# Soatok: Checklists Are The Thief Of Joy **URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/soatok-checklists-are-the-thief-of-joy/29590 **Category:** General **Created:** 2025-07-30T15:20:37Z **Posts:** 15 ## Post 1 by @jonah — 2025-07-30T15:20:37Z I just got a chance to read this blog post, and I love it so I wanted to share in case someone missed it. It really sums up what I have been saying about these sorts of sites in offhand comments myself for a while, but @soatok actually takes the time to write down his thoughts in detail which is far more useful :sweat_smile: > **[Checklists Are The Thief Of Joy - Dhole Moments](https://soatok.blog/2025/07/07/checklists-are-the-thief-of-joy/)** > > I have never seen security and privacy comparison tables (henceforth referred to simply as “checklists” for brevity) used for any other purpose but deception. After pondering this obser… I literally just yesterday saw someone (on YouTube, not here) point to a useless “VPN comparison table” as an example of someone else supposedly taking the time to “thoroughly test” and be “objective” about VPNs lol It also makes me glad we (Privacy Guides) never pursued this whole making-a-checklist thing. At some point I wanted to do sort of a comparison table based on our recommendations (which to be fair is the opposite of what most people do: make a comparison table and then draw their recommendations from it), because people fucking _love_ their comparison tables and I knew it’d be shared widely. Unfortunately, Privacy Guides is still a very small community compared to others in this space, and I always want to change that. Ultimately, I could not come up with a way to make one that communicates our recommendations in a way that’s both accurate and doesn’t _appear_ deceptive. If there’s one thing crappy companies are good at, it’s checking boxes (and getting people accustomed to _expect_ certain boxes via marketing, as he alludes to with the “jurisdiction” point in the post). * * * One final thing I will add. I do think there is one exception: when a comparison table compares _a single metric_. Here’s a beautiful example of this from @yaelwrites, where the comparison table exclusively compares “what sites does this service remove data from” and not much else: > **[Filling In the Gaps For People Search Site Removal Services](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/115L6LpQg_UX638IyUfdwGhRS7dIU3lKwz6fjAcDtE-0/edit?pli=1&gid=0#gid=0)** > > This Sheet is private (I know he was not really referring to lists like this with his blog post in the first place, but I wanted an excuse to share it anyways lol) --- ## Post 2 by @KevPham — 2025-07-30T15:35:22Z > [@jonah](#): > > Ultimately, I could not come up with a way to make one that communicates our recommendations in a way that’s both accurate and doesn’t _appear_ deceptive. If there’s one thing crappy companies are good at, it’s checking boxes (and getting people accustomed to _expect_ certain boxes via marketing, as he alludes to with the “jurisdiction” point in the post). As a somewhat related sidenote, I noticed that deceptive checklists can consist of entire websites. Like, scammy versions of our own recommendations with little to no criteria on why they should be included. Since many checklist-esque websites are essentially paid advertising to shady services, I can’t agree with this sentiment enough. Bonus points if the website has “hacker” graphics and neon green headers :rofl: Shady VPN services and crypto exchanges asides, these websites often take advantage of SEO to get their website spread around folks new to the community. I don’t know how much website traffic they get but it must be substantial enough. I’m glad we avoided this reputation but it is SO difficult to gain community trust. Even minor things like not including comparison tables can help so much. --- ## Post 3 by @fria — 2025-07-30T17:01:26Z > [@KevPham](#): > > As a somewhat related sidenote, I noticed that deceptive checklists can consist of entire websites. Like, scammy versions of our own recommendations with little to no criteria on why they should be included. Since many checklist-esque websites are essentially paid advertising to shady services, Yeah and what they decide to include or leave out is a big area where their subjective opinion bleeds through. If you look at almost any product page they have a heavily biased checklist of cherry-picked features that their app supports and other apps don’t, which are almost always technically accurate but they don’t tell the full picture. I think we’re pretty open that we aren’t an objective source of info and we try to show what criteria we’re going by and what we value in the different categories, hopefully we’re open enough about our biases. There’s never really going to be a way to say one thing is objectively better than something else. --- ## Post 4 by @anon11657877 — 2025-08-11T18:05:08Z I don’t think checklists (or comparison tables) are inherently bad, just the ones used for self-promotion. They could be used as a tool for people to make decisions but never something to be relied on. I think comparison tables could be okay if they… - Are made by a neutral entity not affiliated with anything included in the comparison - Include explanations of each metric - There aren’t any unnecessary metrics or too many metrics - One product doesn’t dominate all other products included, either nothing meets all the criteria, or more than one product meets all the criteria - Remain consistently up-to-date An example of what I mean (this may be inaccurate) | Email provider | Supports IMAP | Doesn’t require phone number | | --- | --- | --- | | Disroot | :white_check_mark: | :white_check_mark: | | Cock.li | :white_check_mark: | :white_check_mark: | | Pissmail com | :white_check_mark: | :white_check_mark: | | [Murena.io](http://Murena.io) | :white_check_mark: | :white_check_mark: | | Proton Mail | Paid only | Usually | | Tutanota | :cross_mark: | :white_check_mark: | | Mailfence | Paid only | :white_check_mark: | | Gmail | :white_check_mark: | :cross_mark: | --- ## Post 5 by @soatok — 2025-09-08T00:52:02Z Unfortunately, the criteria presented in this way is still biased. - Not all columns (in your example) should have equal weight. - There are (practically speaking) nearly infinite ways to measure something. That there are a discrete, finite number selected is an expression of the values of the person or organization creating the checklist. If you want to make one, I cannot stop you, but nobody should ever trust them for anything else but the summarization of an author’s opinion. They’re objectivity theater (in the same way that VPNs are security theater in many threat models). --- ## Post 6 by @privacyisconsent — 2025-09-08T17:35:31Z I mostly agree with the article but I think part of the problem is that comparison tables are one of the easiest ways to crowdsource contributions and compile information about related projects in a relatively egalitarian way. Personally, I can really sympathise with someone who is curious and wants to leverage community interest to improve the knowledge base for everyone (like a lifting tide). I think it would be cool to think of ways to surface this crowdsourced information in a way that informs (no coloured ranking) or opens the path to learning more (well cited/source code linked). --- ## Post 7 by @soatok — 2025-09-11T21:16:56Z For that, I recommend: Wikis. The long-form essay is a foundation for capturing nuance, but suffer from the bias of a single author. Wikis are a collaborative version of a long-form essay, and can be refined over time to reduce the effect of bias. You won’t ever hit zero, but that’s the closest we’ll get as a society, I’d wager. As for communicating effectively to people who don’t have the patience to read large blocks of text? Make one consensus recommendation with experts and front-load the wiki pege with the easy answer for people in a hurry. People who are interested in the details will actually read it. --- ## Post 8 by @win11.shading291 — 2025-09-14T01:39:27Z Checklist are great ways to summarize information. It can be both detailed or not. I’m thinking about this for instance: [VPN Comparison by That One Privacy Guy](https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/#detailed-vpn-comparison) Of course, it can be deceptive as well. The reasons it’s being used so much by so many websites is that it is effective to convey information quickly. Of course, there are many examples where it is used for marketing purpose in a deceptive manner and not to be _trusted_. --- ## Post 9 by @jonah — 2025-09-14T02:05:14Z > [@win11.shading291](#): > > I’m thinking about this for instance That guy _literally_ sold out to a VPN company lol --- ## Post 10 by @soatok — 2025-09-14T02:45:40Z Sorry, I have to disagree. Checklists are not a great way to summarize information. They’re a great way to lie by omission and exacerbate the base rate fallacy. --- ## Post 11 by @dngray — 2025-09-14T06:15:44Z I think it entirely depends on what is in the table has so many columns there are. A person’s brain simply is not able to parse a 50 column table and get anything meaningful from it. Not to mention that it requires constant updates as services change or improve often then meaning the information may simply not be correct. A simple table like the one for [recommended email providers](https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/#recommended-providers) is intended to make a comparison on very specific common use cases. For example accessibility, anonymity and compatibility. I think that can work if the reader is like “Well i want to use PGP because friends i have use that and I want to use Thunderbird because i have work accounts on that and i may need to be anonymous for this account”. --- ## Post 12 by @jonah — 2025-09-14T06:30:22Z I mean, that’s not a _real_ comparison table to be fair, the introductions of these pages are just a summary of the content. Usually tables are presented without context and _those_ are universally extremely problematic. I see one commonly thrown around about Android OS’s, I see many, many VPN tables like the one just linked above, I see, well, exactly the tables that were talked about in the original blog post :sweat_smile: None of these tables are suitable for use, and yet even “experts” cite them as gospel all the time, which is why I wanted to share this blog in the first place. IMO the biggest issue almost always comes down to: > [@soatok](#): > > Not all columns (in your example) should have equal weight. --- ## Post 13 by @win11.shading291 — 2025-09-17T02:00:47Z > [@win11.shading291](#): > > Checklist are great ways to summarize information. > [@jonah](#): > > the introductions of these pages are just a summary of the content. This is all I said. :stuck_out_tongue: I can assure you that many tables are used for decision making for instance. Search for one pagers, dashboard metrics, the Kaizen approach (I can name many more) and you’ll find all sort of ways where tables are super efficient into communicating information quickly. But yes, for all the tables meant for marketing purposes, it is obviously meant to scam people off :sweat_smile: --- ## Post 14 by @jonah — 2025-09-17T02:02:02Z I just disagreed with the specific example you gave that was _only_ a summary of the information. --- ## Post 15 by @davidcollini — 2025-09-29T18:39:26Z > [@jonah](#): > > If there’s one thing crappy companies are good at, it’s checking boxes (and getting people accustomed to _expect_ certain boxes via marketing, as he alludes to with the “jurisdiction” point in the post). This is actually one of the main reasons why I created [softwarecompare.org](https://softwarecompare.org). There’s so many misleading checklists scattered across the internet made by companies just trying to sell a product. Many of them have little context on why these features are important, so explaining with tooltips and verifying with external links turns checklists from a tool that tells you what software to use into a learning experience where different tools fit different people’s needs. \*Also it’s very important to me that the community has a say on how the project progresses, but I’m just currently limited since the project is so small