Constructive measures to help people communicate freely

[Paul Boddie]

On Monday 26. March 2018 23.30.31 Daniel Pocock wrote:
> 
> You wrote "telling people that they are bad", but I only said the habits
> are bad, not the people.
> 
> If I say a habit is bad, I am not saying the person is bad.  Everybody
> has some bad habits but that doesn't mean everybody is bad.

Well, I guess that a habit is something that people are compelled to do, and 
that even if it is bad for them, they are not intentionally pursuing it out of 
malice either towards themselves or towards others. Still, a reminder that 
they are doing something that is bad for them or others can make them feel 
that they are bad, depending on how it is phrased.

Anyway, I want to concentrate on constructive measures that go beyond advocacy 
or behavioural engineering, and I believe you have also invested time and 
effort in those, too.

> Even dumb phones are surprisingly good at monitoring you.  The phone
> number alone is a powerful mechanism for joining the dots.  SMS
> "authentication" is not about security at all, it is about linking you
> to all your other online accounts, credit records, online job searches,
> etc.

I read all sorts of things about how such data is used. From what I have heard 
about the devices themselves, although there are limited options for 
engineering legally-compliant devices, initiatives like Neo900 which seek to 
isolate the different aspects of such devices are well-advised workarounds.

Paul