Folks, let me share some random observations with you, because I can’t wrap my mind around those.

  1. People have Zoom, Teams, Slack, Discord, Messenger, Telegram, and Viber, all happily installed on their phones at the same time. When you then invite them to Matrix they are like “Is this necessary? Why install yet another one of those?”

  2. People who use Chrome by default without ad blockers, and you just hint there is a massive intelligence and surveillance operation are quick to respond that “I am getting this services for free, so it is fine to give something back” [1].

  3. People thinking that OSS is not secure enough for their devices. Surprise surprise, it is the exact same people who fall for obvious scams and their devices are ad-ridden, bloated horrors that have not been updated in a million years, but they think that Libre Office will break their computer and lose their emails.

  4. People thinking that privacy and anonymity enthusiasts are shady freaks who want to go live in the woods and possibly terrorists. There is a slightly insane take here that we are against technology because we refuse to “just” install an app to make our lives easier[2].

So they do not complain about being exploited and disrespected, while ripped off and offered crap services, as long it is a capitalist corporation shaking them down with vendor lock-in and network effects. They are grateful even. But just the idea of installing a single free/libre OSS app or extension to protect their privacy is a red flag and pushes their buttons big time, even for just suggesting it.

So, what are your own examples of anti-OSS stupidity, and how do you explain its prevalence in society?

  1. It is how quick they are in responding that way, which makes me think that the idea is already crystalized in their minds, by some “anti-OSS” discourse. ↩︎

  2. But just installing a Matrix client is a big deal. ↩︎

  • @GrammarPolice
    1•4 hours ago

    Not necessarily. Your example about the journalist just clarifies why we have the concept of “threat models”. She had a threat model that required some level of privacy. I just don’t have that as with most people

    • OneMeaningManyNamesOPEnglish
      1•4 hours ago

      Sure, but since many types of marginalized communities have a default threat model, not having a threat model is a privilege.

      Further, the scale of surveillance and invasion is a threat to actual democracy (not only due to massive surveillance, but also parallel surveillance and political advertising). So this can build up to a “They first came for the socialists” situation.

      • @GrammarPolice
        2•3 hours ago

        I guess so. The possibility of governments having the ability to use that information for their own agendas in the first place might be cause for concern. Probably the best argument for caring about privacy