Hacker Public Radio

Your ideas, projects, opinions - podcasted.

New episodes Monday through Friday.


HPR4012: RE: show comments.

Hosted by Some Guy On The Internet on 2023-12-19 00:00:00
Download or Listen

RE: show comments.

Sgoti replies to a comment or two.

Why unsubscribe?

I don't know how it is in the US, but in Europe, a newsletter by law needs to have a clear way of unsubscribing by providing a link somewhere.
Why unsubscribe? 1. For the environment. It is dirt cheap to spam e-mails around. But the amount adds up in electricity and traffic. 2. For your own privacy. 2a. If you use a commercial mail provider that scans your mails, then each time you get one of those, it is scanned and the profile on you grows. 2b. In case the sender of the newsletter is ever hacked (chances are it will at a certain point), your address will leak to the crackers. 2c. The sender has your address and can (and probably will) trade it for money. In an ideal world (we all like to think that hope dies last) they delete your address when you unsubscribe. If not, it's probably a violation of GDPR.

This show is very opinionated

The nice thing about podcasts and radio is that you can monologue whatever nonsense you like and act like it is the single truth in the universe. That is exactly what is going on this show. First there is some useful information about sextortion, the forms it manifests in and consequences it can have in real life, that's the good stuff. Then comes the bad and the straight-out ugly bit. While the speaker starts of with a pretty factual analysis, eventually he slides into a very much opinionated stance against any form of digital eroticism. Don't do ***** kids! Where have we heard that before, right? Seriously, if you are an adult having a problem with the fact that people exchange nudes in their sexual discovery journey then that is just your own moral problem, do not project that on the rest of the world please. People have done that about sex, drugs, music, religious believes, cultural habits, and pretty much everything we humans design to entertain ourselves and to carry out our identity into the world. Saying "Don't do that" really is totally random moral stance since what is found to be offensive in your part of the world might be totally innocent behavior where I live and vice versa. So, again, because repetition seems to work for Coca-Cola: don't project your own random moral objections onto the world. They are legit, they are rightfully yours to keep. But don't try to push them further than that, because that's just randomly stupid.

Poor quality.

SGOTY. Up to this point, your shows have been of good quality and well considered.
I will preface this with the fact that yes, sexstortion is something that exists. Observing some basic safety measures when using the internet could easily prevent it. It is a societal problem in, especially in the age of social media.
This show however, was a hideous disappointment.
Utterly condescending to other human beings, particularly victims of this. Moral-panic ridden pearl clutching nonsense.
You opted not to :- Actually speak with any victim of the phenomenon about their lived experience.
Nor did you cite any actual subject matter expert, such as Eva Galperin (Cybersecurity director at the EFF, works with sextortion victims), Violet Blue (an author and journalist who covers the phenomenon and adjacent social/tech matters extensively)
Your sources amount to :-
The FBI, a government agency known globally for utter incompetence in understanding social phenomena, and known to frequently lie to further its own, often ill-considered goals. and Reddit. REDDIT.
Thats a fairly clear cut case of source bias.
Repeated mentions of 'evidence' that you opt not to cite directly or clearly.
Nothing whatsoever besides moral grandstanding and a baseless belief you have any right to tell others how to conduct their personal lives.
Seriously, DO. BETTER.

Comments



More Information...


Copyright Information

Unless otherwise stated, our shows are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license.

The HPR Website Design is released to the Public Domain.