[tor-talk] Tor is anti-censorship software

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 03:10:42PM -0400, Paul Syverson wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 11:54:04AM -0400, Mansour Moufid wrote:
> > The advertising doesn't correspond to reality, because it's false
> > and dishonest, not because the user is dumb.
> 
> Why do you imply the user is dumb? I certainly reject that
> characterization of users. I assume that, like myself, most users
> can't give an accurate description capturing every important property
> of most of the tools they use, microchips, automobiles, airplanes,
> etc.  That's not because they're dumb, but because nobody can, or
> indeed should try to, know all the important things about everything
> they rely on.

"Users are dum" in this context is not pejorative!

It means many tor users these days, because it is so easy to use,
are not able to take the language as it is currently used on the tpo
website, and subtract out what it does not mean.

To be more blunt, these "dum" users are reading a lot more into the
terminology --as it is currently used on the tpo website--, than they
should.

Average users who are competant to install TBB with a "yeah, I want some
anonymity" and a "great, protects us from traffic analysis" and a
whistle dixie.

Users should be reading such terms extremely conservatively, and with
many "caveats", and the tpo website does not help them to assume these
caveats, so these dum users make all sorts of assumptions based on
intuitive and --common-- understandings of the terms as currently used
on the tpo website.

That can, and should, be named as false marketing.


> What I think Tor does well (but could always do better)
> is get the gist of things across, and then (more than most other
> communities or organizations) provide the means for anyone who has the
> time, tools, and inclination to fruitfully probe as far as they wish.

TPO website needs to lower expectations.

Common understanding of terms used ("dum users") causes assumptions by
these dum users which do not match reality.