@jonah What is this murderer's row of #privacy abusers on the "privacy news" section of the techlore site? And why use teespring to serve the merchandise area of the site, if it runs cloudflare, facebook, google, bing and other trackers? I appreciate what @thenewoil is doing on Mastodon, but all this is /frustrating as hell/.
@thenewoil @jonah I have heard this argument before, and I see the point. I think maybe there's room for further nuance, though.
For example, could you include explicit statements disavowing the practices of some of the sites you are on---which include some of the worst of the worst for privacy? How else could someone privilege privacy-respecting sites over abusive ones in a clear way to viewers/visitors? Relatedly, what do you think about reaching people on Gab, or Parler?
@spoon the alt-right is not our target demographic, so it hasn’t been considered.
@jonah I just meant to point to the limits of meeting-people-where-they-are.
If where-they-are is a place that abuses #privacy , then participating there without any disavowal of its abuses is normalization. The second part of @thenewoil 's comment is missing: "convincing [people] to join us elsewhere."
Paying for services that invade privacy in order to sell pro-privacy shirts, as techlore does by using Teespring, is worse than normalization. Is there really no plan to change all this?
@spoon @thenewoil it’s a false equivalence. Gab and Parler are terrible, and their users equally so. YouTube and Google are terrible, but their users are merely uninformed about data privacy issues — which is exactly the target demographic here.
Literally every aspect of Techlore is about privacy education and leading people towards making informed decisions about the websites they use online. I’m not sure how much more “convincing” we could be.
@spoon @thenewoil I don’t believe in making mountains out of molehills. Like I said, literally every podcast/video/whatever is about making privacy-conscious decisions. If these platforms weren’t used we would be perpetuating a privacy echo-chamber rather than fostering privacy education.
I’ll ask Henry if he wants to add a warning to the site or something 🤷♂️
@jonah @thenewoil What is so wrong with acknowledging something wrong here? What harm would it do to make a statement on the site, and in the podcasts, to the effect that you condemn these practices, and prefer other platforms? And why not move off of Teespring? What does techlore gain by digging in its heels in public discussion with #privacy-concerned people like me?