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by Brendinooo3 hours ago |
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upvoteby slg3 hours ago|
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You discussed two distinct groups: "certain ideological concerns" and "the kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF primarily cares about". I think you're getting this type of response because many of us can't see any actual difference between those two groups besides your own politics and assumptions.
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upvoteby Brendinooo3 hours ago|
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You might be right; I don't know what the broad populace thinks of what EFF does.

I'll ask you then: What are the three main areas of advocacy where you think the EFF has been the most visible and/or effective?

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upvoteby smaudet3 hours ago|
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It's an association fallacy - Musk may be a radical extremist on the right, and a technology mogul, you may find yourself aligning with some of his world views (not all of them, remember he is an extremist relative to yourself).

So when people support EFF's technological goals (freedoms for users on technology platforms), if they are themselves possibly on the right, they project their own values onto the organization or system (which here is the EFF).

Never-mind if some of those values are incompatible with the values you think you hold (being authoritarian generally is incompatible with being not being authoritarian about technology). When someone points out the (otherwise obvious) contradiction to you, you're surprised that your set of values is incongruous.

Now this can happen to anyone coming from any political starting point, they agree with something but find it doesn't quite fit with their world views. If you are deeply religious about it, you tend to hold on for dear life and either decide to "pick" on set of values over another (suddenly you realize, actually, yes you would like to enslave everyone) or engage in some form of hypocrisy or another (authoritarians are good, but for some reason or the other I'm going to make an exception for technology).

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upvoteby Brendinooo2 hours ago|
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I dunno. My understanding of coalition building is "we disagree about a bunch of stuff, but we agree on this one thing, so let's work together on it". You seem to be saying: "if you disagree with me on the other stuff, your agreement on this thing is rooted in a contradictory value system you haven't fully examined".

Is that correct?

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upvoteby smaudet2 hours ago|
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Not exactly.

Values have a hierarchy. You can't (effectively) agree to painting everything the color blue, if you can't agree what the color blue is.

And you will run into a very similar issue when everyone starts objecting to the pink you have spread everywhere, despite supposedly agreeing to the color scheme.

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upvoteby Brendinooo1 minutes ago|
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I guess, to use the terms of your analogy, I don't think people disagree on what blue is. "Don't add backdoors to e2e encryption" is blue; and plenty of people who are coded all over the political spectrum recognize it as blue and want the wall to be blue.

You seem to be saying that people can't paint together unless everyone agrees on who holds the brush, what brand of brush is used, and what everyone's broader philosophy of painting is.

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upvoteby dvt2 hours ago|
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> Not exactly.

But then you go on to describe exactly what @Brendinooo described, just under the guise of your system of "value hierarchy." The problem is that you can always default to "our values are hierarchically misaligned" and then never have to do any coalition building ever.

So how do you solve that? Because it seems that you can't.

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upvoteby smaudet1 hours ago|
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> if you disagree with me on the other stuff

This part is too broad.

Hierarchical values are just that. Not wholesale. We call that nonsense, e.g. I believe pigs can fly, therefore the sky is red. They are making an ontological error.

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upvoteby dvt3 minutes ago|
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For a Christian, a top value in their moral hierarchy would be rooted in Jesus' famous commandment: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind." Now, if you're an atheist, this might be nonsense to you. You might not believe that Jesus was resurrected or that God even exists. To you, these are fundamentally irrational statements ("pigs can fly," etc.). Under your system, if you were an atheist and your opposition was a Christian, you could never possibly build a coalition because there's a disagreement at the top of the moral value hierarchy.

But this seems wrong because people of different creeds and value systems do stuff together all the time. Or am I misunderstanding your point?

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upvoteby snackerblues38 minutes ago|
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> So how do you solve that? Because it seems that you can't.

By design. Activists and left-wingers in general enjoy losing and being underdogs and infighting constantly

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upvoteby smaudet7 minutes ago|
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Funny, how those in a hierarchical system political system struggle so much to understand, hierarchy.

It's per the usual for extremist ideologies, chock full of hypocrisy and nonsense.

Note that, I have no problem with conservative or liberal value systems...

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upvoteby DaSHacka15 minutes ago|
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I don't know, I've noticed this in the right as well. I think there's always some degree of purity-testing to any community, though I agree there is more on the current (radical?) progressive end than average.
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upvoteby slg3 hours ago|
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I can't definitively give you a top three and honestly don't see any value in ranking them like that. I would simply describe them as the ACLU for technology and the Internet in that they fight for general civil liberties. X and more specifically Elon Musk have shown that they are on the opposite side when it comes to many of those civil liberties even if they all agree on some other issues. Online censorship (both explicit and through algorithmic bias) is the most obvious example that bridges your two distinct groups. Musk might claim he agrees with the EFF on that, but through his and X's actions, it's clear he doesn't.
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upvoteby jeffbee3 hours ago|
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EFF has basically only succeeded in defending Section 230, which makes me wonder if the people who talk in this article and the people elsewhere on HN denouncing Section 230 know about each other.
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upvoteby Terr_2 hours ago|
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There's been a lot of misinformation around section 230 in the last several years. This might be helpful, either as something to give out or to receive, depending.

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...

Granted, it's from 2020, so there may be updated versions by now.

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upvoteby genxy1 hours ago|
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[flagged]
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upvoteby zahlman1 hours ago|
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Whatever you're trying to imply here, it's a personal attack that does not contribute to the discourse.
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upvoteby genxy1 hours ago|
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The OP is coyling spraying half baked questions across discussion in an effort to do who knows what. It is an attack on the delivery, not the person.
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upvoteby zahlman39 minutes ago|
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No, nothing of the sort is happening. There is no reason to assume bad faith in those questions. The questions are not "half-baked".

I make such dismissals because if I merely expressed doubt, it appears that you would make the same accusations against me.

The burden of proof is on you; what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence; etc.

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upvoteby zahlman1 hours ago|
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> I think you're getting this type of response because many of us can't see any actual difference between those two groups besides your own politics and assumptions.

I think that is why, yes.

I also think the differences are really obvious, and I genuinely can't understand why so many people here can't see that.

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upvoteby r-w3 hours ago|
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Why would you say "this statement shows XYZ" if you didn't believe XYZ was a new piece of information?
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upvoteby Brendinooo3 hours ago|
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My original comment did not claim that they were not ideological and it did not claim that that they do not do political activism, so a reply of "[o]f course they care about ideological concerns" makes no sense to me.
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upvoteby beepbooptheory2 hours ago|
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You said the "statement pretty clearly shows that they have certain ideological concerns..." like you were uncovering some hidden truth or gotcha in between the lines here. Was that not what you intended to write?

And then like what is the point of your original comment if you agree that what you could only deduce earlier is now an obvious truism?

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