this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
160 points (97.6% liked)
Asklemmy
43959 readers
1000 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Hi! Although your post is full of reasonable advice on maintaining privacy online I want to challenge you on the statement that the threat model matters. The contrapositive of the statement "I don't need privacy if I have nothing to hide" is "I have something to hide, if I need privacy". This puts those marginalized groups you mentioned in a position where simply by using a privacy tool or technique, they draw suspicion to themselves. It might immediately raise subconscious alarms in internet communities like facebook, where the expectation is that you use your real name.
The only way privacy measures work for anyone, is if they're implemented for everyone.
Further, I'd like to challenge the concept that a cis white tech bro has nothing to hide. There's a big invisible "for now" at the end of that statement. The internet, mostly, never forgets. We've had waves of comedians get "cancelled" over tweets they made years ago. Times change, people grow, laws regress. Posting statements about abortions is as of this year, suddenly unsafe. Maybe posting about neurodivergence comes next. Who knows with the way the world is going, maybe 5 years from now you'll regret having posts on /c/atheism associated with you.
I think a good way to be considerate of privacy is to think in terms of identities, what those identities are for, and what links those identities. Does your identity on github need make comments about your political leanings? Should your resume have a link to your github? Does your identity on etsy need to have a link to your onlyfans? Does your dating profile need a link to your reddit account? Your "2nd" reddit account? Not all of these are clear yes or no answers, they're just things to consider and make decisions about. Also, consider what class identities you only have one of, and what class of identities are for the most part unchangeable, e.g. attaching your phone number to two separate identities functionally links them.
I said neither. I said that the marginalized have relevant threat models and, at least in the state they are currently in, cis white techbros generally do not and treat privacy as a hobby, failing to develop realistic threat models. This doesn't translate into either of those sentiments.
That really depends on the specifics of the technique and if your threat model is the entities that could draw those conclusions, namely a government, they will tend to do that regardless. For those threat models you should really be shedding digital communication entirely and making a plan to leave.
But sure, something like having a ton of boring and diverse traffic in a VPN is useful for making them a privacy tool at all.
Alarms among who and what are the threats? This means nothing without a threat model.
This is simply false. For example, not everyone needs to meet in-person just for that to be an option for staying private. So long as you have a means to avoid leaking certain information to certain people, you can meet the needs of a threat model.
Not what I said.
The only meaningful way to think about it is in terms of threat models. Identities are an aspect of engaging in certain online activities, they only have meaning relative to a threat model. I agree that it is a good idea to keep employers out of your political activity by not tying them together but that is because we live under capitalism where your employer can remove your means to provide for itself whenever it wants. The threat model is ubiquitous, just differing slightly in its form (delays, the need for lawyers, etc). There are of course more threat models re: political activity.
The risk of not considering threat models and instead adopting broad brush practices is that you can fail to adequately weigh threats or get a false sense of security.