Isn't the super dramatic shift in public opinion on this topic the exact thing that makes it such a good example? Isn't the point that anonymity is not considered a universal right yet it is obviously a good thing once considering this example and others? This is a super weird and wrong way to read it.

>It also quietly insinuates that only people with a certain minority lifestyle would care about privacy or that their privacy is somehow more important than others. It's not.

How exactly does their post insinuate that? this comment is the "I don't even see color" as applied to internet privacy (with a touch of "just don't rub it in our faces")

About 68% support gay marriage yet one political party keeps trying to roll it back.

Similar support for abortion being legal yet that was rolled back not too long ago.

Just because a topic has wide support doesn’t mean it’s not under attack and worth defending.

I can't read this any other way than, "Do people really need to talk about their own top of mind problems when I don't identify with that?"

The reason this is relevant is because the statistics you quote represent a HUGE swing in public opinion. Only when comparing to things like slavery can you find such a swing in public opinion compared to 20 years prior, and that one had a war fought over the state's rights to do it.

Actually it's done the opposite of what you suggest. It improved the quality of discourse by giving a simple concrete example all of us can understand and most of us would agree with (that vulnerable people are safer because of anonymity). It didn't imply what you're saying it does, and it's kinda weird that you think that.

I don't know why you added statistics (you didn't really make a point with them?), but assuming you meant "gay people don't really need to worry", you actually bolstered the opposite argument. If only 71% of Americans support gay rights, that means 59 million people think the state should criminalize him. Try to put yourself in that position. 59 million people - you don't know who, but you know they probably live in your community - that don't want you to be able to get married, have a significant other, or have any PDA in media because it would "corrupt" kids. In 2016, 49 people were murdered in the Pulse Nightclub because they were gay. In 2020, a transgender woman was murdered because the murderer was afraid someone would think he was gay. Every year there are acts of violence against gay and trans people because of their sexuality. But nobody has ever been killed for being straight.

Compare the state of transgender rights 10 years ago to the situation now, where a trans person can be literally arrested for going to the bathroom in the wrong state. Or abortion, which was legal everywhere five years ago but now has laws on the books in multiple states encouraging vigilantes to report violations for a cash reward. Supercharged AI making it easy to identify minorities at an industrial scale in the near future is a totally legitimate thing to fear, especially for people in those groups who would likely be the first to be targeted.

I have no idea how you read a statement about how nazis and flame baiters should be able to speak their mind and then concluded that the author only cares about some minorities.

Given that the author didn't say any of the things you claimed, and indeed said the opposite, it leads one to conclude you have a problem with the example used.

On the contrary, I find it a highly effective way to convey something that should be obvious but is often not. As you said, privacy is a universal right, but many don't consider it important until viscerally presented with examples of why it is. Kelsey's writing is immediately effective at doing so.

> 71% of Americans support Gay Rights (more than any other political issue polled)... Privacy is a universal right that's important to everyone.

Per you, it surely must be important to fewer than 71% of Americans, no? The state of infringement on privacy seems to evidence that it's not so important to a lot of people such that they continue to be perfectly willing to elect and re-elect the politicians who enact the changes allowing infringing on it/fail to legislate in favor of privacy. Connecting it to an issue more people care about seems an attempt to argue for its important to those who otherwise are willing to look the other way.

FWIW, I fed my reply above into Claude and asked it to guess who wrote it. It refused (for safety) while also calling me out: "The style here (tight logical structure, the "per you" construction, the move of turning someone's own framing back on them) is common across a lot of contrarian-leaning commenters on HN"

I read it as an attempt to reach the sort of people who think anonymity is bad because it stops them from cancelling Nazis.

> people with a certain minority lifestyle

That phrase is a dehumanizing, Nazi-style talking point: it frames a group of people as a “lifestyle” problem instead of as human beings, which is a common setup for stigma and persecution. Nazi ideology repeatedly used this kind of language to normalize hatred and make targeted groups seem unnatural or dangerous.

Calling people a “minority lifestyle” is not neutral wording; it reduces identity to something frivolous or deviant. Extremist movements have historically used similar framing to make prejudice sound reasonable and to recruit others into it.

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