No, I see Discourse as a communication platform similar to a mailing list, with various additional rich features and plugins for modern workflows. Currently, my perception of social media platforms harks back to the last time I used it several years ago, with users having their own walls to write on. The main difference between these perspectives is that my contributions and participation are primarily constructive and material for myself using the former instead of destructive and purposeless using the latter.
This is disingenuous.
Mastadon is already filled with people that will agree with you on privacy. The impact of spreading messages there is negligible. Now if you spread that on Twitter, the impact of that has much wider reach to a more mainstream audience.
Again, sacrificing privacy for impact of spreading a message. PG has a YouTube channel as well. Not because they wouldn’t prefer alternatives, but it’s a blunt fact YouTube is where nearly everyone is at.
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I was wondering why you wrote Discourse with a capital D. I had never heard of that platform before.
I am not sure what you mean by destructive purposes. Are you referring to algorithms manufacturing anger or people who disagree on any topic taking it too far? Or both?
No it isn’t.
I don’t think you read or understood my comment. Here it is again:
You seem to think I have a problem with privacy voices being present on non-private platforms like Twitter or YouTube. I don’t. I completely understand the need for their presence there and I welcome it.
I take issue with them not being present and active on private platforms. They can do both at the same time. PG does it. The EFF does it. Cory Doctorow does it.
If Cory Doctorow and the EFF can be active on both Twitter and Mastodon simultaneously, so can Proton and all the other privacy influencers who aren’t active there. I also think it’s hypocritical to encourage people to join Mastodon and use Mastodon because it’s private and not use it yourself. It’s failing to live by the values you purport to promote. Again, I am talking about privacy influencers/voices, Not regular people like you and me. People who have an audience.
If I want to ask Proton for support on social media, as plenty of people do, I should be able to do it on Mastodon or even Blue Sky. But I can’t because they won’t respond there.
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Both Twitter and Mastodon are social media where you post things publicly for everyone to see, it’s just that one is decentralized. I wouldn’t say mastodon is more private than Twitter but it’s more censorship-resistant. There’s not really any downside to being on one of these big platforms as a public figure posting public messages, you want to get the message out as far as possible.
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I think it would also depend on your instance. For example, https://ieji.de/ does more than a lot of others to improve and enhance users privacy & security on theirs.
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You’re on it right now, it’s the platform powering this forum
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Correction: it’s the software powering this forum.
The infrastructure platform that’s executing the software is my own 
(As opposed to communities using Discourse Pro, which we do not use)
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Many good answers in this thread.
I think this is an incredibly good point to remember in this context, because it is true and I truly believe it makes a difference in advocacy work. There are simply many people, organizations, and governments who will not take pseudonymously published work seriously for better or for worse.
People (like me, tbh) who are privileged enough to not need absolute privacy should position themselves as allies to people who do need that protection:
Although to be totally honest @SYST3M_D3STR0YER, in my case it is largely due to the simple fact that I have been on the internet and posting about technology unrelated to privacy with this name for a very long time.
I’ve always been very into self-hosting, and found the importance of privacy as a right organically from that direction. In fact I know of at least a handful of team and community members here now who were in the tech communities I was in even prior to PrivacyTools and now Privacy Guides
I get the feeling that many people in this space like Naomi Brockwell or Carey Parker found themselves in a similar situation, where they originally focused on other things and were drawn to privacy activism organically, whereas people who start posting about privacy right off the bat like @fria tend to operate under pseudonyms, like you might expect a stereotypically “privacy-concerned” person to do.
Some of us who used the internet decades ago did not have the benefit of hindsight to see how invasive and predatory social media companies and governments would become, that people nowadays can plainly see with their own eyes 
For many others, internet access is a very recent development in their lives, whether because they are young or because their local community simply wasn’t highly internet connected until the last decade or so, and I’d imagine these people can and should be more careful about the information they share online.
If I were only starting out now, maybe I would in fact do all of this differently, I really don’t know 
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You hit the nail on the head, I’ve always been paranoid about privacy so I’ve generally always used a pseudonym and avoided social media for pretty much my entire life. Most of what I’ve learned about technology has stemmed from that, so kinda the inverse of your situation.
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Neither, it is about the perception of my contributions by others. On social media platforms, people generally interpret my words personally and treat them as a hostile threat, but on Discourse, people can generally hold an argument without being offended. The capability for people to have healthy dialogue is what separates the two cultures.
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Misunderstanding on my part. Yes I can see this as a gripe, and would be annoyed at this as well.
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I see. And what makes Discourse so special? What do you think people are more considerate to what you have to say there?
To be frank, I don’t fully understand how Discourse work. To me, it seems somewhat similar to commenting platforms like Disqus, which allow you to comment on any website that supports it with one account.
Wow! I had no idea! Thanks for letting me know!
In general, different platforms have different audiences. It doesn’t surprise me that there are tone shifts, slight or greater, when you move from one platform to another. You also gotta remember that it’s not uncommon for tone to be misunderstood in writing, especially across cultures. But of course, there are rude people everywhere, and some people will get upset if you say you hate their favorite film.
No worries.
You’re somewhat of a public figure so it’s a little trickier, but for everyone, if you used you real name online for years it is always possible to change course. You can delete some accounts and create new ones. And/or add new fake data points to confuse data scrapers. For example have different DOB and locations with accounts that have the same username.
I know for example, that Carissa Véliz, who is a public figure, has made it a point to not share her date of birth, and she has been largely successful in that, even though I might have seen it listed once on a Spanish website. But again it could be fake.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I once had an anonymous Twitter account for which I had not shared my DOB. I had that account for years. And then one day, I added a fake DOB and my account was immediately locked, because the DOB I chose meant that I was underage (under 13) when my account was created. They wanted me to share my ID to unlock the account. I never did and abandoned the account.
This is just a warning for those who may want to retroactively change their DOB or add a fake DOB to a platform that doesn’t have it. Make sure that the DOB you choose doesn’t make you underage when the account was created.
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There is a broad and common usage of Discourse being deployed as a support forum across the Internet, which means people are looking for solutions to their issues and I can step in to address them subject to my available resources. That being said, not all Discourse communities explicitly follow this pattern, so any exceptions act as a danger signal for me to steer very clear of them. For example, in the case of the Privacy Guides Community, I can pretty much engage with any topic in the Questions category to any depth, but require significant discretion before considering participation within any other category.
I had that same issue with my original Twitter account haha
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I get the feeling that many people in this space like Naomi Brockwell or Carey Parker found themselves in a similar situation, where they originally focused on other things and were drawn to privacy activism organically, whereas people who start posting about privacy right off the bat like @fria tend to operate under pseudonyms, like you might expect a stereotypically “privacy-concerned” person to do.
I started by publishing a book … like 11 years ago now. At the time, it didn’t even cross my mind to publish under a pseudonym. At that point, my name and image were out there and it was part of my “brand”. So when the podcast and blog came along, I just stuck with it.
But if I had the chance to do it all again, I think I’d still use my real name. I’m not doing anything partisan or controversial (at least not in my mind) and I have no qualms associating this with my real identity. Honestly, I think I would find it exhausting to maintain a secret identity.
That said, there’s nothing preventing me from having alternate, private (pseudonymous) personas in addition to my public one.
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Indeed 
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Where? That’s just data / information privacy. A very limited definition.
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As I wrote in my previous post, I don’t think what you quoted is an attempt to define privacy rather to contrast it with security and anonymity in a digital context.
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Folks seem to have captured all of the right reasons. But I’ll add two things, speaking from personal experience:
- Some folks (like me) rely on public profiles to function professionally. I don’t separate my antifascist self from my professional self. So they happen to conflate under my real name online. Some consider it a risk, while I consider it being authentic. Regarding the risks…
- While it is scary, it’s important for me to be forthright in the things some might suggest I cloak online. Because being white, male, cis, and straight, I have a lot of privilege. And it’s important that I bear the weight of that privilege by being transparent with my real name, so that marginalized folks aren’t responsible for fighting their oppressors.
That has caused me some suffering. I have been attacked. But the important thing to note is that I choose what I share. As others mentioned, it’s about consent.
Being an advocate for privacy means consensual sharing, not zero sharing.
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