Traveling to the wrong webpage pwning you is a piece of hacklore so outdated they replaced it with the updated QR code version. Clicking a link has not been a dangerous activity for years. When the rare browser exploit is discovered, it's patched immediately.
I must be misunderstanding you because phishing happens weekly with huge consequences. It's not browser exploits, it's an email that looks legit enough with an incorrect URL or a page that's so convincingly identical to PayPal you feed it the information. Just this week:
Phishing is tricking someone into providing confidential information to a malicious party/site. "Don't click on suspicious links" is, IMO, an overreaction that fails to teach people the core lesson that is "Always confirm that you're providing sensitive information to the party you think you are".
Online, we've made it exceptionally easy to make those sorts of checks: a website, served over HTTPS, is coming from the url. Other systems are so, so much worse about this. Any system where unauthorized impersonation is possible is a technical failure, and the fault for abuse of that unauthorized impersonation is on the providers and designers of that system. Like phone calls. Or email.
People tend to be pretty good at differentiating between "this person can be trusted with sensitive information", and "I shouldn't trust this stranger". What they need are the tools to determine who they're talking to.
Silicon Valley didn’t ruin the internet on its own; it just magnified a culture of deregulation and quick profit that has shaped U.S. policy for decades.
It’s worth asking what might have happened if the web had started somewhere else, in a place that treated it as a public utility instead of a private marketplace.
Would we still have ended up with the same mess of ads, data collection, and walled gardens?
Maybe America’s real contribution to the web wasn’t technology at all, but the story that innovation excuses everything.
I recommend reading Mark Carney’s writings before taking Doctorow’s stuff at face value.
> Silicon Valley didn’t ruin the internet on its own; it just magnified a culture of deregulation and quick profit that has shaped U.S. policy for decades.
That's a good point. Or another way to say it is that silicon valley didn't ruin the internet any more than a bunch of other companies ruined other market sectors.
Article leans heavily towards American social norms which are so far from global norms because it treats the U.S. model of dating (apps, atomized urban life, and market logic) as universal, ignoring that in much of the world relationships still form through family, community, or social context rather than algorithmic matchmaking. It’s a very “Silicon Valley is the world” kind of framing.
For example a lot of communities in Canada just don’t work like this. Highly incompatible with this kind of social network, mostly due to the pre existing real social fabric.
And: shout out to Max and Chris because they really got it with OKC in the beginning, which this article doesn’t seem to say anything about other than just to name drop.
The Patel story doesn’t introduce new technology, or policy insight, it’s a news cycle scandal, which this community treats as superficial material, not suitable for posting. I’d encourage you to find better online audiences that are more focused on America.
It's always interesting to see no US commentators on threads like this and I wonder if other countries could take notes. I've been laid off in the US and been able to lean on the social safety net with no issues while seeking new employment, despite the animosity that seems to exist between the system and people who have never used it.
Thank you for posting this. I've been listening to them all night. They are great, I am from the US and grew up on old school punk. This reminds me of that. Excellent!
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