I have been deep diving into internet privacy and cyber security for a while now. I’ve noticed that any popular privacy related product will get haters for some reason. Obviously I am not going to support a privacy related product “no matter what controversy surrounds it”, in fact I have VERY specific requirements for that. And I get people being paranoid in that specific community, and that maybe people will be on the lookout for controversy. But people will be like “you use PROTON products? What a basic entry level choice” and it’s like do you not know WHY they are so popular in this space? Because they hit all the check boxes and are easy to use. One time I mentioned Signal and someone was like “isn’t that a CIA honeypot?” No. No it is not. There is no evidence whatsoever. And the code is right there, you can just read it. Just because some “normies” like a product doesn’t mean it’s a trick.
And people don’t seem to understand that it is sometimes not wise to completely avoid controversy. Who do you trust more, a group of devs (or even gasp a company) who has been around for 15 years, had a security flaw 3 years ago and patched it after someone noticed and passed independent 3rd party audits since then, or a brand new 1 man project that has no controversy (yet)?
So while I absolutely disagree with blind loyalty to anything, people are sometimes too quick to jump ship and end up being like the “yet you participate in society. Interesting!” meme.
Yeah, that’s how I look at a lot of products. There will be faults and there are some red lines that I won’t cross, but I’d rather a company have done minor faults, be open about them, and fix them rather than be brand new and possibly hiding a lot worse.
I completely agree. Nearly every product, service, or company in the privacy sphere has some controversy. If I based my choices on the lack of shitty behaviour, I would have to give up on the internet completely.
I have been deep diving into internet privacy and cyber security for a while now. I’ve noticed that any popular privacy related product will get haters for some reason. Obviously I am not going to support a privacy related product “no matter what controversy surrounds it”, in fact I have VERY specific requirements for that. And I get people being paranoid in that specific community, and that maybe people will be on the lookout for controversy. But people will be like “you use PROTON products? What a basic entry level choice” and it’s like do you not know WHY they are so popular in this space? Because they hit all the check boxes and are easy to use. One time I mentioned Signal and someone was like “isn’t that a CIA honeypot?” No. No it is not. There is no evidence whatsoever. And the code is right there, you can just read it. Just because some “normies” like a product doesn’t mean it’s a trick.
And people don’t seem to understand that it is sometimes not wise to completely avoid controversy. Who do you trust more, a group of devs (or even gasp a company) who has been around for 15 years, had a security flaw 3 years ago and patched it after someone noticed and passed independent 3rd party audits since then, or a brand new 1 man project that has no controversy (yet)?
So while I absolutely disagree with blind loyalty to anything, people are sometimes too quick to jump ship and end up being like the “yet you participate in society. Interesting!” meme.
Yeah, that’s how I look at a lot of products. There will be faults and there are some red lines that I won’t cross, but I’d rather a company have done minor faults, be open about them, and fix them rather than be brand new and possibly hiding a lot worse.
I completely agree. Nearly every product, service, or company in the privacy sphere has some controversy. If I based my choices on the lack of shitty behaviour, I would have to give up on the internet completely.