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mindslight 3 hours ago

Major publications are pretty fucking mid...

Also do you have anything to say about my other points? Your other comments were seemingly substantive, but now you're just being combative for combativeness's sake.

buellerbueller 2 hours ago | parent [-]

>The destructionist movement is more appropriately seen as arbitraging away existing concern about the issues they claim to take up. Their politicians' main use for reformist political causes are as cudgels for threatening businesses with, after which they back off once their own pockets get lined. As a libertarian who cares about many of the causes of individual freedom they dishonestly champion, I'm well acquainted with their abuse of ideals.

You are making points about their "movement" and generalities about what those politicians do. I don't care about their movement or their general behavior, because I will take this win for privacy to the extent that it is successful at getting devices like this more regulated or (unlikely) eliminated.

Do you think that Trump's coalition is internally values-consistent? I sure don't; but they effectively made abortion illegal in a lot of places, and it seemed to make them happy like it had been a long term goal of theirs or something.

mindslight 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The thing is that I do not see this ending up as a win for privacy. At best it's political grandstanding that will end up in a quid-pro-quo settlement and get dropped by the following news cycle. But there are worse possibilities like it's used as a cudgel to force the manufacturers to add "age verification" (eg sign into an account on the TV to be able to use it at all), or other creeping digital authoritarian dynamic which will then be sold as a "win".

A fundamental difficulty is that there is very little legal basis for a right to privacy. An AG is incapable of changing that, especially after commercial surveillance practices have been around for decades (precluding common-law approaches to novel behavior). Legislatures are where we need constructive action on this topic.

Which is why the generally performative behavior of the destructionists on the vast majority of causes they claim to champion is highly relevant. I'd say the few "successful goals" of the destructionist movement (criminalizing abortion, jackboots attacking minorities, appointing destructionist judges) are exceptions that prove the rule on how generally non-constructive their pushes are.