As someone who’s not super technical myself, but knows enough to get in trouble and also not on the staff, it honestly looks like in the examples mentioned with @dngray you were the antagonist. He was trying to adopt a wait and see approach while reaching out to the company in question and you, (a marked member of a direct competitor to the discussed company) seemed to be going berserk trying to force your point across. Honestly dngray had more patience than i would have had in that situation.
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Thanks, may be you have a point, but I highly doubt the conclusions you reach are apt given you’re not technical, by your own admission, to understand the discussion.
You’d notice that folks here, by default, rally around the moderators. Being an “antagonist” if you intend to question anything, is the default. Hopefully, you kind folks don’t lynch us “antagonists” for merely existing in spaces of our expertise.
Interesting choice of words. No, we aren’t a “competitor” (for reasons mentioned in the thread you claim you read).
So, it is “wait and see” for a “European” project, but “liar” & “dishonest” & “authoritative” for non-European ones? (see also the first message in this thread).
In my view, they violated at least one community guideline (despite being asked to tone it down):
- Trolling, insulting and/or derogatory comments, including personal or political attacks.
Daniel also did not reply to my DM, either.
Berserk? Force? Again, interesting choice of words. I’d like to see what made you think that. I am really curious. You can DM me. This topic isn’t for that.
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Now now, no need for the hostile tone. 
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Thank you both for your replies. I have a follow-up question. I understand that services like Privacy.com can protect you against fraud, and though they are not anonymous, they do protect your privacy to some degree, because you can hide your real name and address.
That said, in Europe, and other countries, many banks now provide virtual credit cards (eg: N26). I don’t know what the situation is in the US, but I would not be surprised if some American banks started doing the same thing to compete with my Privacy.com.
My question is this:
If your bank who already knows your name and address started offering virtual credit cards at no extra cost, why would you trust Privacy.com instead?
To me, it doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen people argue that banks use the information they know about you to sell you stuff, or shares that info with their partners. That’s true. But can we be sure that Privacy.com or any other similar tech company doesn’t do the same?
Also, if you ever have any issues with your bank, at least there is a physical building you can go to, to complain in person. You can’t do that with Privacy.com. I am also personally very uncomfortable giving copies of my ID to a faceless company. Every time I have given my ID to a bank, it was in person.
Lastly, there are companies similar to Privacy.com that are not as invasive when it comes to KYC requirements. For eg, Iron Vest (fka Abine Blur), which is also exclusively available in the US, has no KYC requirements. And hey have been around much longer than Privacy.com, at least a decade.
it still is the company has always been registered in US but their office is in Bengaluru.
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Yeah, the amount of times I saw people trying to get something removed from the site or canceled just because some people involved in that project were Russian is just sickening.
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Its one of the reasons why the team always gets the final say and why privacy guides is not a democracy.
People can quite heated and emotional in a debate. Most folks would have demanded we remove anything even remotely russian after russia invaded Ukraine, but we didn’t.
Moderation will always be a complex topic with a lot of gut feeling involved. While some seems to think its as simple as following a piece of paper such as the COC, folks tend to forget that there are actual volunteer humans behind these pseudonyms, who spend their free time doing their best. And with their already limited time, it sometimes gets hard to discern well meant comments from concern trolls.
We always try our best here, but mods are people, and people can make mistakes.
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The forum seems fine, as a point of view from a Southeast Asian living in my country.
I wish there are more global resource that we can use as an alternative for privacy.com but the truth is the rest of the team cant possibly check every country’s alternative for a more private online banking. That should be on the rest of the community members in their own respective countries - but then again when we look locally, one can only get disappointed because lets face it, the actually good privacy laws - with teeth that can actually punish offenders - are usually from western ones.
I’ve tripped the automoderation bot once with my introduction in the introduce yourself thread and it was resolved (but then again it was early days). I find that the moderation is actually ok enough for my use case and I have no objections really in its current state.
I havent really have the free time as much as I want to hang around as much as before. But overall, I like the community here.
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Instead of DMing me and asking for what biases I and 2 other projects felt, you’re here attacking me for being hostile, while Jonah and Daniel “liked” a post that also insinuated the same (with words like “antagonist”, “going berserk”, “I would lose my patience” etc).
Don’t you get it?
Then why come back at us when we try to hold you to “your best” standard.
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Is it “Orwellian” to uhhh checks notes call out someone being passive aggressive as being antagonistic and hostile? I guess the official position of the RethinkDNS company must be yes, yes it is.
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I don’t see what point you’re trying to make to correct you, but…
Rethink is a FOSS project that I put my sweat and blood and money into. Not a company making any profits. Have a good day.
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Im pointing out your way of typing, thats all, im sorry if my comment pointing it out seemed like an attack to you, that wa snot my intention :). Neither did i know you desired that i dmed you.
Do you still want me to DM you? It can be either on the forums, or if you desire something with encryption, we can use matrix
Just so you know, regulars can flag post and have them become hidden, that doesn’t have to be a mods decision. Its a system where longer existing community members can act as a semi moderator to help out, build into discourse itself.
See here for more info: Understanding Discourse Trust Levels
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This interaction sums up the issue I have with people complaining about moderation. There is a constant stream of misinformation and lack of research by users that forces moderators to act.
People here make statements like they are experts in the field and typically, it is found, they don’t know what they are talking about. I find that part of the forum the most aggravating because its hard for me to use this forum as a resource, unless the post is from one of the 5 or 6 members that have proven they can be reliable.
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not related to the discussion, but why can’t the government force companies to implement back doors for them?
A post was split to a new topic: Do not bump post on edits
A lot of the discussion here is aggravated by the simple fact that is an Internet forum. We can feel quite more often not heard or insulted when communicating online. There is a guideline in the forum that talks about always focusing in the arguments not in the person, something along those lines. I think is a great reminder to drive discussions. Try to not take things personal, your learning can be someone’s else future learning. I’m uncountable times incorrect and I’m grateful for having a community like this that can challenge me all the time to make myself a more educated human in all the aspects. In other forums or communities, in similar situations to this where someone raises a problem a moderator would shutdown the conversation or some fanboys would jump to defend the group. In my perspective people had quite a lot of space here to raise their point of views which for me indicates a very open space. I could be wrong but I’m giving a vow of credit in the outcome here. Again, this comment is not to reduce anyone’s pain point with the forum administration, I just feel that if this was a conversation in a bar with some beers we would all be laughing about this.
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Going to follow up with what Cyber-Typhoon said. I think this thread has a few different topics I’ll provide my unsolicited input on 
On rules, or just being nice
I’m a bit of a hot-head on forums myself, and I suddenly catch myself being combative. Regardless who started what, I think its super important that most users are here in good faith. We all have privacy as a joint interest, wildly different knowledge bases, and are in this together to figure out what works best. Let’s not assume malice in one another.
I think its super important for us to step back and shake hands when we realize things are heated. I will always try to apologize when I realize I am being unnecessarily aggressive, By being the “bigger person” (even if I started it lol) I also find others also spend this time to reflect on their actions, and it’s always a positive.
Moderators should definitely always try to have a cool head, but that isn’t always possible either. Believe it or not, I used to be a mod on other forums, and also ran into this issue with all of the staff. We are humans behind screens with feelings, and its easy to forget that, so human mistakes will be made. Definitely point out to staff when they are being rude, and report it to another mod who is not heated.
For those with very strong technical background, keep in mind not everyone may be at the same level as you. Even if there are close backgrounds, I think we should come at differing opinions as finding the truth, not winning the argument at all costs. The conversation between ignoramous and dngray has a lot of amazing knowledge transfer from different points of view, and I thought discussion was inching towards a greater undertanding.
However, for lack of a better term, the shit throwing made it uncomfortable, and now the shit throwing has made its way here, and no one wants to say “hey, I may have been emotional, let’s get discussion back to a good track.”. If I see a “well I won’t apologize until the other does” then I’ll let that represent their attitude on discourse (pun intended).
For general cases, if its a clear attack on you, report it and try not to emotionally engage; shit throwing is a common outcome. If you aren’t sure, clarify what the user meant, and more often than not its just poor wording or phrasing. If someone criticises your arguments or calls you out for fallacies, that is not an attack on you. Clarify what the fallacy was, or step away if it makes you emotional. Sarcasm can also come off as spicy, so don’t serve it as the main dish if its already a heated debate.
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Apologies for disturbing the hive and not responding back 
, had a long day or two. Interesting to see that others do feel the same.
Multiple instances, but I don’t want to point out specific individuals. I disagree with the moderation, not the individuals. Others have cited some examples below. The post that triggered me was this one: Link. Posting the Code of Conduct just below a flagrant violation would be comic if it was not tragic.
100% the problematic logic for me. Incredible claims require incredible proof, so I understand not taking every tinfoil take on established players. But most of the claims on the website themselves do not give incredible proofs for their claims. For example, the claim here (Link):
We very strongly discourage combining Tor with a VPN in any other manner. Do not configure your connection in a way which resembles any of the following:
You → Tor → VPN → Internet
You → VPN → Tor → VPN → Internet
Any other configuration
This claim is disputed by people like The Grugq in talks like this. This, along with parroting of claims when people themselves have no expertise (and often without a source) is something I firmly believe the moderation team should be actively discouraging. Ideally it should be the NORM to cite your sources in your responses as much as you can. It will improve the quality of conversation for people involved and readers both.
Another thing that constantly irks me. It is quite insane that EU and US companies don’t have to prove half the tests services based in other countries have to. Especially when they, especially the US, are just as incredibly shady in privacy practices as any other despot. If anyone has forgotten, US has been named as a culprit in most of the international mass surveillance incidents in the past.
Coming to tools, some of the criteria are also contradictory and absurd. They look like they were made to fit the tools available, instead of using them to search for tools.
I am also “fine” with it most of the time, including instances of deleting/hiding my responses when I was acting crazy. But you only need to hurt trust once.
Off topic (Forced Backdoors)
They absolutely can, and it was even easier before US courts ruled code is speech. That is why things like warrant canaries exist. Examples: RSA, Juniper VPN, and Papers written by policy advisors and senate lobbyists
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On several occasions on this forum, I’ve given my opinion in a constructive and respectful manner, without insults or threats, and as I disagreed with the opinion of some, my posts were reported and deleted by the modos.
I argued that DDG should be removed from the site for deliberately censoring pro-Russian content, but not pro-EU or pro-US content, and that this was bad for neutrality.
The site offers tools for freedom of expression and circumventing censorship, but you have to believe that things are different on this forum. You have to follow the crowd or risk being reported and censored.
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