Ask HN: Is data privacy just all talk or does it affect your decisions?

Dang, no, I apologize, my pun detector doesn't work at the weekend.

I can relate to a lot of your reasoning, I would probably even cancel my internet at home if it wasn't for close relatives that live abroad. It would become a lot harder to stay in touch. But, like you say, this is not so much related to privacy as it is to other concerns.

I think I know what you're getting at with the objection against the abstract conception of surveillance technologies or 'privacy' matters, but I don't think it is entirely fair; I reckon that if you were to give this hypothetical group some concrete examples as opposed to abstract ones, they would object just the same. For example, do you reckon most Nissan drivers would be okay with their car collecting data on that owner's sex life? Probably not. On the other hand, it is more likely they would be "okay" with this data collection if it's presented to them hidden within a tome of general, mundane sounding tech speak abstracted under a surface layer of Legalese.

But making this exclusively an issue of privacy I think misses the point for most Westerners, leading us to be swayed by arguments such as the one you reiterated about the aspect of self-surveillance/voluntary data donation. It hardly requires an argument, in my opinion, to state that it is true that people now frequently hand over their data to companies, and that in recent years it is indeed true that companies have given something in exchange for this data. But that in itself does not say much, nor does it help us decide on whether or not this exchange or aspects of it are in any way problematic. Donation that either is voluntary or seems voluntary but is rewarded socially is nothing new; blood donation is a pretty good example of it. Where I see a problem in regards to this situation is that such a situation would be desirable compared to our current one. It sometimes is portrayed as if it were our current situation, which to me borders on normalized dishonesty (for the record, I know you're simply throwing it up for discussion). Data, of course, is and has been so profitable for more than half of a century that it is already a cliché to call it the new oil. It is problematic to me that the inoffensive claim that data collection could improve a product or process is coupled with other inoffensive claims and the nearly universally acceptable desire of some mutual benefit arising from nearly any situation with two parties in exchange, and is then somehow used to justify what is in essence a vastly asymmetrical relationship where it seems more that the customer was deceived by the world's largest corporations in a vicious cycle of having to keep up the facade of eternal rapid expansion on the basis of unstoppable technological innovation, not being able to deliver on this promise, and having to meet profits another way (worse every cycle, seemingly).

Painting this as only (or even mostly) a privacy problem is faulty at best and counterproductive at worst. One of the biggest 'privacy scandals' in recent years that I can think of, for example, Cambridge Analytica, was one where in actuality privacy hardly comes into play beyond the peripheral discussion generated by it. The issue there is that it does not entail the absence of a massive problem, but rather that there is a massive misdiagnosed problem, or several sizable misdiagnosed problems. It's hardly a challenge to think of situations of such data collection/digital surveillance and find problems that are barely privacy problems, if at all, but are predominantly discussed as such. Not only is that not helpful as the problems aren't tackled, but it can lead to the undesirable situation where the problem is not addressed but swept aside as privacy is found to not be an issue. Data being stored encrypted in the Cloud does not do away with the issues of surveillance and data collection (amongst others), Google making an advertising profile of you is not perfectly acceptable as long as it's abstracted as a hashed ID, Tesla Sentry mode not recording 24/7 and data being encrypted does not make it okay, Amazon's Ring camera doorbell activating and tracking based on a black box algorithm is problematic regardless of whether or not their promise of employees not viewing the data holds or not. Not that privacy does not have a part to play here, it has, from memory all three of those I named have had scandals where a rogue employee viewed customer data, but the problem(s) neither starts or ends there. Having said that, my claim is deliberately quite modest. There's an argument to be made that some might have more urgent and legitimate issues squarely in the domain of privacy here, and that I am underselling those issues. That's not my intention, quite the opposite. For myself and I would assume most other Westerners—dissidents, (sexual or religious) minority groups, journalists, and other vulnerable people aside— it is quite easy to diminish the importance of privacy due to a lack of realistic consequence, and on that basis selfishly deciding that there's no consequences for anyone. I believe my position still works for both, and will always be on the side of privacy, just not because of privacy alone.

In short, I think both situations you describe are likely true, but I reject both the implication that this alleged hypocrisy makes it a non-issue, and the implication that if this is not an issue of privacy for a privileged majority, there is no issue at all.

I use a wildcard domain and give each business a different email, for security and privacy. I almost never need to respond.

Generally, when responding, the email is always accepted.