
Levels of Safety Online - type0
http://edunham.net/2017/06/27/internet_safety.html
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matt4077
This doesn't strike me as very insightful...

Let me start with the most important objection: he's basically advocating for
anonymity to protect oneself from violence. Asking the (potential) victim to
change their behaviour because of others' willingness to break the law tends
to be unhelpful, especially in the realm of political violence, where victims
are looking for support more than actual safety advice.*

It's especially egregious considering he's agonising about a problem that's
basically solved. At least in the US and Europe, acts of political violence
are negligible. And while the few that remain are tragic and deserve further
efforts, his attitude of we'll-never-solve-this-abandon-ship seems...off?

Some more unsorted notes:

\- If at all, I'd frame this problem more in terms of political dissidents in
Turkey/China/Russia/etc. (But yes–this post was apparently inspired by a
recent meeting, making the focus understandable)

\- Those levels he comes up with seem to be completely arbitrary. I could
invent as many such levels as needed: "the safety to order physical goods",
"the safety to know that medical information is accurate" etc.

\- His "golden" level of online safety comes across as a sort of caricature.
Firstly, I'm not sure if anybody uses the term "social justice advocate"
without irony or ill intent–but I'm not a native speaker and may be mistaken.

\- As one of those people he's talking about, I think the "“safety” most
social justice advocates tend to focus on" is the safety of a woman having an
abortion, or a poor African-American being stopped by police. But yeah, I
guess there are some that get death threats and it's probably not a good life
when the mob comes for you.

~~~
hnzix
Doxxing, human flesh mobs, griefing, swatting and attacking livelihood are
very much risks for online publishers of all cultural stripes. This is not a
solved problem.

 _> Asking the (potential) victim to change their behaviour_ TFA explicitly
states that "preventing the attacker from harming the content creator" is the
ideal. They are pointing out additional defensive steps that can be taken.

~~~
edunham
Yep, taking action to prevent oneself from coming to harm while also working
toward a world in which the mechanism of harm doesn't happen are not mutually
exclusive. A cyclist who campaigns for safer bike lanes and legislation
against cars hitting bikes probably still wears a helmet.

