Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data
blog.thenewoil.org
Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data
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Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data
#2I think there is a bit of a problem with the initial analogy in the proceeding in the wrong direction won’t get me where I want to go.
For most people, privacy isn’t a goal in itself.
Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data
#3Thought experiment:
What if we just continue like we did in the last two decades?
Would there be any real harm if we simply returned to the pre "cookie banner world" of the internet?
Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data
#41. Some amount of yesterday's data is "yesterday's news"
2. Any reduction of data theft is progress
3. As a greybeard, I care more about the next and future generation's loss of privacy and impending totalitarian enslavement.
In a capitalistic system, people should be able to charge what they want for their commodities. My data is worth more than the thieves could pay.
Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data
#5I think there is a bit of a problem with the initial analogy in the proceeding in the wrong direction won’t get me where I want to go. For most people, privacy isn’t a goal in itself.
Privacy may not be a goal in itself, but it sure would be painful to wake up one day and realise one has given it up for perhaps more trivial and ephemeral "benefits" along the way, especially if this took place relatively slowly over many years. Privacy (among other things like personal freedom, health, etc.) really seems to be one of those things many people take for granted until they realise they have lost it, or willingly gave it up, not able to easily get it back, only then realising how important it was in hindsight.
Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data
#6Simply because it sometimes takes governments years to act on industry abuses (giving time for market correction, etc) doesn’t mean the government should not act.
Information based industries are absolutely abusing their access to our personal information, and they’re refusing to self correct. The governments of the world are now stepping in to correct that.
To be blunt, the corporations have only themselves to blame.
Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data
#7This is a cool article. I like the narrative of "Change to a life where you are in control of your direction."
I am probably the most privacy conscious person of my friends (not that I do a particularly good job of it), so I spent lots of time thinking about how to communicate about privacy in a way that is effective. [We're all mid-twenties, for context.] The main issue, I find, is that people just mostly don't care.
That being said, most of my friends do relate (and dislike) the loss of agency that comes with giving your brain to an algorithmic feed that decides what you eat. The narrative of "control your life and decisions" would be an effective piece of rhetoric, I think!
The other argument I've found really effective is one that convinced me after reading Edward Snowden's memoir Permanent Record. A sketch of the point:
Person 1: privacy matters. Person 2: I don't care about privacy, because I don't have anything to hide. Person 1: Historically, the folks who were hurt because of a lack of privacy weren't us (young professionals), but rather the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the Vietnam anti-war movement, etc. Privacy is about protecting those people who the government/institutions/etc already squash down.
It's an argument that comes from Permanent Record, pretty much, and I think for me it is the most compelling reason that I care about privacy! Not as much for myself (although that's nice), but mostly for the people that privacy protects who really need it.
In my experience, it goes over very well, as people can see that privacy isn't just about doomsday preppers not wanting anyone to know where they bury their gold, but rather about protecting those people who need/deserve/would benefit from protection!
P.S. I'd recommend reading Permanent Record. I was only 15 or so when all that stuff went down, and really didn't know anything about it except "Snowden good or bad idk," but the book is a fantastically interesting and well-written story. I think he's kinda awesome.
Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data
#8Thought experiment: What if we just continue like we did in the last two decades? Would there be any real harm if we simply returned to the pre "cookie banner world" of the internet?
Why do you think there is so much outrage on the internet these days ? It's a consequence of 2 decades of optimizing for engagement, because they make money not by providing a product people pay once and use at their will, but a product that gets a minuscule amount of cash any time someone does something with it.
And this ad based system only works if you spy a lot on people.
Everything is affected by this: the vaccine opposition in the covid crisis, the presidential election... Everything.
Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data
#9This is a cool article. I like the narrative of "Change to a life where you are in control of your direction." I am probably the most privacy conscious person of my friends (not that I do a particularly good job of it), so I spent lots of time thinking about how to communicate about privacy in a way that is effective. [We're all mid-twenties, for context.] The main issue, I find, is that people just mostly don't care…
> Ignoring our own privacy, shouldn't we protect those people who the government/institutions/etc already squash down?
And this should resonate even among the individualistic and self-interested who might believe they're unaffected, as those who aren't "squashed down" right now would be wise to not get caught in the thinking that the set of people affected today by certain state, corporate and institutional actions is immutable. "They would never do it to us" (along with the often heard "it could never happen here") is one of the most dangerous ways of discounting problems affecting "others" in the present. When you see people, either as individuals or as groups, being treated a certain way by those with greater power, remember that this could just as easily also be you in the future.
Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data
#10I think there is a bit of a problem with the initial analogy in the proceeding in the wrong direction won’t get me where I want to go. For most people, privacy isn’t a goal in itself.
Privacy may not be a goal in itself, but it sure would be painful to wake up one day and realise one has given it up for perhaps more trivial and ephemeral "benefits" along the way, especially if this took place relatively slowly over many years. Privacy (among other things like personal freedom, health, etc.) really seems to be one of those things many people take for granted until they realise they have lost it, or…
For this to matter there will have to be a turning point event that causes masses of people to re-think their privacy. The NSA reveal didn’t do much because nobody was financially or socially affected; maybe if the dataset itself was leaked and anyone could search it, we’d see real repercussions and changes made to stop any sort of surveillance (think the Congresspeople being personally affected by the data leak), but that didn’t happen. The only thing that comes close is the Equifax breach, and no citizen can avoid working with them with how everything from home purchases/apartment leases to auto loans relies on their databases.