The problem isn't that people don't care. The problem is that the negative consequences are too abstract/too far to see. Not so different than smoking or climate change denial.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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I think the average user feels "They have nothing to hide" or "I don't really care". However they feel this way because they think they still have the ultimate control over their privacy. They believe that if they wanted to they could pack up every byte of data and quit the internet and that their digital ball of privacy info goes home with them.
Most user probably don't realize that the camera, gps and microphone on your internet connected devices are actively gathering data all the time.
They think that there is a special wall between what they post and what they do with the rest of their day; it's not.
The amount of time that you use the service, what you click, how long before clicks, etc etc etc is all tracked too. There is a data profile to "anticipate" and "guide" the users to further engagement. And all of that is before you talk about how much data-selling and brokering occurs.
Not just that, but I think the average person also thinks with social media being around 15-20 years already, that their data is probably already out there on the Internet anyways.
So because of that, they just don't care.
are they wrong though? let's say in this hypothetical situation, i have never ever had a social media account. Checkmate privacy invaders!
except wait, i have family, like my mother, who have my name and phone number saved in their phone, probably my birthday and address too if they fill out the contact card completely, which they've given permission to facebook to access to "find other friends", and boom, now i have an entry in a data tracking database without ever opting in myself (i know this is a core privacy argument, not arguing that).
so how is the average person wrong in the "they already have it anyway" camp?
One thing you don't understand is not everyone knows or even cares or has enough energy to fight for privacy. Not everyone knows how bad tracking is on websites or hell even know about tracking. Not everyone is a computer guru and can figure out how to use Linux and use a bunch of open source confusing programs. It's a balancing act between privacy and convenience. It's sure as hell convenient to use a default Samsung,apple, Google, LG, phone but oh the other end of you want max privacy you have to basically make your own phone from scratch which almost no love is going to do.
Most people don't know or have the energy to care about companies watching them 24/7.
Can confirm. I don't really care about internet privacy all that much, though I don't consider myself average.
That being said, I refuse to engage with Meta, for no particular reason.
Pretty much the same, having reached a certain age before the internet was a thing, all my shit is out there already. I genuinely don't care if Google has all my info from decades of Gmail, YouTube, googling, Android phones etc etc because they make it convenient for me to use all their products. What I'm not happy to roll with is massively sub par experience due to adds or rage bait curated feeds. So I'm not on Twitter, Insta, FB or anything just because the experience of using it would suck. If they want to track me that's fine, just don't be gross about it and don't get hacked (hoping I don't jynx myself)
I don't think there's a good reason to be worried about this aspect of my "privacy," and I think the people who care are borderline chemtrail-level mistaken about how this data is used.
I am pro data collection, as a whole.
I try, but at this point I think it might be too late. I've been on the internet pretty much my whole life and didn't realize how big of a deal privacy was until I was in my 30s.