Hacker News

points by ashleyn 1 day ago | 0 comments

Tech companies used to demand warrants/subpoenas for these kinds of things. Now it seems they just gladly hand it over with a wide smile on their face. Am I the only one to notice this shift?

[–] newhotelowner 1 day ago

Indian government is banning 1000s of posts and accounts everyday on Insta/FB/Reddit/X in India. They used to notify the user and let them know that this is a government requested tack down. Now, they just say, their automated system flagged the content.

[–] dijit 1 day ago

> Tech companies used to demand warrants/subpoenas for these kinds of things.

Two things are true

1) Tech has become more financial people and "techbros" than principled nerds.

2) The powers of the USG have become a lot stronger and far reaching- quite literally to the level where talking about complying with an order is itself a crime.

[–] davidw 1 day ago

I want to reunite with my 'principled nerds' so badly. Things weren't perfect, not by a long shot, back then, but there was a sense of hope and excitement about using technology to make the world a better place.

[–] thepryz 1 day ago

Agreed. One of the reasons I'm seeing myself becoming more of a luddite looking forward to retiring offline with minimal technology is precisley because online discourse is largely comprised of unserious people confidently incorrect and technology companies have largely stopped trying to make peoples' lives better and are more focused on quarterly earnings.

[–] dbspin 1 day ago

Hackerspaces still exist - and seem to be booming again since the tech layoffs. Dropped by Noisebridge while I was visiting SF and as the kids say, the vibes were immaculate.

[–] cowlevel 1 day ago

Do you participate in a hackerspace though, or do you just visit? I've realised I've become far too passive as a result of consuming mass internet media.

[–] johnisgood 1 day ago

You and I both. :/

[–] DANmode 1 day ago

Both of these are serious, but decades-old problems.

[–] piltdownman 1 day ago

They used to operate in a legally consistent Western Democracy. They no longer do. OpSec for most involved in basic social activism needs to now be at the level of 'Journalist in a Dictatorship' or stricter.

At this point there's a non-zero chance you and your employees are detained on spurious national security grounds, or simply end up in an ICE internment centre - accidently or otherwise.

[–] BHSPitMonkey 1 day ago

That was before doing so would almost certainly result in immediate retaliation from the executive branch.

[–] cowlevel 1 day ago

Are you talking about the individuals or the companies? Companies can lie a lot of the time and just say they don't have the requested information, and the government has no way to know, unless they usually comply with similar requests. The government can seize servers, but can't compel disk encryption keys yet.

[–] phendrenad2 1 day ago

Your mistake is assuming that the company is anti-ICE.

[–] bmitc 1 day ago

People care more about money than morals and ethics and just being a decent human being and citizen.

[–] lioeters 1 day ago

"Authoritarian capitalism is a system in which corporations ally themselves with repressive or anti-democratic political regimes, benefiting from protection and impunity."

[–] cestith 1 day ago

There's a shorter phrase for corporations and other large organizations colluding with or controlling an authoritarian government for the organizations' own ends at the expense of at least some subset of the people. It's actually only one word, and there are three options. Mussolini had corporatism on the mind. You probably know the other two, and one is a proper noun.

[–] zeusk 1 day ago

You should call the nazis out imho

[–] cestith 1 day ago

Fair enough. The two other words are fascism and Nazism.