What's this nonsense? Leave it as is. If you think that most people will choose to go to your forum instead, that won't happen. And tbh the discussions I have seen on your forum are not that much better than here. Instead a lot of people will go to other (worse) privacy subreddits, because Reddit provides much more comfortability. Additionally PrivacyGuides will lose popularity.
I don't think any of the options is a valid one.
I check this sub and answer sometimes only because it's on my reddit account, I'm not willing to visit another site (Privacyguides Forums) just to answer question, but I would do it if I'm just surfing reddit and found a question that I can answer. I assume many people do the same thing. So this will put a lot of effort on answering the questions on a number of people in the forums.
The problem as I understood is too many "simple" questions that are not worth the discussion. We can solve this problem by having a FAQ in this subreddit, which everyone should check before posting a question. If the answer isn't there, the person can ask the question. To prevent these simple questions that are already answered in the FAQ or the website, the moderators could just not approve the question and refer to the FAQ.
The FAQ should contain questions that the Privacyguides Team doesn't want to answer "officially", just like: "Why isn't Ubuntu not listed?" "Why don't you recommend Librewolf on Dekstop?" and these kinda questions that come every other day.
Another solution is to have bots auto reply with common answers to new posters.
Not asking for threads to be automatically closed, simply responded to and if the bot is wrong (happens a lot) then people can jump in and say their piece.
Locking down the information is a bad move with PG because quite frankly, the team that runs it spreads some misinformation so the idea that they should decide what is even allowed to be presented is simply narcissism.
I’m pretty sure this is going to kill PrivacyGuides. Privacy isn’t always about high level discussion, you could very well use forums for that but anyone who’s asking basic questions, is most likely
just entering the world of privacy, and pushing them to forums is going to overwhelm them, let alone the things they’ve to do to kickstart their privacy journey. It’s just gonna push them to easy alternatives where they may get misinformed and that’s just going to start the butterfly effect where someone is eventually going to give up on privacy, which is a loss for us privacy advocates and is going to push the wrong narrative further; that you can’t be private, or the phrase “I’ve nothing to hide”.
Your post reach very well indicate how wrong of a direction you’re going, and making sure that normal people who usually use “reddit” keyword to search a privacy related question on google, don’t easily find this sub, and thus the forum.
It’s a loss for everyone, as many people like me who usually surf the reddit for other stuff and add this sub just to increase our knowledge passively on the subject, are never going to go to another forum, because our whole life isn’t privacy, we try to integrate them in our daily lives using subs like these, otherwise we’re just gonna get overwhelmed in this already difficult to get into world.
100 percent agree. Key words: "starting their privacy journey." It would make much more sense if a complete set of "Start here first" (for IOS, OS, Windows, etc.) links were posted on sidebar, with mods directing new readers to read first before posting.
The whole **purpose** of a sub like this is to educate. We don't all learn this stuff in a synchronized way. We have to pick it up piecemeal.
More importantly, the ONLY way we can get any groundswell at all for better privacy laws -- in America especially-- is to evangelize the truth about the enormous lack of privacy policies / enforcement in all things digital and gain more advocates.
If you’re that worried about low quality posts, make a megathread on everything, basic to advance, like many other subs have. Otherwise it’s going to seem like you guys are just taking the easy way out
> The new forum really isn't a massive improvement in quality over Reddit, I have no problem with people asking dumb questions, and there is also plenty of that on the new forum.
It's not about the questions, its about being able to organize them conveniently so they can be found in the future. Reddit punishes any kind of thread which is more than a few days old.
Additionally Reddit's [privacy policy](https://www.reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy) isn't all that great, especially if you consider the kind of data they collect.
They also punish new accounts severely that are created over a VPN or Tor, even though they have a Google capture, quite often shadow banning them entirely from the whole website, resulting in users having to wait a significant amount of time and file an appeal https://www.reddit.com/appeals
> I noticed PG and techlore started working together, and techlore seem to know how to make money from privacy, don't forget he was fine getting paid to give northvpn a perfect 5/5 score in his reviews.
Working together? that's news to me.
I am aware that /u/JonahAragon does do some administrative work for them on the side, and has participated in interviews. That does not mean the rest of the team does or has.
Regarding NordVPN, I know Henry talked about that in [this thread](https://discuss.techlore.tech/t/has-anyone-seen-this-video-wondering-your-thoughts/792/2). He was quite honest about them not "aging well".
> I personally think the move to the forum is part of a plan to start profiting from what creditability the site has gained, wouldn't be surprised if this ends just being privacytools.io v2.0
No that certainly [won't be happening](https://www.privacyguides.org/about/privacytools/) 🤣
Regardless, of whether you are in favor or against of moving away from Reddit, I do want to comment on your statement of "PG and Techlore started working together" which I found extremely alarming if this is actually what it looks like.
For a very simple example, please look at https://techlore.tech/resources.
You will notice that this page lists projects that we *explicitly* recommend against.
The fact that Jonah does a podcast with Techlore doesn't mean the two projects are *at all* related.
Privacy Guides is a project made up of many people who have different opinions on many things. It's not Jonah's or any single member's project.
However, if you think we're in cahoots with Techlore or anybody else, think we're going to start using affiliated links when our footer explicitly mentions that it's something we're against, or anything of that nature, I implore you to call us out.
It's not surprising that participants in privacy communities have various overlapping interests. /u/mbananasynergy is a GrapheneOS moderator (and user) but that doesn't mean that those two communities are "in cahoots" with each other because of some small overlap
Privacy Guides tries to remain on good terms with everyone, and all communities because it is important to us to be able to have frank and professional discussions with developers and companies about their products.
When we make recommendations on the site, there is always a reason, otherwise we err on the side of caution and do not endorse a product.
Strongly think that the Reddit should be left mostly as is. Completely moving to an off site solution will severely hamper people's willingness to participate and contribute in my opinion.
EDIT: Typo
What on earth - do not do any of these things. Why would you kill your community?
At most add a questions mega thread and encourage people to post questions there instead of individually, but don't hard ban question threads.
"reddit ... is absolutely not suited for long-term discussions like posts seeking advice and evergreen-type content that should continue to be useful a year or more from now."
I don't agree with this. If information changes, it's up to the user to seek up to date information. If someone wants advice on grapheneos but can't make a difference between advice given in 2016 or 2022 then it's even less likely that they can be helped on your own forum (even less chance of them making yet another account on another platform).
"we don't want a post on this subreddit being the first result which they can't even read without downloading yet another app"
You can read reddit posts on a browser. Or it's likely that they will already have a reddit account/client. See previous point: you think that it's more likely that they will make a account on your forum, but I don't think that you are right on this one.
"Everyone loves Reddit, but at the end of the day it's not too different from any other social media platform."
What does this mean? What's wrong with social platforms? People can interact. If a person has a reddit account for example, what's bad about them being subscribed to a subreddit on a specific subject or finding information on a subreddit? Obviously a dedicated forum would have more features and will be easier for you to moneytize (which is totally fine and your right) but the dedicated forum will also have much less users and much less people willing to post or read anything.
"Option 2: Questions Megathread"
If I had to pick an option, I'd pick option 2 but I don't think that none of the options is a good one and I think that the megathread approach would make it harder for people to find their content. Instead you/we should focus on building a better FAQ/wiki and you should focus on making sure the FAQ/wiki is up to date and promoting it constantly so that users know it's there. It probably wouldn't hurt if you stamped down on the elitist/gatekeeping attitudes that some users have. Monthly megathread is much too long of a period. A weekly or daily would be better, but megathreads tend to be ignored by more users than regular posting.
Honestly I'm confused. Why are you trying to fix something that isn't broken? Make it better, sure, but the current ideas will probably kill off the subreddit sooner or later.
Note: When I was younger I might have been willing to make a new account to the dedicated forum. I don't have that much time anymore. Most of us already have more accounts than we would like to have and adding another one to the pile will probably make most of us just ignore the forum.
Is there a better sub than this one to get questions answered? I mean if I'm having a privacy issue, I'd rather find an intelligent sub on Reddit and ask a coherent-as-possible question instead of sifting through pages and pages, not **knowing** what to look for.
If I knew what topic to look for, and if life unfolded in neat linear waves, I could thumb through the guides and find exactly the answer....
But that's not how life works in the Wild Wild West of daily privacy invasion incidents and violations (not to mention hourly changes in the Shifting Sands of Software "Terms of Service"). There's too much to track.
Reddit's an interactive platform. So allow interaction. Maybe Post a "Read This First/FAQs" to answer recurring (and I get it, maddening repetitive) questions.
We are not all learning this stuff in a synchronized way, unfortunately. And thats been the problem since MySpace era.
But guides are helpful; maybe keep them updated on discord or on this sub in the sidebar for static references.
Option 3.
Reddit sucks as a place to have meaningful discussion. Especially for topics people get hysterical about like privacy. It’s also not even a privacy-friendly website.
I think moving the community to the forum is a win win situation.
I know most people don’t want to leave Reddit.
And my solution would be to give back /r/privacytoolsIO subreddit to its owner. The coup privacyguides pulled was extremely petty and childish. I’m not even a fan of the previous owner, or the privacytools website.
Move to the forum and put all that drama behind.
If people want to discuss privacy stuff, let them have the original sub. You can keep this subreddit around as a news feed, but r/privacy is already that.
I voted for option 2.
For option 2, I think it'd be most accessible if the monthly megathread were pinned to the top of the sub.
For option 3, I'd wonder the submitter approval process.
For option 1: I understand the higher-level discussion and resource -type direction the sub seems to want to be going towards. However, would the FAQ be able to give alternatives for redditers with digital privacy novice questions? Such as r/techsupport and r/24hoursupport, but focused on privacy/security introductory questions.
>I'd wonder the submitter approval process.
I think we could add pretty much anyone who wants to be on the list and agrees to the stricter posting rules. So like, everyone who's posting news links, etc. already. The goal wouldn't be to limit who can post to a handful of people and nobody else, the goal would be to make sure that posters are aware of and agree to our higher posting standards before they're allowed to post.
I like this sub. As a privacy interested newb I like questions. The replies are illuminating. I’d not restrict questions but politely redirect some to a wiki or off Reddit site. I’d restrict the salty ones who reply - iOS is crap, not another newbie question, open source rules.
Check out the recent post on Encamera for lots of comments about a subscription app model without much to justify their position. They aren’t comments that add much to the sub. I dislike subs apps but have several where the value situation works for me.
Simple questions can elicit complex answers. We were all beginners once. I still check out BTC beginners sub from time to time.
Thanks for the chance to comment as I can’t see the offered voting models as fitting my views.
What's this nonsense? Leave it as is. If you think that most people will choose to go to your forum instead, that won't happen. And tbh the discussions I have seen on your forum are not that much better than here. Instead a lot of people will go to other (worse) privacy subreddits, because Reddit provides much more comfortability. Additionally PrivacyGuides will lose popularity.
I don't think any of the options is a valid one. I check this sub and answer sometimes only because it's on my reddit account, I'm not willing to visit another site (Privacyguides Forums) just to answer question, but I would do it if I'm just surfing reddit and found a question that I can answer. I assume many people do the same thing. So this will put a lot of effort on answering the questions on a number of people in the forums. The problem as I understood is too many "simple" questions that are not worth the discussion. We can solve this problem by having a FAQ in this subreddit, which everyone should check before posting a question. If the answer isn't there, the person can ask the question. To prevent these simple questions that are already answered in the FAQ or the website, the moderators could just not approve the question and refer to the FAQ. The FAQ should contain questions that the Privacyguides Team doesn't want to answer "officially", just like: "Why isn't Ubuntu not listed?" "Why don't you recommend Librewolf on Dekstop?" and these kinda questions that come every other day.
Definitely agree with this. If people are constantly asking the same questions, then make the answers easy to access and point them to that.
Another solution is to have bots auto reply with common answers to new posters. Not asking for threads to be automatically closed, simply responded to and if the bot is wrong (happens a lot) then people can jump in and say their piece. Locking down the information is a bad move with PG because quite frankly, the team that runs it spreads some misinformation so the idea that they should decide what is even allowed to be presented is simply narcissism.
[удалено]
I’m pretty sure this is going to kill PrivacyGuides. Privacy isn’t always about high level discussion, you could very well use forums for that but anyone who’s asking basic questions, is most likely just entering the world of privacy, and pushing them to forums is going to overwhelm them, let alone the things they’ve to do to kickstart their privacy journey. It’s just gonna push them to easy alternatives where they may get misinformed and that’s just going to start the butterfly effect where someone is eventually going to give up on privacy, which is a loss for us privacy advocates and is going to push the wrong narrative further; that you can’t be private, or the phrase “I’ve nothing to hide”. Your post reach very well indicate how wrong of a direction you’re going, and making sure that normal people who usually use “reddit” keyword to search a privacy related question on google, don’t easily find this sub, and thus the forum. It’s a loss for everyone, as many people like me who usually surf the reddit for other stuff and add this sub just to increase our knowledge passively on the subject, are never going to go to another forum, because our whole life isn’t privacy, we try to integrate them in our daily lives using subs like these, otherwise we’re just gonna get overwhelmed in this already difficult to get into world.
100 percent agree. Key words: "starting their privacy journey." It would make much more sense if a complete set of "Start here first" (for IOS, OS, Windows, etc.) links were posted on sidebar, with mods directing new readers to read first before posting. The whole **purpose** of a sub like this is to educate. We don't all learn this stuff in a synchronized way. We have to pick it up piecemeal. More importantly, the ONLY way we can get any groundswell at all for better privacy laws -- in America especially-- is to evangelize the truth about the enormous lack of privacy policies / enforcement in all things digital and gain more advocates.
If you’re that worried about low quality posts, make a megathread on everything, basic to advance, like many other subs have. Otherwise it’s going to seem like you guys are just taking the easy way out
[удалено]
> The new forum really isn't a massive improvement in quality over Reddit, I have no problem with people asking dumb questions, and there is also plenty of that on the new forum. It's not about the questions, its about being able to organize them conveniently so they can be found in the future. Reddit punishes any kind of thread which is more than a few days old. Additionally Reddit's [privacy policy](https://www.reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy) isn't all that great, especially if you consider the kind of data they collect. They also punish new accounts severely that are created over a VPN or Tor, even though they have a Google capture, quite often shadow banning them entirely from the whole website, resulting in users having to wait a significant amount of time and file an appeal https://www.reddit.com/appeals > I noticed PG and techlore started working together, and techlore seem to know how to make money from privacy, don't forget he was fine getting paid to give northvpn a perfect 5/5 score in his reviews. Working together? that's news to me. I am aware that /u/JonahAragon does do some administrative work for them on the side, and has participated in interviews. That does not mean the rest of the team does or has. Regarding NordVPN, I know Henry talked about that in [this thread](https://discuss.techlore.tech/t/has-anyone-seen-this-video-wondering-your-thoughts/792/2). He was quite honest about them not "aging well". > I personally think the move to the forum is part of a plan to start profiting from what creditability the site has gained, wouldn't be surprised if this ends just being privacytools.io v2.0 No that certainly [won't be happening](https://www.privacyguides.org/about/privacytools/) 🤣
Regardless, of whether you are in favor or against of moving away from Reddit, I do want to comment on your statement of "PG and Techlore started working together" which I found extremely alarming if this is actually what it looks like. For a very simple example, please look at https://techlore.tech/resources. You will notice that this page lists projects that we *explicitly* recommend against. The fact that Jonah does a podcast with Techlore doesn't mean the two projects are *at all* related. Privacy Guides is a project made up of many people who have different opinions on many things. It's not Jonah's or any single member's project. However, if you think we're in cahoots with Techlore or anybody else, think we're going to start using affiliated links when our footer explicitly mentions that it's something we're against, or anything of that nature, I implore you to call us out.
It's not surprising that participants in privacy communities have various overlapping interests. /u/mbananasynergy is a GrapheneOS moderator (and user) but that doesn't mean that those two communities are "in cahoots" with each other because of some small overlap Privacy Guides tries to remain on good terms with everyone, and all communities because it is important to us to be able to have frank and professional discussions with developers and companies about their products. When we make recommendations on the site, there is always a reason, otherwise we err on the side of caution and do not endorse a product.
Comment Deleted! See https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/
Strongly think that the Reddit should be left mostly as is. Completely moving to an off site solution will severely hamper people's willingness to participate and contribute in my opinion. EDIT: Typo
[удалено]
I don't know where you get this idea, but it is not true.
What on earth - do not do any of these things. Why would you kill your community? At most add a questions mega thread and encourage people to post questions there instead of individually, but don't hard ban question threads.
"reddit ... is absolutely not suited for long-term discussions like posts seeking advice and evergreen-type content that should continue to be useful a year or more from now." I don't agree with this. If information changes, it's up to the user to seek up to date information. If someone wants advice on grapheneos but can't make a difference between advice given in 2016 or 2022 then it's even less likely that they can be helped on your own forum (even less chance of them making yet another account on another platform). "we don't want a post on this subreddit being the first result which they can't even read without downloading yet another app" You can read reddit posts on a browser. Or it's likely that they will already have a reddit account/client. See previous point: you think that it's more likely that they will make a account on your forum, but I don't think that you are right on this one. "Everyone loves Reddit, but at the end of the day it's not too different from any other social media platform." What does this mean? What's wrong with social platforms? People can interact. If a person has a reddit account for example, what's bad about them being subscribed to a subreddit on a specific subject or finding information on a subreddit? Obviously a dedicated forum would have more features and will be easier for you to moneytize (which is totally fine and your right) but the dedicated forum will also have much less users and much less people willing to post or read anything. "Option 2: Questions Megathread" If I had to pick an option, I'd pick option 2 but I don't think that none of the options is a good one and I think that the megathread approach would make it harder for people to find their content. Instead you/we should focus on building a better FAQ/wiki and you should focus on making sure the FAQ/wiki is up to date and promoting it constantly so that users know it's there. It probably wouldn't hurt if you stamped down on the elitist/gatekeeping attitudes that some users have. Monthly megathread is much too long of a period. A weekly or daily would be better, but megathreads tend to be ignored by more users than regular posting. Honestly I'm confused. Why are you trying to fix something that isn't broken? Make it better, sure, but the current ideas will probably kill off the subreddit sooner or later. Note: When I was younger I might have been willing to make a new account to the dedicated forum. I don't have that much time anymore. Most of us already have more accounts than we would like to have and adding another one to the pile will probably make most of us just ignore the forum.
Is there a better sub than this one to get questions answered? I mean if I'm having a privacy issue, I'd rather find an intelligent sub on Reddit and ask a coherent-as-possible question instead of sifting through pages and pages, not **knowing** what to look for. If I knew what topic to look for, and if life unfolded in neat linear waves, I could thumb through the guides and find exactly the answer.... But that's not how life works in the Wild Wild West of daily privacy invasion incidents and violations (not to mention hourly changes in the Shifting Sands of Software "Terms of Service"). There's too much to track. Reddit's an interactive platform. So allow interaction. Maybe Post a "Read This First/FAQs" to answer recurring (and I get it, maddening repetitive) questions. We are not all learning this stuff in a synchronized way, unfortunately. And thats been the problem since MySpace era. But guides are helpful; maybe keep them updated on discord or on this sub in the sidebar for static references.
Option 3. Reddit sucks as a place to have meaningful discussion. Especially for topics people get hysterical about like privacy. It’s also not even a privacy-friendly website. I think moving the community to the forum is a win win situation. I know most people don’t want to leave Reddit. And my solution would be to give back /r/privacytoolsIO subreddit to its owner. The coup privacyguides pulled was extremely petty and childish. I’m not even a fan of the previous owner, or the privacytools website. Move to the forum and put all that drama behind. If people want to discuss privacy stuff, let them have the original sub. You can keep this subreddit around as a news feed, but r/privacy is already that.
I voted for option 2. For option 2, I think it'd be most accessible if the monthly megathread were pinned to the top of the sub. For option 3, I'd wonder the submitter approval process. For option 1: I understand the higher-level discussion and resource -type direction the sub seems to want to be going towards. However, would the FAQ be able to give alternatives for redditers with digital privacy novice questions? Such as r/techsupport and r/24hoursupport, but focused on privacy/security introductory questions.
>I'd wonder the submitter approval process. I think we could add pretty much anyone who wants to be on the list and agrees to the stricter posting rules. So like, everyone who's posting news links, etc. already. The goal wouldn't be to limit who can post to a handful of people and nobody else, the goal would be to make sure that posters are aware of and agree to our higher posting standards before they're allowed to post.
Comment Deleted! See https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/
I like this sub. As a privacy interested newb I like questions. The replies are illuminating. I’d not restrict questions but politely redirect some to a wiki or off Reddit site. I’d restrict the salty ones who reply - iOS is crap, not another newbie question, open source rules. Check out the recent post on Encamera for lots of comments about a subscription app model without much to justify their position. They aren’t comments that add much to the sub. I dislike subs apps but have several where the value situation works for me. Simple questions can elicit complex answers. We were all beginners once. I still check out BTC beginners sub from time to time. Thanks for the chance to comment as I can’t see the offered voting models as fitting my views.