SAFE is about choice and freedom and our intent for doing things is quite possibly the most important aspect of anything we do. You can’t force freedom on people. But there is a certain mentality that will claim people are in a state of brainwashed learned helplessness and can’t make the choice and need to be helped into a place where they could make it. Such a mentality will likely be provoked by any rate of spread which it feels is not fast enough.
Conversely it would be a way to spin against the goodwill of SAFE. What would the effect be if the major viral removal software programs are set to claim SAFE as maleware and strongly recommend its removal. Could such programs be set up to automatically remove it without consent? Would it matter?
Unlikely. Even if something like that occurs, the SAFE website could post an unmissable disclaimer. If the site is blocked, a backup could exist on all the other darknets. Anyone who genuinely wants to use SAFE would find a way. I imagine that such behavior from these organizations would spark a movement that would have the opposite desired effect. A bumpy road lies ahead of us. In the end, technology prevails.
@Tonda, I think Warren referred to virus checkers removing SAFE from your machine and preventing it being installed again. The “brainwashed” masses would just assume its malware and not not try to use SAFE.
@Warren, I doubt they would attempt this. McAfee is associated with a project “Demonsaw” to do similar to SAFE. Virus checking companies remove false positives from their databases on more contentious programs. It is not in their best interest to start a program of censoring the program world and start removing security/anonymity programs.
If they did then yes there would be a segment of the population that would not question the virus checker, but instructions on how to whitelist SAFE would abound. Imagine if any other popular program had this done to them. Eventually even the masses would whitelist SAFE or the virus checking company would remove it from their database.