Shaming Never Works | Weekstarter 34-2026
Weekstarter is here. Come and get your weekly updates, links, recommendations, and notes about why I think shaming is never a good tactic.
Intro
ne of the things I really like about our neighborhood is that it’s usually a really quiet and calm place. I said usually because that’s not the case for the last couple of weeks.
This is how it usually goes these days. Mornings are quiet and calm as usual, which is the best way to start my day. But around noon, the common area between the seven blocks we’re part of turns into an asylum taken over by its patients. But those patients are between 4 to 8 years old, mostly boys, and no one cares about what they do at all. So it’s screams, swearing, and a bunch of other random noises until 8 in the evening at least. Then if I’m extra unlucky that day (like today), our downstairs neighbors start watching random videos (usually politics or religious stuff) on what I’m guessing based on the really poor sound quality from their phones for another hour or two. Then it’s back to normal again around 11.
Greetings from Sangarius. Hope you’re all doing well.
Mission Control
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- A couple of small things started moving, so this week I’ll have to make sure I have set things in motion on my side as well. Might assign project names to the ones that end up not being one-shot things.
- Since we’re in the second half of August, it also means that it’s time to start the cleaning and get ready for September.
- It’s also time for some maintenance and redesign for this website and Tuhaf Studio one as well — partly because I’m really impressed with Jay Springett’s new design.
Check my Now page if you want to see what I’m up to in a more detailed way.
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Shaming Never Works
Last week, we released the new episode of our Tuhaf Gelecek Podcast with Sabri, and our conversation started with the “AI agents hacking random things” news, and from there we went to how these developments will impact the security field to whether how people are talking about AI is causing a different kind of security vulnerability. Since it’s in Turkish and I wanted to build on top of that idea a little more, I decided to write about it here as well.
During the 2010s, I was deep into the digital security and privacy activism circles and helped lots of people on these issues. One of the things I had to fight regularly was the misinformation and really bad advice they’ve heard from elsewhere. You know, the kind that makes you paranoid about everything and feel like there is no way to keep yourself secure unless you’re using Linux and run everything from your own servers with free software.
The problem is that these so-called advices usually make people give up on everything and just ignore the risks they can easily avoid. So when I tried to help them, I had to start with undoing the damage done by the others first.
Even if you were lucky to never experience these types of things, you’re probably familiar with the experience of asking some technical help online and dealing with a bunch of anti-help. Like when you have a problem with Chrome, a bunch of people will start shaming you for using it or tell you to use Firefox or some other browser. Or the opposite will happen, and the fans of that technology will come and tell you that it’s happening because you don’t know how to use it. No one will help you, but everyone will judge you.
Based on my observations, we’re going through the same thing with AI as well. It’s a new technology, and most people are curious about it (whether you believe it or not), but what they’re seeing online isn’t helping them at all. On the one side, people who claim it’s doing unbelievable things without mentioning any of the risks or things people should be careful about. On the other side, there are people who shame anyone even mentions this technology, even with a neutral position, and treat anyone using it like a war criminal who has an ICC warrant.
In a situation like this, most people who need help to have a more informed opinion about this technology or want to use it without causing themselves any serious risks are out of luck. Which means all these people will try to figure things out by themselves, make mistakes, and risk their security. And believe me when I say that shaming someone will stop them from using any technology; neither telling them you’re using it wrong will magically make them use it correctly.
Since my job now is to think about futures, I also can’t stop thinking about how “the shaming approach” also creates an attack surface for the future as well. When your position is to focus on small examples you like and ignore or try to shame out of your sight what else is happening, you basically make it impossible for yourself to understand what actually is happening. And when your understanding of today is severely limited because you don’t like what’s happening and think that ignoring it will make it go away, you’re basically letting others shape the future however they want.
If you don’t believe me, ask the Linux fanboys when the year of the Linux on desktop is coming or how the one who tried to shame people out of Facebook/Meta is going.
Song of the Week
Reading Log
“Hardware is a psychedelic technology: a way of leaving one technological reality and entering another. A camera proposes a different relationship to memory. An instrument proposes a different relationship to making. The object’s value is partly contained in what it refuses to do. People don’t want less technology. They want technology with edges.”
The Independent Industrialist – BURN AFTER READING
“Thus, I view reactions to dismiss AI based on a forced definition of “real art” that opposes new technologies as escapist. It betrays a desire to hide from the contemporary world rather than confront it, which I believe to be the antithesis of what contemporary artists can and must do.”
Maya Man On Being An Artist In the Age of AI
“If we are going to have to live with such turbulent politics, can we not at least reap a cultural windfall from it? Upheaval in real life, orthodoxy in the arts: this seems the worst of both worlds.”
The exciting boring decade
Outro
That’s all I have for this week. I also have plans to start normal blogging here as well, so keep an eye for that too.
Take care of yourselves, and I’ll see you around.
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