As if Jonah Aragon isn’t trying to sell something..
What’s he trying to sell?
Membership to the platform? Static mention and info of it doesn’t equate to actively trying to shill for something to get you to buy with urgency.
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To answer this question you need to start with identifying all forms of capital (financial, symbolic, etc.) being gained from PG. There’s nothing unique here of course. There are tons of “information businesses” that extract value from community contribution and don’t want to appear so.
I didn’t equate these all. There are many different ways to capitalize on information. I merely remarked on the fun fact of one capitalist blaming the others.
So what exactly did you mean here? Please elaborate with detail so I understand how you meant it.
What I meant is precisely written in my previous message. Which part is unclear to you? The notion of symbolic capital? Value extraction? I can direct you to basic readings if needed.
What I’d like to know is what you implied when you said Jonah is also trying to sell you something.
What is he trying to sell? How did you mean it?
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You seem to equate “sell” with “money“. These are not necessarily connected directly. I probably can’t help you if after reading my messages it is still obscure to you.
Please remain respectful and on-topic. Continuing to be demeaning will result in your suspension. This is your only warning.
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You are right he has been selling fake Mullvad VPN subscriptions in the alleyway where I live. /s
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I’m open to critique but it’s too vague to be actionable. If they could give specific examples that would be more helpful to improve. Personally I’ve see much more LARP-y communities, I think we try to keep things measured and grounded in real world threats and the capabilities and limitations of available tech.
For example, we don’t allow accusations of backdoors without evidence.
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Sure, obviously I think Privacy Guides is a valuable service, and I think most people here would probably agree.
I think it’s clear from the context though that I’m talking about blogs and “communities” with obvious conflict of interests, which Privacy Guides doesn’t have.
If you want to interpret privacy advocacy as me “selling” the idea of privacy, then sure, I absolutely do. We use traditional “capitalist” marketing methods extensively here, such as posting to all sorts of social media and creating YouTube videos.
Even a nonprofit is a business, and we have a business model. We solicit donations, and in return we use those contributions to reach out to more people and make privacy education more accessible. That’s transactional, but everyone involved in the transaction agrees that the benefit is global.
So what I’d ask you is: so what? What’s your point?
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Damn, kids these days don’t even have the attention span to wait 12 hours for me to wake up and reply before deleting their account while I’m mid-post lol
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gestures to follow me into a shady alley hey kid you want some non-kyc services?
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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.
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OP and proud “Snowden larper” here. For the record Jonah, I don’t feel like you are trying to sell me anything. And many, many thanks for creating this community to give us all a safe refuge from r/privacy.
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This whole thread looks like a dumpster fire if I really am being honest.
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we just pissed off the people stuck in echo chambers (or might be kids), what can we say.
Sorry, I must ask: What’s the basis for this pointed claim?
offtopic: "I like replying to trolls"
Oh well, then reply to my modmail from April?
Probably true only for the main website?
The CoI policy goes:
At the same time, accepting contributions from people with a conflict of interest can be necessary or highly beneficial for Privacy Guides and the community…
Though, it is still great that CoI contributions are prohibited for the team members and discouraged for everyone else (other participants).
The policy also goes:
Look for non-neutral language or poorly-sourced content
I find a bunch of non-neutral langauge in the VPN page: For instance, words like “premium” and “inexpensive”.
And:
cautious about accepting self-published sources, press releases, and other similar primary sources at face value
Plenty mention of audits that link straight to primary source but no mention of what those audits are about (ex: iVPN annual audits are mostly NOT of their VPN data plane)… to the point of appearing to market on behalf of the provider.
I had called out the VPN page for not meeting PG’s own bar before: Secure encryption and online anonymity are now at risk in Switzerland - #28 by ignoramous
Fanboism / sycophancy is another similar problem to tackle here, leading to fiefdoms that the gatekeepers guard relentlessly.
Not sure about “serious”, but yeah, agree with the rest. The participants are well-intentioned, well-informed, & generally nice.
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There is more than enough “privacy nerds” in their cave already(1) We need people getting out and sharing the message.
.(1) Nothing wrong with that, but it isn’t how we reach mass audience.
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I think my only gripe about this forum is that it seems heavily focused on tech privacy, not so much stuff for the real world like navigating vehicle registration, insurance, housing, and day to day interactions from a privacy standpoint. I wish it had more of that and I try to contribute when I see those threads pop up. Most of my interactions here have been pleasant and the discourse feels organic, as opposed to Reddit where a lot of subs feel to be overwhelmed with bots and the ‘current meta’ is the only allowed perspective (I think that’s more a fault of the upvote/downvote system where dissenting voices can be drowned out). I think one advantage that Reddit has is that the r/Privacy sub has been active for 17 years and has over 800k weekly visitors so the amount of information flowing through there is not matched by this forum. I browse there but almost never contribute for some of the reasons described above.
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