The Hated One shares what he thinks are paid agents to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) in the privacy community…
While he might be overreacting, this discussion is worth having.
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I mean, it is just a fact that there are legions of people employed by various governments to spread disinformation on the internet full-time.
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I wouldn’t be surprised there are some even in this community.
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Whether or not it is true that there is a “psyop” happening doesn’t matter much. The real discussion lies in the FUD itself, not whether the FUD is deliberate. I agree that it’s a worthy discussion, but I particularly dislike how this guy immediately jumps to the conclusion that there is a “big bad” performing psyops on his channel. He also includes the possibility that they are trolls, but this is also an issue. Yes, psyops exist; and yes, governments have performed psyops; and yes, they have an incentive to keep the status quo. Those three premises are true, but the conclusion isn’t that your channel is being subjected to it. If anything, you might also say that social media corporations are spreading this FUD, since they also have an incentive.
He also somehow attributes the well-known argument, “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” to being part of this supposed FUD campaign. It’s a small part of the video, but it’s a big leap in logic. It makes more sense that the people commenting those things actually believe them, not that they are being paid to by some big bad, or that they are bots, or whatever. This is the issue. There is a conclusion being assumed without evidence.
One thing he mentions but completely evades from properly discussing is the possibility that these “defeatist” propaganda comments are not actually propaganda or trolls, but real comments from real defeatists and other real people with their own intentions. I personally found some of the comments to be funny (if taken as a joke), so I find no reason why anyone else wouldn’t merely make these comments with the intention of making jokes/memes. However, we can ignore this possibility during discussion, as I doubt all of them are the result of memeing around. I feel that the real issue lies in the community itself creating defeatist positions, not that some “big bad” is out there doing this.
This conclusion, that FUD is being spread deliberately, is itself a “defeatist” conclusion in my opinion. He does actually offer a solution, so in a sense it isn’t quite as defeatist, but the very people he critiques would hold the same position as him. To separate himself from them, he would actually need to provide evidence, not just “extreme” (as he literally acknowledges) examples of it happening historically and comtemporarily. He explains why it’s the case that it could be happening to him, but does not provide evidence to back up those whys.
He acknowledges himself that his conclusion might seem like “paranoia”, but fails to meta-cognitively apply this to his own viewers. Is it not also the case that these comments are as a result of paranoia-induced defeatists? Maybe it is a bit of both. I do not discount any such possibility that the government has their hands in keeping the status quo, but the focus is on his failure to recognize the sociological explanations, which I think are more plausible and offers more actual solutions.
To simplify it thus far:
We essentially have a problem. There exists FUD within the privacy community that affects the beliefs of its individuals.
He asserts without evidence that the cause is due to a propaganda campaign by either the gubberment or by some organized trolls or what have you, but mostly orients the video towards the former. His solution is therefore:
- Report bot accounts.
- Don’t let the comments fool you, either emotionally or rationally or whatever.
- Always go to the source.
Numbers 2 and 3 are the best parts of this solution in my opinion, particularly 2. Unfortunately, he goes on to spout how these comments can serve to actively manipulate you for some purpose or end, which I find not as useful of a reason compared to merely “fooling” you in the sense that they are misinformed (as opposed, again, to disinformed). It’s a big leap in logic as well. Just because they are not disinformed does not mean they are not misinformed. I find number 1 the most useless.
And again, he proposes this solution because the FUD is a deliberate propaganda campaign.
What if it weren’t? Why not take a look at the causes from a sociological point-of-view? The current social media META (Most Effective Tactic Available) for social critics and other related channels for thriving on YouTube is spinning a narrative. He clearly understands this, whether consciously or subconsciously, as evident from his previous video titles, video thumbnails, channel name, etc. The narrative that privacy is at stake, that there exists an “us” and “them”, and that “they” want privacy gone, and that there is a “Big Brother”. Although this is true in one sense, the overall atmosphere of his channel (at least from what I couold tell when browsing it quickly) is quite defeatist itself.
Compare this to Techlore’s channel, the Privacy Guides’ forum, etc., whose atmosphere is often much more down to earth in comparison and focused less on narrative spinning. Narratives are an easy way to create defeatist positions. I’m not saying that this guy is actively creating defeatists with his channel. That would require data I do not have (although it’d be interesting to do a study on this so we could actually progress the discussion beyond “the gubberment is to blame”. However, clearly defeatists will lean towards his content more given the atmosphere of his channel. Such individuals will most likely also watch channels like Mental Outlaw who is, in my opinion, also narrative-driven. The thing is: he actually also advocate for these kinds of ideologies, to live in the wilderness, be self-sufficient, etc., and also make these kinds of jokes/memes. A guy named Luke Smith also advocated for these ideologies, and although he isn’t (or wasn’t) as narrative-driven as Mental Outlaw, some parts of the privacy community watches him (or used to). I can imagine that the privacy advocates watches or used to watch them also developed the same kind of ideology (and humor–although again, not really the focus).
If this is the actual cause for why FUD seems to be rampant (especially in his comments sections), then the solution he proposes does not actually amount to much of anything. In fact, the video itself will probably attract more defeatists. However, if the issue is actually because of his narrative-driven content, the solution is to become less narrative-driven and more practically oriented, Privacy Guides or Techlore’s channel. I am not familiar with Techlore’s content nor his comment sections, but I imagine they will not be as FUD-y as this guys’ channel for the reason I listed. I am also not too familiar with this guy’s content, but he claims to offer solutions in the same vein that Techlore’s channel seems to. The clear difference is the overall atmosphere, really. Whether his content really is or isn’t practically-driven, people are attracted to the aesthetics. His aesthetics attract the defeatists. After all, he is “The Hated One”. Who hates him? “They” do. Or at least that’s how they might conceptualize him.
I hear that his Patreon is actually less narrative-driven and very practically-oriented. If so, I wonder what the differences are between the public-facing content’s comments and his Patreon content’s comments.
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Hell yeah, I spread FUD professionally. Put kids through college doing that.
On a more serious note, I try to not attribute to malice what can be attributed to misinformation. There is an astro turfing problem, but there is also the problem of people simply being resistant to changing their misinformed opinions. Like the classics spouted by FSF, or the adamant ideas around hardware freedom, or everything being backdoored and compromised, etc. I feel the latter is exacerbated (but did not originate from) by the former. People don’t want their views challenged, they see someone confirming it, they become more rigid. Its the same issue in politics, academia, etc. Humans 
The solution imo is just reading and citing sources across affiliations, trying to understand reasonings instead of memorizing conclusions, and most of all being transparent. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, since you never know when teams, orgs, and communities get poisoned.
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Indeed this has been a recurring theme with The Hated One. I’ve noticed similar videos from him where he blames YouTube for his underperforming content, when the far more likely explanation in my eyes is that some of his more recent content is simply not as interesting to his established audience.
I’ve never really thought about it in this way, but it makes a lot of sense to me. I have noticed that some channels like The Hated One, Rob Braxman, Naomi Brockwell, etc. are very problem/blame-oriented, whereas I feel Privacy Guides is very solution-oriented. That is to say, we don’t have a big emphasis on privacy problems like Big Tech, government programs, Five Eyes, etc. (in fact we deemphasize this content generally). It’s more like well, you’ve found yourself in a privacy-problematic situation, here’s what to do about it.
That isn’t to say all of those things aren’t problems, in fact I think they are, but I can see why the community would be very different if we spent much more of our time discussing the problems instead of the solutions.
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It is, but while we know full well about Russian & Chinese bots, we forgot our own governments also have them.
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PG cannot do the “problem discussion” part because it has an inwards facing structure built for its public face (a forum is a self selecting group of participants). So everyone already knows thw problems.
A lot of youtubers and other entities who have an outwards facing public face (content is supposed to reach the masses, shared, consumed instead of interacted with, etc.) are in the position to discuss problems to bring it to public notice, so they do.
There is nothing inherently negative about either. Folks who teach how to survive a nuclear explosion and folks who raise awareness about increasing nuclear weapon stockpiles as a problem are both essential.
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While not unjustified and I agree that it’s a problem, I feel that the “paranoid” nature of the community itself (which is composed of privacy/security conscious individuals), also helps exacerbate the problem a lot.
It’s not too often but most of the time that I see someone saying that someone else is “spreading FUD”, it’s a perfectly normal opinion to have that simply disagrees with the other person and/or the status quo of the community. This isn’t productive.
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I ignored Ente after seeing this a while ago: reddit .com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/rjzc9s/compare_cryptee_and_enteio/
Only recently did I realize this is mostly misinformation: Has Ente resolved issues since this Reddit thread?
I wonder as well, because they lost me as a customer for multiple years, and worse I’m guilty of sharing a link to this comment on multiple other Reddit threads during this time (sorry!).
From what I can see, this user has been aggressively shilling Cryptee and throwing shade at competition (Ente, Stingle and StandardNotes) for years.
Is there a reason to not remove this thread?
With the new person doing YouTube videos for PG, we will see if solution oriented videos have any game on the platform.