Thanks for writing this. I enjoyed the article. I also listened to the episode of Tech Policy Press’ show that you were on and that was great. I initially found your article over on Bluesky where I lurk sometimes without an account, and I have to be honest that the way that people are slinging generalizations about your piece, it makes me never want to actually join the site.

The way that people zero in so heavily on the encryption part of your article, using it to throw away and ignore any other arguments you make about the much wider range of topics in the piece, it helps prove your point about how digital rights advocates and groups seem to have an aversion to grappling with bad outcomes. They want to either misrepresent (such as with the laws in Australia & Canada) or narrow on something they know will get the public on their side (the focus on encryption in the Durov case).

Over the last couple of years I came to a similar realization, that if the digital rights organizations do not change their tact and methods, recognizing their issues, it will lead to fed up progressives and politicians becoming fed up. And when they get fed up, they don’t want to listen to the organizations that cry wolf or wag their fingers. And that leads to the actual bad legislation that the digital rights orgs claim to fight against.

Orgs like the EFF attempt to roll it back a bit with their discussions of “comprehensive privacy legislation” and “Privacy First” series that target corporare data collection, but it feels like too little too late, as well as something they wrote in a dismissive manner so they can link to it any time someone asks them “So what do you want us to actually do?”.

I’m grateful for writers such as yourself and tech policy lawyers such as Mike Dunford, whose Bluesky account is where I found the article.

We need more people who realize that the status-quo is untenable and that we need to shift tactics and work toward positive tech outcomes & laws, rather than digital rights orgs saying “no” to any & all laws all over the world, whether they be good or bad. That latter path leads us to the people with power refusing to listen and just passing the bad laws.