Pointing out that you've presented no evidence for an argument is not an "appeal to authority".

>Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that: there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

Open and shut case, Johnson!

If anyone here could be reasonably construed as arguing from ignorance it'd be you.

You said that "there are many much more subtle and effective ways to stifle free speech and human rights than a big firewall," such as "MITM attacks, botnet troll armies, astroturfing, etc. etc."

If you're not asserting that such techniques are being deployed, then ok. But if you are, and follow that up with "Good luck finding proof of that though," as though that's a perfectly reasonable excuse for not being able to back up what you're alleging, then you are yourself asserting "a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false."

Of course such attacks are being deployed, but by whom and for what purpose?

Here is an example of one such attack, which the researchers called "Censorship 2.0".

https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock...

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Team#Use_by_repressive...