I am baffled that anyone thinks implication-of-action ambiguity and hidden security states without obvious controls, are acceptable security practices.

Individual-level ethics and respect are being dispensed with en masse. The excuse being that these companies operate "at scale".

But last time I checked, they are taking money from individuals. Or otherwise encouraging individuals to use their services.

So this lack of respect for individuals by specific large companies, is predicated on their encouraging users to trust them, and depend on them, without taking on any of the implied responsibility to not capriciously ruin someone's day or year. And then hard or soft stone wall them.

As someone who nearly lost everything due to the automated bureaucracy of a financial firm, I cannot stress: We are not safe. And we will not be safe until these companies are legally required to treat customer investment and dependency on their services, as valuable and necessarily recoverable, via prompt recourse and response, in cases where the automated bureaucratic systems fail.

Otherwise, this is going to keep getting worse.

When I hear how Microsoft helps someone who got attention, what I hear is that it takes extraordinary circumstances for Microsoft to care about the significant harm that there systems are causing many other people, today, who did not have the luck of this person.

And that they are very very aware of this.

I think we need to start using the word evil for this. Because it is. It is gross irresponsibility. Gross abuse of a power situation, of a strong dependency, that the company quite knowingly creates.

Software distribution is largely controlled by 3 companies; Microsoft, Google, and Apple. We used to have the web and web apps as an escape hatch, but, surprise, all 3 of those companies use a shared “safe” browsing blacklist that can be used to wipe your domain / website out of existence. Mozilla participates by using the same list which is a shame.

Big tech shouldn’t be allowed to control the platforms and the ability to distribute / blacklist software and sites. That needs to be legislated against and those companies need to be broken into a thousand pieces each.

A weak argument which suggests there is a strong parallel to a famous 20th century expansionist totalitarian.

A thoughtful witty self-effacing on point comment. Which for some reason gets no upvotes. No downvotes. No follow up comments.

Allegation of severe HN censorship. Further speculation on the political motives inside Y Combinator.

A link to a web archived version of the paywalled original.

I thought for sure this article was going to be political commentary!

(I would pay a lot for some fat 1500 page, leather-bound tome of wisdom and anecdotes about historical foot guns, by Carl von Clausewitz, titled "1D Chess". And it's inevitable multi-authored, Harvard-published much thicker contemporary-world sequel.)

They use sex as a weapon.

Their wars are legendary. They never give up. Never surrender. And the cycle never ends. Children of war.

The end game of "the replacement theory" when everyone fully commits.

Hey everyone! I found a sideless one over here! Get 'em!!

That depends on which side of "our values" you are talking about.

Are you orange team or green team?