I see so many posts where a discussion about the best options for privacy/security related software are dominated by comments about how some entity always felt shady, they can’t be trusted and so on. How having optional things like crypto is the epitome of evil practices, even though it may have nothing to do with how the product actually fares in terms of what matters in the context.
Latest example is this thread and its top comment. (I know, the content of the article doesn’t even have anything to do with the browser.)
I’m tired of it. It doesn’t help.
We live in a society… that is rooted in capitalism. Development and support of any product needs to be sustainable. If in some cases crypto helps, so be it, as long as it doesn’t have an effect on the premise for using the product and is optional who cares?
If there are real concerns about someone promoting privacy when evidence shows otherwise I’m all ears. But it needs to be substantiated.
I don’t care about specific products, I don’t care about crypto. I do care about an informed discussion.
/rant
What I love to see is websites/resources like this one or this one with tangible information, but I rarely do see them in these discussions. (Although I have to admit I can’t verify the information presented.)
Well, some of the comments you mention is just people being people and writing a shortened representation of their state of mind / feelings. You sometimes want to say something, but don’t want to compile a fact checked summary of the wrongdoings of the last 10 years. So you just say ‘i have a bad feeling about this’. And people either remember reading those news articles back then, or they write something in return and you then get into more details. It’s not bad per se. But i agree. Just spitting out random opinions without anything substantial or even being right, is just a waste of everyone’s time.
It’s compounding though. With every post and every time there is an unsubstantiated top comment more people will just regurgitate what they’ve seen because upvotes means it must be true.