post-truth society
I hate that the claim that we live in a post-truth society might be true. There are more and more moments when I have to argue about facts with people that should not be arguments because there is clear evidence.
I had a discussion recently with someone who believed that all password managers are evil and unsafe, out of ignorance. They thought the passwords are just stored plaintext in their cloud and if that is hacked, then the hackers have all the passwords.
Me and another person gently reassured them that this is a valid concern and I used to have it too before I got one, but that it actually works differently. I summarized how it works in very easy sloppy laymen terms - boiling down to the encryption and all that. They understandably asked “If they don’t have my Master Password, how can they validate my login?” and again, two of us explained it as best as we could - how a lot happens on device, nothing gets sent back, etc etc. and even had the official documentation of multiple password managers handy.
But it was all useless as the person just avoided it all like “but that doesn’t even matter right now” or “yeah they say that but does it REALLY happen” or “it still doesn’t FEEL safe”. Has to be the only instance where I stand behind “facts don’t care about your feelings”. You can hardly fake something like that mechanism and people can and often will listen in to what gets sent in and out of their network and as it is open source, someone would have noticed already via either of these routes.
These are products used by entire organizations, recommended by cybersecurity experts, etc etc. there is just a level of vetting your uninformed gut feeling and paranoia is not comparable to. The narcissism at times to be like: “Yeah, I who doesn’t know how this works at all knows more about this than the people who do it as a job because I get scared.”
Like oh my god, you don’t need to use any of these services - but what is so hard about saying: “Thanks for telling me, I will think about it!” Or: “Thanks, I’m not yet ready to use them though”. Or: “Thanks, I am still on the fence but it helps a little.”
Still annoying to hear that, but at least you’re not fighting facts with weird arguments and reaches based entirely on feelings. Rational and intelligent people are able to change their opinions when presented with new information. It doesn’t have to be immediate, but at least think about it, my god. At least let yourself.
Your misguided fear doesn’t even keep you more safe; not using a password manager raises your risks of reusing passwords and choosing easy passwords which are easier to be hacked or already compromised. Like wohoo, great, you have Summer1213 as a password for everything and it gets compromised in a leak, but at least you avoided the evil password managers company of having encrypted info they can’t decrypt on their servers.
I’m tired of the fact that we can’t agree on a truth anymore even in casual shit like this. And we’re expected to coddle people like that too like “You’re so valid for feeling this way and it’s okay! You don’t have to! You’re entitled to your opinion!” sometimes you’re just wrong, man, genuinely. And yes, technically it’s “okay” if you make mistakes and don’t listen to anyone and it’s “okay” to be wrong, but that doesn’t absolve you from being a stubborn idiot sometimes.