I guess since they gave up I’ll just reply for them, for the sake of anyone else who believes this. I like replying to trolls, because usually they are saying things that other people genuinely believe too, but have the decency to keep to themselves, so it’s more for the reader’s benefit.
I would think the “legitimate criticism” is that associating myself personally with a very reputable “brand” like Privacy Guides gives me substantial personal benefit, which I suppose is true. It connects me with people, makes people trust me more, and presents opportunities that I generally don’t care to take, but are valuable to have nonetheless.
I think some people would say “if you really cared about privacy you would just do all of this anonymously on GitHub” like some other resources do.
The thing is that to me, privacy advocacy has always been the more important aspect of what we do. Writing resources and “preaching to the choir” so to speak is important and builds our trustworthiness immensely, but showing those resources to people who haven’t looked into any of this before is the thing that really makes a difference in the world, to me.
And, I personally believe that for a huge amount of people in the world, they need a face and a name to connect to, for better or for worse. That just is how it is. I’ve spent over a decade writing on the internet and elsewhere with this name, since long before I really cared much about privacy. I could’ve spent the last 5 years erasing myself from the grid and being more private, and perhaps I should’ve. I didn’t though, I figured if I was in this position anyways then I would be able to actually do something with it.
It’s a huge luxury that my personal privacy is not that concerning to me on a day to day basis. I don’t have a violent ex or stalker, and I’m private enough that I’m not being profiled by crap companies with targeted pricing and ads that impact my financial life. Some people are threatened, and big tech places real people at risk every day. If me personally being less private in practice means we reach out to more people who are less educated about this topic but are at greater risk, I just think that trade-off is worth it to me.
Maybe I’m wrong about this, and we would be just as effective if the entire team was anonymous. It’s hard to really say, but this is the route we’ve already chosen so it’s a bit late to change it up now. And I think Privacy Guides is clearly the largest “serious” community dedicated to this issue so we must be doing something right.