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Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

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Re: Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

#21

Post by grp000 »

PaulAJ wrote: post #20
resonious wrote: post #5

I feel like the idea of privacy as a luxury is not limited to high-tech society. Do poor people in a primitive society have more privacy than poor people in a developed country? We're always so concerned with machines recognizing us, but what about other people? If I live in a small village, the owner of the general store will surely remember my face just like an ML-laden camera or POS system. We get creeped out when…

Actually in low-tech societies it was the other way around. Rich people had servants who lived in their houses and knew every detail of their lives. If you were rich back then, the servants knew where you ate, what you ate, where you slept, who you met, basically every detail of your life. If you had an argument with your spouse over money the servants could hear every word. Meanwhile poor people were known to their…

Isn't one of the traits of a good servant discretion? Meaning, your job depends on not blabbing your Master's secrets.

Re: Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

#22

Post by bryanrasmussen »

anshorei wrote: post #16
kawzeg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beside the difference in scale, there are also different incentives. The bartender typically doesn't sell your data. They probably don't have a list of favourite drinks which they could share with others, they just have the information in their head. As soon as that data can be collected and sold at scale, there's an incentive to collect and sell as much data as possible, without any repercussions. Spreading rumours…

> Spreading rumours doesn't pay the bills, so there's no large scale incentive to spread them. Spreading rumours absolutely helps pay the bills, it's almost an essential part of the experience of going to the pub in a small town that only has a couple. You're right to say that there is no "large-scale" incentive though.

>You're right to say that there is no "large-scale" incentive though.

Journalism.

Re: Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

#23

Post by csunbird »

Everyone seem to forget the fact that, if you are able to pay just for the sake of privacy, your data is now even more valuable, since you signal that you have disposable income to spend on things that "common folk" can not afford to.

Advertisers want to target you specifically. The better idea should be to feed them incorrect information and intentionally poison the data.

Re: Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

#24

Post by Popegaf »

It does? Maybe technical expertise, but money?

https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/alternatives/

https://prism-break.org/en/

https://www.privacytools.io/

Those all list FLOSS alternatives to the services out there. Maybe one or two things needs self-hosting but ProtonMail now has ProtonCalendar, Tutanota is coming out with a calendar too, files can be synced with Syncthing, and so on and so forth.

Of course, it's nice to donate if you have money, but it's not mandatory and that's better than the alternatives.

Don't use Google (except maybe Android, but there are ROMs), Apple, Facebook (yes, that includes Whatsapp), Microsoft and you're already most of the way there.

Re: Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

#25

Post by fighterpilot »

baliex wrote: post #13
karaterobot wrote: post #8

The only service he mentions by name is Protonmail, which has a free tier, which he doesn't mention. The pay version is about $7.50 USD a month, which is not cost prohibitive if you care about it. His theory seems to be that if you have a bunch of these, they will add up. Maybe, but I can't buy the argument without more and better examples to back it up. I mean, if you had Protonmail and a $5/mo VPN, you'd still be s…

> The pay version is about $7.50 USD a month, which is not cost prohibitive if you care about it. It’s possible for someone to care about privacy but not have the means to do anything about it. The fact that $7.50 a month _is_ cost prohibitive for some people is the point of the article.

GP's point is that it may be cost prohibitive to some but it's too cheap to be a marker of class in developed countries. It'd be like saying a Netflix subscription is a marker of class.

Re: Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

#26

Post by vntok »

grp000 wrote: post #21
PaulAJ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually in low-tech societies it was the other way around. Rich people had servants who lived in their houses and knew every detail of their lives. If you were rich back then, the servants knew where you ate, what you ate, where you slept, who you met, basically every detail of your life. If you had an argument with your spouse over money the servants could hear every word. Meanwhile poor people were known to their…

Isn't one of the traits of a good servant discretion? Meaning, your job depends on not blabbing your Master's secrets.

Just like Google.

Re: Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

#27

Post by GoblinSlayer »

yoaviram wrote: post #17

I'm the creator of YourDigitalRights.org, a free and open source service in the privacy space. When we started 3 years ago we decided to make the service free precisely because of the reasons outlined in this article. Almost every week I get an offer to monetize the service in some way, but I still think you shouldn't need to pay for privacy (literally as I was writing this comment I got an email offering to pay for…

Ability to receive money doesn't make your service paid. See e.g. how linux mint does it: https://linuxmint.com/donors.php

Re: Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

#28

Post by yoaviram »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #27
yoaviram wrote: post #17

I'm the creator of YourDigitalRights.org, a free and open source service in the privacy space. When we started 3 years ago we decided to make the service free precisely because of the reasons outlined in this article. Almost every week I get an offer to monetize the service in some way, but I still think you shouldn't need to pay for privacy (literally as I was writing this comment I got an email offering to pay for…

Ability to receive money doesn't make your service paid. See e.g. how linux mint does it: https://linuxmint.com/donors.php

Agree, thanks for the correction.

Re: Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

#29

Post by marapuru »

Before the internet was filled with tracking things there were plenty of online services. And you paid for that. Initial mail services cost money, but we seem to have forgotten that. And now we put that pricetag on privacy?

No. Running a service costs money. Everything you get for free is just an unseen loan that you have to repay eventually.

Re: Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

#30

Post by pydry »

karaterobot wrote: post #8

The only service he mentions by name is Protonmail, which has a free tier, which he doesn't mention. The pay version is about $7.50 USD a month, which is not cost prohibitive if you care about it. His theory seems to be that if you have a bunch of these, they will add up. Maybe, but I can't buy the argument without more and better examples to back it up. I mean, if you had Protonmail and a $5/mo VPN, you'd still be s…

>The pay version is about $7.50 USD a month, which is not cost prohibitive if you care about it.

$7.50 x number of online services you rely upon

It's quickly becomes a lot.

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