evidence for an existing investigation apply to online
>     social communication just as well.
>
>     There is of course value in making the list publicly available to
>     build community, provide a learning resource and so on, so
>     automated self-destruction seems like a good balance and default
>     to me. Things become semi-private, or semi-public; words are
>     written on sand instead of stone.
>
>     On 10/2/20 8:57 AM, Yosem Companys wrote:
>>     https://inre.me/why-privacy-is-the-most-important-concept-of-our-time/
>>
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