I think the average person just simply doesn't care about their privacy.
In some of the music communities I'm in the content creators are already telling their userbase to go follow them on threads. They're all talking about some kind of beef between Elon and Mark and the possibility of a boxing match... Mark was right to call the people he's leaching off of fucking idiots.
I care. I’m just increasingly convinced it’s too fucking late.
Tbh it's not black and white. I'm sure a big corporation can extract a ton of information on us but there's still a pretty big gap between having our real names and photos plastered everywhere on social media, or them just knowing where I live and that I spend a lot on steam games. Don't take the small victories for granted.
It is. They know everything about you. Even every store you have shopped at knows a lot about you. It really doesn’t take much interaction for a company to get a lot of info. It’s relatively easy to get an email and from there, if they wanted, they can get the rest of your profile from a 3rd party who has your data all matched up already. They can also build your profile pretty easily themselves as well.
How can regular people buy this data?
Say I wanted to find out what my profile looks like?
Yes. I would like this info as well if anyone has it ^.^
If you're in the US, you can demand a company release the information they have on you, to you, for inspection. It's more data than you'd think. A LOT more.
I imagine "you" can't
you'd likely have to work for some marketing agency and can probably only buy user data in bulk amounts (based on region, or some other desired demographic) with a recurring business plan of course
it wouldn't be financially beneficial for these companies to sell an individual thumbprint
That makes sense.
So who wants to set up an marketing agency with me?
Live in the EU.
I do. Now what?
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government-in-ireland/data-protection/rights-under-general-data-protection-regulation/
It's never too late. Sure, they already have a lot of data on you but you can keep them from getting more.
Definitely. I’m was trying to state that basic info about you is readily available to companies regardless of how you choose to interact with them.
I think personal data poisoning is going to become more prevalent among privacy communities, I would like to see some tooling for this in the next few years.
Im in basically the same position since realistically the change needs to be at an institutional level. I can't really change anything by myself without excluding myself from most modern services.
We need laws and regulations. But like you I fear it's too late.
It might not be. Plenty of US states are coming online with privacy rights. If you live in CA, CO, CT or VA you can submit requests to opt out of information sales and for sites to erase your data.
Me. I care I just....fuck. That ship has sailed. I don't go out of my way to download the big offenders like Tik Tok but....still. Everyone is tracking me. Everyone is selling my information. God knows how many different companies have massive files on me.
Same here, but that doesn't stop me from trying where I have the time and energy. One of those ways is voting. So far the government has let these companies wipe their shit onto every corner of the internet, and the 5-10% of us switching apps or emails or... Whatever, aren't going to change that. It's not a short-term solution, but I'm starting to think it's really the only way.
Even if you get them to care once you show them all they need to do to have a shred of privacy they shrug say something along the lines of "well I don't have anything to hide anyways" and go back to their merry way. The path of least resistance will always win sadly
Literally saw a comment like that yesterday. Drives me up the wall. I'm in the process of accepting that the average Joe/Jane just doesn't care about anything but their little bubble. I used to spend so much emotional energy on trying to convince people to stand up for something greater or to at least think more than 2 meters ahead, but now I'm just done. I'll watch out for myself and the people close to me, everyone else can just evaporate for all I care.
Congratulations, you now have your own little bubble.
Lol true but teaching people better ways is like swimming against the tie. Heck is even hard with people close to me !
I literally just had a friend tell me he joined Threads and how neat it was, etc etc and when I explained why I wouldn't be joining him, he basically just gave me the old "Well I already know they have all my information so it doesn't matter"
...like wtf? So you just...give up having any privacy whatsoever? I just couldn't respond to him after that, I don't really know how to respond to that. There's a disease spreading in the world unfortunately and it isn't just COVID. It's one called Apathy and too many people are coming down with it.
The Average person, in my experience, doesnt give a shit about their privacy..because they are stuck on the notion of "what do I have to hide? I didnt do anything wrong!" with a heaping helping of not wanting to give up convenience on top of it.
And all attempts to explain them that you dont have to have anything to hide for your privacy to be important and be protected fall on deaf ears and accusations that you, the one trying to protect them must be some kind of bad/evil/criminal person to be that concerned with privacy.
These people tend to be absolute delights to deal with when their shit gets stolen, and they expect everyone else to fix it for them.
Well okay, with my piracy habit perhaps I do have something to hide😂
But I also think most people don't realise they do have stuff to hide.
Everything should be private by default. All this shit about nothing to hide is the opposite of that - trying to justify why something should be private. The question is rather why it should be public.
There companies profit enormously on our data and we get exactly nothing in return except the ability to use their service, under the conditions that they put in place. We have zero power to change anything at all about what they provide for us.
A user in that context is similar to a loser. Someone who has no ability to control what happens.
I mean if you want to start paying a fee to use social media.... that's just the choice they make
I keep seeing people saying "I have nothing to hide" is a bad argument. But no one ever explains why it is. So for the people who say they don't care about the privacy, what would you say to them about why they should care?
Because everyone has stuff to hide. You dont have to have criminal activity, ongoing or in your past, to want to keep your privacy and keep things hidden. I always counter with "Okay, then lets paint your social security number on the side of your car if you have nothing to hide", and they always stammer and stutter about how thats different and that would cause them no end of headache if someone got it and stole their identity.
And yes, thats the point. You have stuff you want to protect and keep others from knowing. Not just for identity theft reasons, but for social reasons as well.. You probably don't want your spouse to know how much you hate their sibling for no reason, or want your boss to hear what you say about them at home, You dont want people at the bagel shop to know your bank account number and password, Or any of a thousand other things that you do every day, that you dont want other people to know about.
Personally, I've always thought "They could sell your data to insurance companies who might jack up your prices or claim something is a pre-existing condition" to be the most p we persuasive to people like my parents.
tbf if you're not american it's better
But Facebook/Twitter/etc isn't telling out boss what we say about them at home. Or our SSN to every car we pass. Or how much we hate it family-in-law.
Unless you give them realistic reasons, they will always counter with "That's different" because it is.
Some really good arguments. But here's one from the Cyber Security side. We all know about the CIA, but do you know about the other CIA?
Confidentiality is the heart and soul of a functioning life. You do have stuff to hide, even if you say you don't. Do you want a rando to know your passwords? Do you want your wife to find out about your birthday gift to her before the big day? Do you want your nosy neighbour to start gossiping to the entire neighbourhood about what you and your wife did on her big day? Do you want that big secret plan that will make you the next Mark Zuckerberg be found out by the real Zuckerberg and now he's rich and you're not? All of these are things that aren't illegal, yet are still private information that someone like you might want to make confidential.
And this isn't even the tip of the iceberg. Sure, you might argue, you shouldn't be posting your plans for the Zuck-killer on Facebook, but your actual words are not the only thing Facebook stores and analyses. They know a lot about you. What you liked. What you commented on. What you searched for. What you looked at. They know things about you that you never ever said. For instance, even if you never said "I'm a {Democrat|Republican}" in so many words, or even if you don't share overtly political posts, they still know your ideologies and are willing to sell this information to everyone and sundry. Facebook is even building profiles on people who never created accounts on Facebook. Imagine being {Republican|Democrat} and working for a {Democrat|Republican} boss. You've worked hard to keep politics out of the workplace, because while there may be anti-discrimination laws if you're a woman or a minority, having an unpopular political opinion is not protected in as many places, so you could easily lose your job if Facebook discloses to your boss that you've not got the right political views.
If Confidentiality really was not an issue and everyone could live open lives without consequence, we'd be talking about the IAs of security, not the CIAs. That we are talking CIAs shows that yes, there actually IS a need for secrecy, and we actually DO have things to hide, even if we don't moonlight as murderers, cat-burglars, or strippers.
PS: I don't believe you have never had it explained to you why 'I have nothing to hide" is a bad argument.
PPS: Very strong sea lioning vibes here.
PPPS: Seems like this nonsense started cropping up on Reddit when it became clear the protests were having an effect. And now it's here. So much dishonest debate tactics being thrown around the whole "we want an alternative to the creepily intrusive policies of main-stream social media" debate. I wonder why? </sarcasm>
OK, ngl that
{democrat|republican}rendering as {democrat|republican} is pretty cool.I'm just curious if you're a tech worker? (or a teenager interested in tech)
I ask because I feel like people who work in tech are basically exposed to the dangers of web privacy all the time. I remember having to implement a facebook pixel on a website, and realizing the network of surveillance that facebook have spread across the web at that time. So I have pretty decent privacy behaviors, still far from great but maybe slightly above average.
But when I go to the doctor and I mention how often I eat fast food and drink alcohol, or when I go to the dentist and admit I don't floss everyday - I'm sure those people are thinking 'most people seriously don't care about their health'. They might stop short of 'fucking idiot', hopefully.
I’d also say that those health issues are much more practically impactful than Instagram showing you ads for luggage when you’ve bought a plane ticket.
Caring about ad tech is a hobby. It’s as good a hobby as any other, but that’s what it is.
Sure I think thats fair. My larger point is that everyone is biased over time by their hobbies and professions, and we should be careful how harshly we judge others by our yardstick.
You can be casual about it, but I don't think it's a hobby to seek to understand something that you're very nearly forced to coexist with. I have to acknowledge there's ideology behind statements like this, but it's more analogous to knowing your enemy's capabilities. It's a necessary prerequisite to forming an effective defense.
But I've come to understand many people don't share my antagonistic mindset. That's fine, but they should still understand the interactions they're having with these systems in even just the vaguest terms, because the effect on their lives is very tangible.
I’m saying the very idea that you need to ever even think about this as a defense against the enemy is the hobby. There’s only a battle to be fought here if you want there to be, and most people don’t want that. The impact on their lives is not actually tangible. Ad tech doesn’t really hurt anyone. No one likes it, and at best, it feels a little gross, but feeling vaguely icky is not the kind of tangible impact that reliably drives people to action. What happens to you when Facebook or Google bundle you into anonymized groups of eyeballs and promise advertisers that they’ll show you ads relevant to the profile they’ve built of you? Nothing really. If you think about the way they built that profile by tracking your every move online, then yes, it feels creepy, but that’s it.
i love a good analogy. point taken.
They probably don't know what actually involves giving away their data and what actually concretely means. I'm a tech guy, developer, here in the Fediverse and neither I do know actually what it means. It's the lack of information the problem. I could imagine it though, but it's not the same thing. I could imagine that with my data big corps become more powerful, creating more addicting ads, contents and algorithms that eventually will fuck up the world even more. And that's a nightmare, I know. Metaphorically it's like intensive farming. "I eat meat because I love it and I can't give up on it" and as soon as no one sees what actually happens to the animals inside those farmings, no one cares.
They are my mother, father, and everyone else. Life's hard, and too many things compete for our attention.
You're right. Indiscriminate data collection is like the meat industry. Some people may find abhorrent how animals are treated, even how destructive the whole thing can be. But ultimately, out of sight is out of mind, right?
Like you said, the same with privacy. Apps are shiny, addictive, and seem to be given away for free. Then life happens, the mind becomes busy with what holds its attention.
We're doomed because the game being played is simply too complex for anyone make sense of it. Any competing insight is immediately drowned under the massive torrent of data we're all subjected to.
One problem is that it's very hard to quantify how much our privacy, our data, is worth. There's money to be made with it, but we, average people, have no idea how any of that works. This leads to general indifference.
Another problem I see is that most people don't correlate their continuously worse online experience with being spied. Every facebook change led to lots complaints, but people didn't quit, they just ate shit until they stopped complaining. Same with Twitter, Insta, Google, Youtube. Since the enshittification happens gradually, they fail to correlate one thing with another.
I stopped using Facebook 10 years ago, but I'm loathed to actually delete my account because every once in a while, a long lost friend or relative contacts me there. It would be a shame to lose touch with people. Ultimately I care about that more than privacy. It's the same with Whatsapp. I've made a concerted effort to convince my immediate family to try XMPP, Delta Chat and Signal, but they just won't install another app unless everyone they know is using it. I find it a bit frustrating, but that's reality. So I have to keep using Whatsapp.
We can always keep a never in 10 years updated profile active for family and stuff. The biggest danger is for active users after all: they're the most vulnerable to targeted media manipulation.
By being present in their lives (while giving up as few data as possible to big corporations) they can have by their side someone with good advices on privacy, manufactured consent, rights violations and adjacent topics. Alienating ourselves from them isn't really beneficial in the long run.
I use WhatsApp as well for the people I keep in touch with, and have an active Instagram account where I use only the chat feature. It's enough to keep up with the people in my life.
For whoever is even more privacy concerned, it's possible to run those apps in sandboxed mode through some apps.
I really think this thread is a great example of why the average person doesn't care that much.
The whole thread is full of comments like "the issues caused by giving away all your data are too abstract, too far away, or too difficult to understand". This is true by the way, I completely agree.
But I haven't seen a single comment trying to explain those possible issues in an easily understandable way. The average person (or, at least me) reading threads like this won't learn anything new. Give me a practical issue that I might face, and if I agree that it's an issue, I'll focus more on avoiding that issue.
In other words, an example:
PS. I do agree with the notion of "minimize the data you give away", which is one reason I'm here, but I really don't have an answer for these questions. I'm like "I understand the point of privacy, but can't explain the reasons".
This isn't a plug, but it is a link to an article I wrote for exactly this reason. I tried to succinctly explain why privacy matters with real work examples and precedent.
https://emilsmith.pro/articles/posts/2023-06-29-practical-tips-for-protecting-your-data-ditching-google-and-why-it-matters/
Great content here, thanks
If an algorithm knows exactly who you are, then it knows how you think, and it knows what sort of content will manipulate you politically. And right wing political content is profitable. It's called the alt right pipeline. Most people have some kind of argument that will manage to radicalise them to any position you can name. Through correlative learning, an algorithm will look at how people like you changed their views, and it'll send you down the same path. It's easy.
Cambridge Analytica. Not only did they influence the elections and general political attitude of the Philippines, it also affected US elections as well. I think there was a genocide that was caused by targeted campaigns too, not sure where it happened, though.
don't forget Facebook knowing that their programs increased teen suicide rated but still stayed course because changing that negative content would lower revenue
Don't you feel like awareness of it can be the number one thing to protect you from the manipulation that is rampant? I look at everything and say that is trying to change my mind. Unfortunately, with that comes this cynicism that I'm being sold to all the time and whatnot. But if I happen to hop on a browser that doesn't have AdBlock, I don't walk away having spent money on snake oil, or I don't go sign up for my local right wing political action committee, because I've been made aware consistently that everything is aimed at getting me to give something.
And let's be real, we all remember the constant reference to the Reddit hivemind. If we're saying they're wasn't some sort of external influence that landed everyone on the same wavelength, that feels naive. Or I'm a cynic and can't enjoy anything anymore.
No, awareness isn't the number 1 protection, it's the number 3 protection. The number 1 protection is actually having a nuanced understanding of the issues so that when propaganda tries to prey on your misconceptions, it can't find any. And the number 2 protection is avoiding propaganda, because anything starts to sound persuasive if it's repeated enough. Awareness is important, but it's just not as effective as those two other protections. It has too many weaknesses.
I think that's pretty well put and I'll agree with it.
In spite of everything telling me not to I still pop over to Reddit because I think there is still value there, even if I have to wade through the bullshit and the bots and whatever. A couple subs weren't infested with shit yet. But for sure it's a risk assessment, and I think I got it, but probably I'm not as smart as I think.
I've always felt like data gathering is kind of like lobbying. It is not directed toward you in person. It is used to shift the way people think and their opinions on topics.
A company / non-profit / movement / whatever lobbying towards a goal might be buying lunches or making seminars and talking about their point with selected group of people who have a say in a topic. Or they might not but they are in the vicinity of the topic or perhaps they are a group that a the company feels like they do not know what the fuck they are talking about and that needs to change.
These are not directed toward you but to a group of people whom you most likely have nothing to do with. This group has power to change something. Whether for good or for bad, that depends who doing the lobbying and for what purpose and how you think about the topic.
Data gathering is similar. This data that is being gathered is not identifiable to you (or it can be but this is not what I am talking about) but it gets clumped together with a buuuuunch of people. This bunch might be people from country x or Christians or people who like Mc Donald's or who are against gun-rights or pro abortion or people whom think that companies should not be pushing climate change responsibility to the consumer. This clump of people are the same bunch that the lobbyists are targeting. But they do not have direct power over a subject, in general. Point being that even if most of the people have no power over a topic, some of them might (they might hold power oma person company deciding whether to do more against climate change). And even if they do not, they will converse about the topic and this will shift the general consensus around a topic.
And this bunch of people can be very accurately targeted. People in their 20-30s, who graduated (or will soon) from a university that are most likely to go work in high-tech companies in or in the government who have people around them (family, friends) that are against gun-rights but still own guns and do hunting? Ezpz. Or perhaps own a car and drive a lot and have relatives far enough that car is a necessity but have shifted their thinking being more against cars? Np.
The problem is that this does not easily be used against you in particular. But it can be used against a group of people that you are a part of. It is used to shift the way we think as a community. It is used to push ads and news articles (or just the topics of articles because glancing it also works) to you, comments in twitter, posts in Facebook, and change the search results that you might see. Kind of like ads as well; ads work really well even though lots (most?) people would say that ads don't make them buy a product and only annoy them. Advertisers aren't dumb, they know exactly what people think and how they function, and ads work.
And again to reiterate, it has nothing to do with you. You are a blip. But you are a part of a larger community and in order to shift that community toward something all of its little bits and pieces need to be moved toward that target. Not all of them need to move toward that target. Just enough.
This got a bit rambly I think but anyhooo it's kinda how I see it.
So, if I understand correctly, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but the simplified version of this is: data collection allows massive cooperations to target Communities of Interest (CoI) and manipulate them by collectively altering their digital perception via a barrage of targeted advertisements, promoted articles and suggested social media posts?
And all of this leads to an eventual shift in the opinions and desires of said CoIs, leading to what the company would deem desirable behavior, be it growing apathetic to digital privacy, buying their product or growing more engaged with their platform?
Bad actors may use it to manipulate you or cause problems in other aspects of your life (HELLO data breaches!).
This is a hypothetical. Think about all of the normal stuff people could see about you on Facebook. Would you also want those strangers to have your other personal information and possibly passwords? How about your boss? School? Insurance agency? Bank? Someone who works at one of those places, and still remembers that information after they clock out?
Let's say there isn't a data breach. They also use that information to try to get you to click ads, even if those ads might be unsafe to click.
Please answer something for me. What is it that makes you think that Zuckerberg would act in your best interests? What would stop him from turning around, selling data again? How can you know that he will keep that data in trustworthy spaces, and away from bad actors?
I wouldn't even give my own parents access to that level of information unless I absolutely had to. I'm certainly not happier about a stranger having access to it.
I remember back when Snowgen first leaked all of that imfo about government tracking. One show, either the daily show or colbert report, did an episode about it. Almost no one they talked to cared until they mentioned the government can also track your dick pics.
People do, but ease of use will trump it every time.
It's a bit of a shock that simply picking an instance and signing up like any regular site is such a hurdle to so many people.
I think in Mastodon's case it was less that you had to pick an instance, rather they were all instances from companies/people that they didn't know. How many email providers does the average person know? The "my Mastodon admin can read all my posts" discussion also fits into this (they were fine with Twitter doing it). Threads will behave just like any other service in the Fediverse at the end, with all that "complexity", but people will say Threads is easier, just because of the recognition factor and that they already have an Instagram account.
That last bit is part of it. One Instagram account means full access, full interaction. If you don’t have one there’s no approval process, either.
Plus it looks more fleshed out. Let’s face it, a clean and at least vaguely clear UI is far more trustworthy for 99% of people than a possibly sketchy one that seems to almost overcommunicate as far as they’re concerned.
Oh, and speaking of UI, the only app I have for Lemmy on iOS is through Testflight. Most people don’t have, want, or even need a desktop so if there’s no phone app then literally nothing else matters and that’s fair.
Technology is hard
That was not the case with lemmy. Most of the instances I tried required manual approval for signups. It took me going through like 4 different instances to find one that didn't.
To be fair, most people reccomend lemmy.world now, and that doesn't need manual approval. But there's another problem, they can't interact with Beehaw.
"Simply" picking an instance is not actually that simple. Most people just want to go to the site and sign up. Even with email, they know what Gmail and Outlook are. But on Lemmy, there's no indication of what you're supposed to pick. Even if you try to go with what seems like the "default" instance, lemmy.ml, you're met with an announcement saying not to do thaf cause it's overloaded.
People don't want to have to make decisions, especially when they don't have any information to go off of.
That’s the key, you have to figure out what instance is best for you. With a million choices you get choice paralysis mixed with FOMO and they just don’t bother.
IMO that’s probably the biggest problem with anything decentralized like this. The average person doesn’t care about the benefits and the above is by far a big barrier to entry.
Lemmy and Mastadon aren't at all private, by any measure. Not sure what exactly you mean now.
They're also not mega corps tracking and selling your every move. It's quite a bit different. What's public here is what I explicitly make public, there's no unwanted encroachment or permissions.
So it's about profiting off the lack of privacy. Not the lack of privacy itself. Now I get it.
Yes, but also how they are doing it. And to who they are selling the data. Etc. Etc.
Best thing Lemmy signups could do is ask "What's your primary interest?" And randomly select an instance that has that category.
What if I don't want to immediately pigeonhole myself into one specific niche?
As a non-LGTB / non-furry / neurotypical / multiple-interest-having / boring-ass white guy in his forties, there really isn't a sub-sub-microcommunity for me.
And picking these communities is like throwing a political sign in your front yard, saying, "HEY! I know there are some people out there who hate this stuff! Argue with me! Troll me! Make my experience here as terrible as possible!"
That's a bit hyperbolic. You only do that if you join a heavily political instance or subscribe to tons of political communities. Most of the boards aren't like that.
I guess lack of choice makes choosing easy—you only have one option and that's it, take it or leave it. Having to choose between vastly different options is also easy. But if you have a hundred similar, yet slightly different options to choose from, making the decision becomes psychologically hard, even if it doesn't make a difference for your UX which option you choose.
And buzz. Don't forget buzz.
I'll go a step more general. People can't be inconvenienced. Climate change,politics,etc...
If it slightly inconveniences people you'll need a good leader to push it
All many people care about is bread and circuses. Unless their sustenance and distractions are taken away they are complacent.
Veganism is the perfect example
People join massive protest all around the world for these things. They are willing to spend a day walking around and yelling even if it is an inconvenience.
It is lack of organizing and having a trust that if we just vote for right politician it will be solved. For decades of elections, nothing changed.
We need to organize ourselves as the people, like they do in some countries. Stop the traffic, organize in shifts to stay on road blocking all gas powered trucks. You need to stop businesses from operating normally to give the system some reason to change, instead of just ignoring us and promising us that next election it will be better.
Same for soical media, do the internet equivalent of blockades, DDOS them like anonymous did. They can't arrest us all. And organize to block police cars when they try to make an example of the few.
Zuck is proof that sociopaths and narcissists run the world. This is obvious theater at this point.
Privacy 🔏 What are you trying to hide something /s every Karen ever
It’s like music streaming. The streaming quality is worse and wireless earbuds don’t sound great, but the convenience of it all made that industry huge.
Convenience over quality.
I mean I use galaxy buds at work installing flooring and I love it, but at home I listen to vinyl or the very least flacc with good headphones.... but I guess im not the average person in this situation
I mean, I blame Apple and the general trend of aggressively bland minimalism for the wireless earbud thing. You're not wrong though.
Ultimately, even for me as someone who cares about it, it's just become one of those things that I don't prioritize. Life is hard and at some point I'd rather get something cool done with gmail reading all my private conversations than struggle with my own email server.
Not saying it's a great choice but ultimately life is short and we need to focus on doing what feels right. People have to pick their battles and that's life.
That's kind of a fatalistic view on life.
You could have just used Protonmail or something.
First of all most people, not just the average person, simply do not grasp what privacy is exactly - especially in the US, where the view on privacy is skewed by its obsolete constitution.
I mean, just the fact that anyone would think if you personally don't mind sharing personal affairs or being public, then privacy isn't much of a concern proves the lack of understanding of that principle. It's like saying, I'm not religious so neither the lack of freedom of religion or the separation of church and state would have any impact on me.
The most important function of the human right to privacy is not the thwarting of interference with one's property or dignity, it's the maintenance of the control and power an individual has over their own self - and by extension that of a people.
A simple example: If I give you my phone number, I give away some control over myself because you now have to power to use that property however it fits you. That may mean to just keep in touch with me, to save the number in your contact list that is accessible to ChatGPT, Tiktok or some malware on your phone, or share it with someone who wants to dig up some dirt on me.
The key point is not whether any of the possibilities affect or matter to you but whether you would have any say in how that information is obtained, handled, kept, etc. The effect of the resulting consequences may appear only gradually and sometimes take years but those in control ultimately shape politics, the economy, culture, society. This is also one of the reasons why the US is run by so many monopolies and oligopolies in their respective market segments.
Excellent post!
.de and undertones of capitalism critique? hello mein freund
Ultimately, it's because the concerns of privacy are simply too far removed from people, or they trust certain entities more than others.
For example, if your next door neighbour knows all your browsing history, people would be bothered, but people are not bothered if Google knows as it feels they would have no direct effect on their life, whereas your next door neighbour might.
This can be easily seen in the whole discussion regarding privacy on Mastodon.
A lot of people refuse to use Mastodon over Twitter, because "Mastodon admins can see my DMs", even though Twitter absolutely could as well (Twitter apparently has encrypted DMs since May 2023 though). The reason for this is they see a Mastodon admin as someone who could potentially have an effect on their digital life, whereas they trust Twitter not to do anything with the data since they're a big corporation who has nothing to do with their personal life.
Unless it is an effect they can directly observe (or imagine to occur), people simply don't care. This applies to almost all discussions around the big picture, such as things like climate change or unions, or whatever.
Whether we like it or not, people absolutely trust corporations.
I would not say, people absolutely trust corporations.
You can probably ask any stranger o the street if Facebook is trustworthy and they all would say something about FB doing weird stuff with their data.
They all know!
But people have a limit on how many issues they can care about.
We decided that privacy is an issue, others might decide that the issues their sister is facing in life are an issue, or just how to pay the next month's rent.
So, they just use Facebook, google and co. because that is what works, what is there and done. No time to think any further about it!
So, if you wanna get wide adoption for privacy-friendly alternatives, stop solely selling the privacy aspect. The fediverse is great, but all the people who care about the benefits of it are already here. Now try to reach those who don't care that Twitter is a mess, they are just there because all the others are too.
They use it to communicate and not because it is great. The same applies to most other platforms too.
I liked Reddit because it's one platform where you find literally anything! You wanna talk about energy drinks? There is a subreddit.
You wanna know what this thing is you just found on the street? Just post a picture someone definitely knows!
True, the claim that people "absolutely trust corporations" is definitely hyperbole, but I would say they most certainly have some implicit trust for them in a way that people might not trust a volunteer.
I think this is relevant for anyone that has not read it,
A Cypherpunk's Manifesto Eric Hughes March 9, 1993
Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.
If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of their interaction. Each party can speak about their own memory of this; how could anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it, but the freedom of speech, even more than privacy, is fundamental to an open society; we seek not to restrict any speech at all. If many parties speak together in the same forum, each can speak to all the others and aggregate together knowledge about individuals and other parties. The power of electronic communications has enabled such group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might want it to.
Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to a transaction have knowledge only of that which is directly necessary for that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, we must ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In most cases personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at a store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I am. When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages, my provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying or what others are saying to me; my provider only need know how to get the message there and how much I owe them in fees. When my identity is revealed by the underlying mechanism of the transaction, I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively reveal myself; I must always reveal myself.
Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system. An anonymous transaction system is not a secret transaction system. An anonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity when desired and only when desired; this is the essence of privacy.
Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one's identity with assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.
We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak. To try to prevent their speech is to fight against the realities of information. Information does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. Information expands to fill the available storage space. Information is Rumor's younger, stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and understands less than Rumor.
We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.
We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.
Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of the software we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.
Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes information from the public realm. Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its violence. Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible.
For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one's fellows in society. We the Cypherpunks seek your questions and your concerns and hope we may engage you so that we do not deceive ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course because some may disagree with our goals.
The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for privacy. Let us proceed together apace.
Onward.
Eric Hughes
I don't see how data collection is a privacy and not secrecy issue by his definition.
My name is not secret, lots of people know my name. My name is private, I want to share it with the people I want to share it with, not with everyone on the internet/every corporation I interact with.
I think that's why data collection falls under the 'privacy' instead of 'secrecy' category for the most part.
Is this the community where we just talk about drama with other social networks? Because if so, I guess I'll just unsubscribe.
talk about other social networks in the community about social networks?
Nobody forced you to click this thread. =p
It's just like 90% of all the posts in my feed right now, and it's getting a little annoying.
It's true, there are like, at least two on the front page every time I come on here.
I've seen so many online communities fall and this is par for the course, lol
Yeah, welcome to Lemmy.
The average person doesn't understand modern technology even on a basic level. Most people don't know what Free Software is or what end-to-end encryption is and you can't have privacy without those two. And those things have existed for decades. What about more complicated topics such as cryptocurrencies or AI? It's easy to see that most people don't understand them either.
So when it comes to some basic aspects of modern technology, most people are decades behind. Sometimes I even meet software developers who don't fully understanding those topics.
As an operations side IT, I've met a lot of developer side programmers (even really good ones) that don't understand computers in a functional sense.
That's kinda sad. I think our education is just not good enough when it comes to IT.
True, it should really be a foundational course now, and not just "here's Microsoft office" level shit. With more advanced stuff left to collegiate courses.
Both programming in a high level language like python and A+ level CompTIA type thing.
"Even" software developers? That's kind of a weird thing to say. Programming as a discipline is far broader and deeper than most people realize (and that includes software developers!). Knowledge in one limited specialty does not translate automatically into knowledge in a different specialty and, indeed, can actively interfere with another domain without intensive retraining. (For a concrete example of this, just look at the abominations made in "embedded"^1^ programming by people coming at it from writing Yet Another CRUD-backed Web App.)
So it's absolutely possible for someone who's a real whiz with making web app front ends to have a very hazy grasp of security and privacy. It's a peripherally-related discipline at best.
^1^ "Scare quotes" used because I don't view what amounts to a PC running Linux in a funky form factor as meaningfully "embedded".
I just expect programmers to know more about software. They should know those things at least on a basic level. They should be the ones to educate people about it, because otherwise who will do it?
If software developers don't understand what end-to-end encryption is, what hope can we have that an average person will understand it? I just don't know how we can make progress if even technical people don't know technology well enough.
In my opinion, they do care about privacy from people around them like you and me, they just don't seem to care when it's big tech companies like Meta or Google. Like for example, they won't show you or me their "sensitive photos", but it's fully backed up to iCloud or Google Photos, yknow.
They care about visible, or tangible privacy. It's hard for some to grasp internet privacy and why it matters if "you're not doing anything wrong."
But barge into their house at 4am, or open the door while they're in the bathroom, or listen at the door while they're having sex, and you'll get a whole different response.
Ask them about their finances and most people won't talk about it, but they don't realize that facebook and google know all about it.
Exactly. It is not that they don't care about privacy it is just that they trust them because they are the standard, they are big and government is supposed to keep them in check.
People trust the system way too much
you're right, the average person doesn't care about their privacy.
and not only do they not care about their privacy, they resent being called stupid for not caring about their privacy. "you're an idiot" seems to be most privacy advocates go-to argument as to why we should all care more about privacy, and it's really not making a very good case.
ikr? some years ago, a classmate laughed at me for not wanting to give my credit card to Google to watch a YouTube video with age restriction.
he called me "conspiranoic", "hysterical" and stuff, and i was just like "why do i have to give my credit card to watch a freaking video?".
he was the typical "i don't have anything to hide" guy. he said "it's not a big deal, they already have lots of info about us, why do you care at this point lol".
and i am ashamed i got influenced by them and days after, when that restriction appeared again for other videos i searched myself, i ended giving my credit card number.
and he was like making fun of it, like "see? i was right and you did it".
damn, he was so annoying.
(sorry for this, pal. it was just to say that people gladly share their data to mega corporations, and press us to do the same by calling us conspiranoic).
ikr? some years ago, a classmate laughed at me for not wanting to give my credit card to Google to watch a YouTube video with age restriction.Wait YouTube age restriction need credit card info to unlock?
That, or a photo of your ID, or some other "proof". Depends on country too probably.
Honestly I don't think there's any relevant data google would gain from that that they don't already have unless you're very meticulous about not letting them have any, so I didn't really care.
And you can almost certainly blame "think of the children" type of legislation for that more than google trying to collect more data. Which is also what causes the country variation, it might not be needed at all in some places.
Interesting, from where i from i just need to have google account and hit continue
in my country, i was asked for my ID card, credit card or maybe (i don't remember this one) driver's license.
i think it was the algorhythm those weeks randomly flagging videos as age-restricted, or my account as suspicious or something.
Here in Germany I had to upload my ID card
I imagine how the check folks is related to local legislation.
Recently i was hanging out with my brother. He look at some search result on my phone and asked about Neeva, that was the search engine i was using then. I explained how it worked and how it didn't push add on you.
His response was basically "so".
Yeah lots of people just don't care at all. either they think it is pointless because someone out will know about you or they don't see privacy as important
Everyone has to chose what's right for them. The reality is Facebook having and selling that data will never impact the average person. But not be part of the family because you are not on Facebook is a real thing that will affect people.
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.
I just use my name and say whatever I want here.
No one will ever believe you anyways.
If threads scrapes these sites and somehow links your account to your name, do you really want do recieve ads related to your complaint of an illness or condition? You should want to mantain privacy, or at least anonymity.
For the web scrapers, I, actual Hollywood superstar Margot Elise Robbie, stand by everything I've ever said on Lemmy that I would never say in real life, including the following:
Sam Altman and his web scrapers can scrape my Academy Award nominated dick. - Margot Robbie
Is this like that story where Jim Carey took a handful of fries from someone’s plate and said “Nobody will ever believe you”?
Because I want to believe…
I'm not sure that they ever did.
The turning point for me when I really got a concrete realisation about people absolutely not giving a shit about this was when Snowden came out and I saw the majority of people just go "Eh, that's pretty fucked, whatever", and then immediately jump straight back into scrolling facebook all day long.
I realised then that there probably wasn't any point expecting anything from them. I don't have much sympathy left for people in this regard anymore.
Most people legitimately don't give a shit about this issue. I think that they really should, but they absolutely don't for the most part.
I tried to explain this to my daughter in law when she suggested my wife just use the same password for everything, including online banking.
Ended up in a big row about how she doesn't give a shit because she has nothing to hide.
Didn't talk to me for a week.
Thinking about that, perhaps I should rack it up as a success 😏
Can't disagree with anything you just said
Most people aren’t aware of these things, and even if they are, they don’t want privacy to hinder their normal life in any way.
I think for most people it's "semi aware but just don't care".
Yeah Facebook is bad but so is the government etc etc
Hang around security professionals for a while and you'll realize just how bad things can get. This is the only thing I really miss from Twitter, an interesting group of security professionals I followed.
Oh, just realized I should probably follow those kinds of people on Mastodon.
Most people are completely ignorant about how much they are known to the tech companies, what the data is used for, and the dangers emanating from it. They don't know the risks, so they don't fear them.
What is shocking is the apathy of states. Slightly more movement in the past years, but it's still extraordinary how spying laws are now being circumvented through the use of industry, and states are just mostly looking away.
Not too shocking when you realise that the US isn't going to restrict its own tech companies because it likes being the global tech hegemony, while europe and others lag because they have become vassalised by the US, this report mentions ukraine in the title but the content of the report sees it as having taken place over a much longer period. This isn't some fringe influence org, it's a direct policy tank funded by Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, etc etc etc the list is really really fucking long.
Europe has almost no digital social media of its own, no digital sovereignty if you will, and the vassalisation has caused extreme reluctance to address this, which compounds the issue. Unlike India, China, Russia or others where they have constructed their own media that they control.
I doubt that anyone is going to address this, not unless they want to end up in the crosshairs of punishing sanction policy. It's not going to get resolved until dedollarisation of the federal reserve currency progresses significantly further.
Honestly, I feel like it's from technological incompetence. These people don't understand how a basic website works. They think facebook is entirely on their phone. Which, don't get me wrong, there isn't really anything wrong with an older person not understanding how it works. But it's entirely different when you're the one responsible for making decisions on laws involving technology.
Technology is developing at mach speed, and the government has a pack of snails pulling it forward. Couple that with many of the people making decisions being ancient, and you have laws that are not even close to matching our technology. Shoot, even photography laws are outdated. In the US, photography laws are practically non-existent. The only laws that apply to people taking pictures are trespassing laws. If you're allowed to stand there, and you can see it, you can take a picture. Laws weren't really needed when cameras weren't in every single persons pocket all the time.
for the laymen, where can i read on this?
People DO care about general and online privacy, but to a point. They will sacrifice some privacy if it means they can see their friends on social media. They will sacrifice some privacy in exchange for free apps.
Most of the public is unaware just HOW much they are being tracked and what is happening to their data. Most people are a bit unsettled when the data is shown to them. We need to educate more people.
I think the abortion and trans kids situations are putting into sharp relief the danger of large third parties knowing too much about us. Facebook is absolutely scanning its servers for signs of unwanted pregnancies and relaying that information to red state law enforcement. Other platforms may be doing the same thing.
Women in the US are advised not to use period-tracker apps, given they do often sell the data they glean, and don't discriminate against far-right interests. And anti-abortion organizations are shopping.
I’m not saying I don’t believe you and I wouldn’t put it past right wingers. But I gotta ask if you have a source for any of what you said here?
Welp, a short internet news search of period tracker led me to this interview on Slate
On TechDirt (which I use a lot for tech-industry news) reported this in 2021, so before the Dobbs ruling was leaked or released in May / June 2022.
So, it depends on to what degree you need it confirmed, but it doesn't seem to be buried.
My most recent trans privacy freak-out was Texas AG Ken Paxton requesting a list of all Texas drivers license / state ID records that have requested a change of sex on their ID, which can also be found searching news.
Actually, the guy was only asking for how many they were, and the report was never made anyways.
This is what Zuckerberg keyed in on early internet days. Tech savvy users understand what is at stake, but to the average user, it gets in the way of using apps that people socialize on. It didn't matter how much preaching I did back in the early days. Eventually people fall in line and do what their friends do.
Nobody cares. I mean, have you seen armature porn? That used to not be a thing on line, once upon a time. Nobody cares anymore apparently, because there's a sense of anonymity in a large enough group.
I know I've seen armature porn
Whoa, mark that NSFNW (Not safe for not work)
Please, showing girthy shafts like this in public is such a shameless behaviour.
I don't agree, whenever I take someones phone and start reading their private messages or browsing history, they always get nervous, even if I can't find anything.
People certainly care, even an average person is aware of problems with digital privacy and they would love to get it solved. But people care about a lot of things, global warming, homelessness, police brutality, they just don't organize well enough to fight those issues and fighting them alone is hard.
Also don't forget the amount of propaganda there is to live a certain way, to chase promotions on your job, earn more money and have a high social status. All of these things get in the way of deleting instagram,whatsup and etc.
There is also a problem with lack of marketing of alternatives, most people haven't heard of lemmy or XMPP chat.
I suggest we try to get people to start using these alternatives first, until there are enough users that they actually have a choice to choose either network and then a lot of people will delete mainstream apps. First step is to make it popular, second is to delete these bad apps. However even getting someone to use a new app is hard, since they are bombarded everyday to install some new app and are even financially motivated (with deals and discounts).
It is a hard battle, but a necessary one. Without privacy there is no democracy, voting is secret for a reason. We need a real democracy, where we choose laws directly, not by someone else we are forced to vote for due too lack of better choice. That requires safe and private digital communications. In person communication is very limited.
I mean, would be nice if we actually had one.
Or both, really.
It goes hand in hand. We need to fight for privacy in order to have direct democracy
In a country where 98% of the voting population picks based on team color, we don't have either, and it's because neither side will hold anyone accountable.
The reason we don't have democracy is not because we don't fight enough with each other, but because we can't fight together for a common goal. 98% want a democracy and would prefer privacy. We need to stop letting politicians pin us against each other, but let us understand that despite our differences, we have a lot of common interest and that they are the actual enemy.
As some did in Russia during conscription for war in Ukraine, shoot the officer that made you fight in a war, not the unwilling solider on the other side of the border. People don't want to fight each other, it is politicians that throw other people's lives away while they sit far away from action, pretending to be actual war heroes.
No, I disagree. When you ask the average person to show you their private chats, emails and passwords, they will refuse because of privacy.
Instead of not caring about privacy, people prioritize convenience over privacy. Big tech companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft offer really good, stable products which are mainstream and generally don't cause problems. At least, Windows 10 is way less troublesome than Linux and it's easier to use the stock Android with Google instead of installing a custom ROM such as GrapheneOS.
To really push the privacy friendly alternatives towards the mainstream, the alternatives should become more user-friendly, less tech-savvy, and preinstalled.
I agree, but I'd add that they don't really understand how valuable their data really is. It’s almost like being in a different country with a different currency and not being able to really do the math in your head of how much it would cost in your own currency. I grew up with the early internet where, you assumed you were on a world stage and any post you made was on display for anyone to view, but you could navigate it in relative anonymity. Now you have tech companies not only track you online (where you browse) but also in the real world. You carry a personal tracking device at all times.
People don't quite comprehend that this is what countries spend billions of dollars on with intelligence operations. And this is the currency you are spending when you sign up for these “free” services. Just because it doesn’t come out of your bank account doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. I’ve had discussions with friends and family and they don’t seem to understand, if your not paying for the product, YOU are the product and they are being paid for you. But because of this obfuscating of roles people will keep willing hand over their data, not understanding that these companies are building profiles to hack your psyche and influence you into doing or buying things.
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.
You say not so different from smoking or climate change, but those are on completely different scales. Unless Mark Zuckerberg is doing some Samuel L Jackson in Kingsman level nefarious shit, then I don't think you can compare loss of privacy to getting fatal cancer or destroying the planet.
What are the negative consequences that most people seem unable to see?
This question has been asked like half a dozen times in this thread and still nobody has come up with a concrete response.
Information is power. Information is used against you pervasively for control. This control ranges in nefariousness. You want examples? Here are some examples of consequences of use of information as a means of power:
The usual response to a list like this goes something along the lines of, bah, none of that will happen to me, I'm a goody-two-shoes. That advice is about as good as saying "I'm a good driver, I won't get into a crash, so I don't need to wear a seatbelt". Back to my point, the consequences of information used against you are too far and too abstract for people to accept.
I think there has been a huge shift in the privacy concerns of the average people. 10-15 years ago we shared our (LIVE) locations constantly and everything defaulted to doing that. People tagged everyone on all photos (with locations) and initially there wasn't even a way to consent to that. Today that sounds really extreme. Now many people will lock down their accounts and they aren't sharing as much as they used to. You are right that the average person doesn't care as much, but it's not entirely true that people are completely careless.
Haven't we known this for literally decades now? After the Patriot Act passed in 2001 and precisely zero fucks were given by the general population. Then a few short later facebook comes out and I realize oh ok not only do people not care about their privacy, but they'll freely and gleefully hand it over in exchange for a digital dog park where they can go around sniffing each others butts.
I feel like many people care deeply about their privacy. I certainly do. The problem is, protecting it is exhausting.
The constant vigilance it takes to maintain your privacy along with dealing with the day to day stress and strife of just trying to live is too much. Sometimes it’s too heavy to carry.
I’m on top of that, the deck is stacked against the average person.
Ignorance is much stronger than apathy.
Average person does not understand why privacy is important. They were lucky enough not to (yet) experience repression, censorship or surveillance and often throw banal one liners like I've got nothing to hide.
It's only once you lived a while with someone (person or an institution) watching your every step you realize how it definitely changes you. You decide not to state your opinion, not to raise your hand, not to make the choice you would of you were truly free.
Same goes for welcoming your data against you.... But you're on fediverse. I'm packing to the choir here.
You would like to think so, but one thing that's become clear to me is a large number of new fediverse users are only interested in escaping what Reddit/Twitter have become in recent months, and have no issues supporting competitors who will abuse them algorithmlically just the same.
Not caring about privacy is one thing. There is also a network effect; that is caring about privacy leads to poorer contact with family, friends, and people they care about. Privacy has been correlated with disadvantage.
The sad thing about it is that none of it is natural, the big wigs have rigged it this way. Sometimes I feel like the only winning move is to choose your peers, and if you cannot choose your peers, you cannot win this game.
It was "dumbfucks". In context, people who trust Zuckerberg with their personal information are dumbfucks. His words.
I think a big part is people don't understand the impact of what they are losing. It's not something tangible like their wallet or car being stolen, it's just "information" and they don't understand how that data can be used against them. Even when examples are given, such as the Cambridge Analytica incident, they think they are smart enough to be impervious to the manipulation so it doesn't matter.
It's because privacy is not a trivial matter, especially in those sites. You have to go through endless legal jargon to see how exactly the platform is using your data. Your average user has the attention span of a goldfish because of Tiktok, he/she would never read the platform's privacy policy and will prioritize convenience over digital rights.
You don't even need to read the privacy policy most often it's enough to look at the requested app permissions of the app you are installing.
Yes but those are only local permissions, they don't cover how they are tracking your app usage
It's all jargon by design. You won't use something that openly says they watch/listen to you shit.
I think people only care about their privacy if the consequences is something they can see/feel directly (e.g. privacy related to election)
People don't understand the power of aggregated mundane data
perhaps they also can see it and feel it directly but have decided its largely unavoidable, something they are largely unable to change, and just give up? sometimes i think it's as much about lack of control and weariness as much as it is about apathy.
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)
It is important for a society to have privacy, not just you as an individual. There are journalists and activist that need privacy for a very good reason.
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." ― Edward Snowden
I guess I should clarify that I don't care about my own internet privacy all that much. Obviously there should be ways to be private if you need to, but I'm not going to bother with them.
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.
Most people do not have to a reason to care about privacy, until the day their private comms/data gets leaked and abused is when they will give a damn.
But that’s not the kind of privacy we’re talking about. Privacy discussions are largely about ad tech and tracking. The post here isn’t calling people idiots because he thinks Threads is more likely to leak your credit card numbers and nudes. He’s calling people idiots for not caring about tracking the way he does. And the reality is that there’s no real reason why they should care. The argument boils down to just, “c’mon, don’t you think it’s creepy?”. And if I say, “not really”, we’re kind of at an impasse. There’s just no obvious pragmatic harm you can point to to reason them over to your side. You may as well being trying to convince them to enjoy pineapple on pizza. If they don’t already, the game’s pretty much over.
I get the feeling that the average person doesn't understand what privacy means in relation to the Internet.
I feel like the average person doesn't understand their options and doesn't want to understand them because it's difficult to them. When I try to help explain privacy issues to others, their eyes glaze over instantly. They don't want their private information to be collected and sold, but they don't have the attention span to learn about "tech stuff".
Americans don't care about privacy unless it's China collecting data.
And even then, it's lukewarm at best. I mean, Tiktok is still stupidly popular.
Privacy is complicated and often a luxury. Not everyone has the technical understanding to protect their privacy, nor the money to always choose the privacy-conscious option (which are almost always paid options). And to be honest, they shouldn't really have to if governments did their jobs and brought in effective privacy protection laws.
I mean, ActivityPub as a whole sucks at privacy.
Show me where activitypub actively tracks how much time you've spent looking at content, what content makes you stop scrolling, factors that contribute to you interacting in content, or any demographic information about you, etc.
Privacy is given up on the fediverse when you choose to post such information, (e.g. "I live in Ohio") not actively harvested as a means to craft ads for your eyeballs and sell to whoever has money.
Your comment is akin to "oh you don't like eating spoiled yogurt? And yet, you eat bananas... Curious."
I'm assuming they're referring to the recent post about how Lemmy stores your upvote/downvote history in databases accessible to all instance owners and not just the owner of the instance your account is on.
its perplexing when i talk to my siblings and realize how little they actually care about their privacy online, its almost if they enjoy giving out their private information to companies
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?
I think that the average person is just ignorant about the issues regarding privacy, or doesn't have the time and energy to find out/care about it. Big societal issues such as privacy require some digging into to find information on, and they require some (a lot of) thinking to fully understand the problems and the consequences of these issues. A lot of people are already struggling to deal with their daily lives. Big issues like internet privacy and data collection are too big and too distant for them to care about, and the short-term convenience gained from giving in is too good. It's currently quite a hassle for the average layman to learn how to use and implement the tools to protect your privacy (not helped by the big businesses deliberately making things difficult).
Mots people do care about privacy, but most people see more pressing issues that goes first. It's hard to care about something intangible when it's hard to have a roof over its head, or to pay the bills.
Also musicians won't hesitate to put their audience at risk. They doesn't care about what they're asking their audience, because they 'feel' like they have no choice. Which is objectively wrong.
And musicians are often ignorant about copyright laws, so how can they protect their audience if the don't know how to defend them self?
I was always taught to keep my real life off the internet so my thoughts on privacy as it pertains to the Internet largely are irrelevant. They're going to profile my online persona; not me, the real human being behind the keyboard.
Of course part of that includes not giving my real name even if they ask, and not using apps that are really egregious in the data they collect (like with the app permissions Threads requires).
I am for data collection to a certain degree. Using it to target ads may be kinda cringe, but I don't see it as evil. Collecting usage data to improve the thing I am using is also okay. The data I don't want collected is, like, my name. My address. My phone number. My bank info. Etc.
People do, but have no clue.
Just think of all those posts we see that go "so I looked in my Google history and see they've been recording everything for the last decade and holy shit this is creepy" oh-snap moments.
It's just not something a normal person thinks about. I mean, just like a normal person wouldn't consider the thoughts of a serial killer, similarly people don't consider that stalking mega corporations could do what they do.
I really wish there could be a law that says that if they want people to use their platform so they can use their data they have to pay people for their data. Data is money, but only to the companies that suck up my data and use it to make money. If my data is worth money I want money for my data. If companies had to pay me for my data I would consider using Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, et. al. if the price were right. This is no doubt a very impossible wish. They also say time is money and there is no law requiring people to pay me when they waste my time. But, I can dream. Imagine getting a nice check in exchange for signing up for Instagram.
Let's call it data whoring.
That's funny! Imagine being called "you data whore" hahaha! In all seriousness, though, if such a law existed and depending on the payment requirements, there might not be many data whoring opportunities. Depending on the legislation, it could discourage entities from tracking, storing, mining, and selling people's data. It would require entities to keep track. With people using online services in the millions, that's some serious accounting and legal representation. It might even cost more money to prove compliance to governments than the payments to the "data whores" would. Then, of course, there would be the fines to pay for non-compliance, and the lawsuits. That's why this law I dream of will never happen. Depending on the law and its implementation it could cripple online industry and make companies like Meta totally non-existent.
I understand your frustration entirely. And for the most part, I agree with it. But for music producers, especially if they're indie, they have no choice. Content creators trying to make a living off of their art rely on putting themselves out there on the biggest platforms to maximize the amount of exposure they're going to get. The importance of social media with millions upon millions of users for an indie artist cannot be understated. It is the difference between them paying rent, and getting evicted.
As for the average user, as others have stated, they have friends, family, and content creators that they like to follow. Digital privacy comes at a cost. We cannot afford to create the misconception that acts protecting our digital privacy are free actions. And the level of cost and willingness to pay it varies from person to person. I don't need Facebook to keep up with my parents. But many people do. For their parents and the rest of their family and loved ones. I was willing to make the switch to Linux, but it cost me some simplicity in my gaming; some titles aren't just plug n play. Even ones that were on Windows. Switching to Lemmy was nothing for me, but for some people, they're giving up subreddits they loved, or they have to keep using Reddit to access them. And there are some valuable resources there.
Privacy isn't free. It's invaluable and sometimes the price tag reflects that.
@BraBraBra Convenience will always win out with the masses. There needs to be more tangible benefits for doing something more inconvenient than losing privacy for that to change.
Not really true, people are willing to fight for a better life and a better world. We just need to organize, to fight together. There is a lot each of us can do make using these decentralized apps more convenient, including simply making valuable content on these networks, but also translating it into different languages, reporting bugs and trying to fix them or write tutorials on how to use it or get around a bug.
That’s your dumb average person. Personally I am fine with it cause it’s a choice they make.
I've been online for years and years. Enough to know that, we've been giving our data away before social media took off. Social Media and search engines like Google, have accelerated it and made it a farming thing as the basis of their foundations.
So what I'm referring to about giving our data away before the social media era, is that we have registered on to forums and we have registered to chat rooms and other services. We willingly gave them our names, even beneath the screen names we registered under. We willingly discussed a lot of ourselves within those forums and we can't preemptively assume that they aren't keeping some record of what we're doing and saying. We know all sites keep a stamp of our IP addresses, so it's a safe bet that they're also collecting everything we do within their site's boundaries.
I'm not trying to say that we should all just expose ourselves, en masse. But I will say that you are responsible and you've been responsible for what you decide to put there online. You are right to be questioning and working against things like Google needing your street address to recover a simple password when there had been other proven methods to recover your password by. However, it comes off a little ridiculous when you're griping about privacy while also being someone who dumps their life stories on that platform or this platform.
There was always a line though between "i'm sharing this personal information with you privately" (i.e. registering with your name and e-mail address), and "I'm sharing this information with the general public". You also were able to remain somewhat anonymous, by registering with your real name but making sure other users only saw your screen name.
While there was always the threat of someone finding your publicly shared photos or stories and using them for nefarious purposes, the idea of the company you're giving them to analyzing all of that private and public data, across the entire web thanks to tracking cookies, and using it to manipulate you or packaging it up and selling it was never really a concern. No one had the capabilities to analyze that much data 10-15 years ago, and if they did it wasn't yet profitable.
The idea that you now have zero control over how your personal and private data is used, or who it's sold to, is terrifying.
Most people do not but over the past five years, privacy has become more of a concern in peoples lives I would say
They don't care because they don't know the immediate consequences, if any.
My sister told me about a friend of hers who was about to get blackmailed by some random guy who claimed to have her child, he used a Facebook photo as proof. Aside from the bullshit extortion intent, after hearing the story, my sister became more cautious with the information she shared on social networks.
The extortionist thing can be extrapolated to the large companies that use our data for their own benefit, but the common citizen cannot see the danger in that because the companies are not "extorting" you, they just want to sell you their shit at any cost.
I think that it's a little bit of don't care and a little bit of that it's a ton of work I think. It's a lot of work if you actually use online services because they all want your data. You have to be very aware of every app and site that you visit. Changing settings, browser extensions, complex opt out methods. It's more effort than a lot of people will make.
I agree with the "work required to get away". The User Experience is a huge job. Most open source projects are targeting the functionality.
I guess I don't care about lots of data things normally. Honestly at this point I care more about the Elon V Zuck fight.
There is no semblance of privacy anymore. Most people need a bank account or a credit card. Boom someone has (some of) your data.
In the US, at that point, credit agencies also have (some of) your data.
Even in something like Lemmy, someone could easily scrape all the data about what you post/do/etc. At some level almost everything you do is public to some extent.
Edit since I thought of something else: Even if you drive in a big city: something is tracking your license plate. In NYC they do it for EZ-Pass, and in the Bay Area they do it for Fast-Trak.
Didn't the Equifax leak include people's data that never used their service? Like damn, is Zuck going to learn something new about me that every other company hasn't written down already?
Yep! The credit agencies are very likely to get your data when applying for a credit card or loan or etc. So they have basically everyone at some point. Honestly the only other info Zuck has on me is random photos from 10 years ago.
Let's not downplay the value of that photo. Stuff like that is a critical
competentcomponent for building AI systems strong enough to visually identify people under a variety of conditions. It's the keystone to a total surveillance state, which itself is the gateway to things like the social credit system used in China.Edit: stupid typo
Those AI systems will happen either way. Take the EZ-Pass example. It wouldn't surprise me if they want to use facial recognition to cross reference the driver with the plates on the car to find a kidnapper.
I understand that this stuff could be used for.. evil .. but acting like they can be stopped from being developed is like saying no country should make nukes. We still make nukes.. and this tech. The only ones who don't do it are the ones who fall behind.
You can slow it down maybe but you can't stop it.
People say the same thing about AI like chatgpt: we should slow it down or pause it till yadayada. Anyone who 'pauses' is just hiding results longer.
Honestly living in a world with great facial recognition could have benefits. Would be cool to be able to shop without needing my wallet or phone and have it charged to me automatically based off my face. My Google Photos has facial recognition and I think it's a great feature.. I wish it worked even better.
At this point I think they have everything they would want from me. Even if I started to care now I feel like it's too late.
Better late than never, they say... (I think)
I often think this as well, however I take the continual attempts at nearly every possible turn to syphon yet more personal info as a sign at least someone doesn't have it yet and wants it and maybe I can stop them getting it and also I think these operations that suck up and sell or otherwise exploit your data need a continuous flow rather than simply a finite set.
What they have is probably useful but actually to a certain extent it probably isn't of much use without more data constantly coming in. Organisations like Google or Facebook would have such a large proportion of the planet represented in some form in their databases that it that were enough it'd basically be mission accomplished and they'd have no growth opportunities. I can probably never really know, but it looks like they need you to keep interacting with their services to maintain useful profiles of you and the rest of their hoardes and if they didn't get it your data would be essentially stale at after time.
To be fair, you basically have to give up on your privacy if you want to be a public figure these days. To make it most musicians have to constantly evangelize themselves, which means being omnipresent on social media platforms.
Posting your band's tour dates on Facebook doesn't really even change your privacy status that much.
Whether you have a Facebook account or not, Facebook tracks you around the web. Data brokers sell your data. Your cell phone company sells your location and browsing history, etc.
People over-estimate how much not using any given social media app really matters.
Now granted, installing it on your phone gives them a level of data they wouldn't have from a web browser. That's probably why Threads is phone-only.
Fair enough. I took efforts a few years back to eliminate all my social media, and started a new reddit (now lemmy) account and made efforts to be more anonymous
I'm sure they collect some info on me, but for me its about not just handing it over.
Ease of use comes first. Normies are very ignorant when you try to indulge them into technicalities. They do care about privacy, but then have a real life to worry about, than leaving a unique fingerprint while browsing the internet. Most of all of them, are unaware about this situation.
Someone(GAFAM) at some point have made a decision for the internet to fill it up with bloat shit to track what you're doing, else there wouldn't be a need for a privacy guide.
People obviously enjoy The Algorithm. They enjoy a feed that is constantly full. The fact that it is full of noxious shit is irrelevant. Those that come here from The Algorithm to mastodon or lemmy or anywhere else where The Algorithm is not present are immediately put off. Effort is required to fill your feed, it is an active rather than a passive experience. There is something entirely sexual about this dynamic. People enjoy being brain fucked by The Algorithm.
You're absolutely right. I come to Lemmy maybe once or twice a day. Reddit? Every hour. I really want to stop going to Reddit, but man is it hard.
Different people have different preferences. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.
The average person definitely doesn't imo. Threads is easy to get into and has a fast growing user base. Those make it more appealing then privacy ever would for the average person.
I am not an average person having worked in IT for a couple of decades now and I can tell you no, the average person is either not aware or doesn't care.
Even I, and my peers who are very aware, don't care
I think where privacy minded people fail to understand is that for most people we are not committing crimes or shady shit online therefore why care? A lot of us understand that if you type anything in a computer it is assumed to be on the public record either easily found or through a few hoops to get it.
If you want privacy write it down on paper or talk about it in person with your peers. Those are the most secure things.
Online and privacy are oxymorons. People need to understand this.
Yeah, I hate that argument (the typical "If you don't have anything to hide, why should I worry"). Because you might not have anything to hide (debatable), but you know who does? Journalists, political activists, people in witness protection, people who suffered from domestic violence or human trafficking and need to hide, etc....
Don't collectively erode people's right to privacy, because there are people whose lives depend on it; and who knows, you might need it some day.
I agree with you 100% but it's a very black and white way to look at things and the world is grey. Furthermore, the world feels drastically different than we do.
The issue isn't that people are trying to hide their crimes or their shady shit, it's that the information about ourselves that we did not post online/are only letting a select few know are being revealed to strangers without our consent. It's about the choice of who we are willing to reveal what to. Are you willing to let strangers know every aspect of your daily life? What you eat, when you sleep, when you poop, where you go, what you like to do etc. Because that's what companies want with data collection, to know every aspect of you, the good the bad the ugly, so that they can market your data to advertisers and constantly push their products to you. Taken to the futuristic extreme, they can and will push toilet paper products to you while you are on the toilet, or advertise gym services while you are eating dessert, or maybe even push sex products while you are in bed with your partner. It's this sort of future that many people are worried about and want to prevent from happening. (And this isn't even talking about what governments can do with this sort of data collection.)
People want the choice of being able to reveal select information to select people. That's what privacy is.
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." ― Edward Snowden
The problem is that nowadays your medical documentation, banking and other sensitive data is all transferred through a computer. And it should be protected and private.
For all intents and purposes it is "private" though. In your examples specifically banking and government, that data is not used for anything nefarious. People are screaming into the wind on Facebook, twitter, google, et al. In all of these there is an unspoken agreement that "we get it for free and you get our data to use as you will". The vast majority of the public is oblivious to this or gets it and doesn't give a shit because you are literally screaming into the wind.
Is it right? I'd argue no. But it is what it is. Control what you can.
This position is full of generalisations and false dichotomies. Care / don't care, private / not private.
This is pure hyperbole. Sure a lot of idiots don't realise that the platforms they're using are not private, but it's usually only admins that can access their stuff - it's not "on the public record".
The honest question then is why are you or anyone else online period? Who do you vote for? Where do you have accounts? The list goes on and on. The world has spoken. We are the vast minority regardless of if we are "right" or not. I agree with those privacy minded individuals but at the same time I have a life and in the grand scheme of things there are far larger problems out there.
Sorry I don't understand what you're getting at.
One can participate online and make choices about what risks to privacy we are willing to tolerate.
It's not a binary "everything online is not private" because privacy is subjective - it depends on the context.
Privacy is abstract to people until something happens to make them realize how valuable it is. "I don't have anything to hide" is from people who don't feel threatened by anything, who've never been stalked or targeted.
I showed my friend all of the privacy problems with threads and his response was ‘I don’t care, they already have everything anyway’.
I told another friend and their response was ‘I don’t care if they have my data, it’s not much use to them and it doesn’t have any effect on me’
The world is hopeless.
So there's a lot of doom and gloom here, but what do we actually do about it? How do we do it? ~Strawberry
It's more that the average person doesn't have a clear understanding of what the cost is of not protecting your privacy.
The Internet is basically a privacy economy, where you sell your privacy in return for free services, and to most people this feels like a very one sided exchange. They're giving away something that to them has no percieved value.
What privacy advocates need to get better at is actually explaining to people what the value of their privacy is.
My brother in law is like this. He keeps a yearly journal on google drive and his logic is that since he keeps it on google drive he doesn't care if google know everything about him or not. The convenience of having it heavily outweighs any privacy that he might have. Though I wonder if him growing up in an authoritarian country has something to do with it.
Normies are cancer that make EEE & surveillence possible
how do you think we got here (gestures all around) in the first place
Yes, I think it is blatantly obvious how little many people care about their privacy and data. This is the result of an astonishing lack of knowledge and education on the consequences of giving away your data. They cannot imagine how many types of data are stored about them and analyzed to gain all sorts of insights into their life, thoughts, ideas, views and social life. Often people don't believe they have anything to hide which is always false because we are humans. The other is they underestimate or refuse to believe the the information which can be drawn from your data or the fact that ads and other forms of manipulation do in fact work on them.
Same here. I've tried so hard to get people to care about their privacy. But it's one of those things that human brains are designed to fear things they can see and feel. We aren't really good at fearing the stuff that creeps up. (aka heart disease, diabetes, privacy creep lol)
What do you mean when you say "privacy"? Threads isn't more or less private than using any other federated service-- they all share everything you do on them with everything else anyway. I guess federation doesn't share things like your email and IP address, so there is some privacy-related concerns, so maybe that's what you meant?
The big distinction between threads and, say, Mastodon is that Mastodon doesn't have an algorithm. The minor distinctions are more along the lines of it being open source and not controlled by a giant corporation. I am not surprised that most people don't care about (or maybe actively seek out) a service with an algorithm, let alone about the benefits of FOSS.
Issue with threads is the app constantly collects everything such as location, card details etc
Card details?
Sorry, i meant financial info and purchases
You mean through the app?
yes
You expect them not to track purchases through their own app?
Most people just don't even realise despite everything that all of these huge corporations are tracking their every move and, of those that do, many do not see or simply refuse to acknowledge the dangerous implications of handing people like Mark and Elon what are, in many cases, essentially the keys to their personal lives.
People are weird. I mean they're completely fine with random people at google knowing their exact location what they're doing and what websites they look at, but as soon as you start following them around in public they get all upset!
Seriously though, I'm guessing that an app just doesn't feel very 'threatening' somehow. It's just an appliance, in some sense. You don't care about the toilet seeing your private parts right?
In the case of content creators they typically would not care as much about privacy from a social media platform. They are going to do anything that gives them a commercial/marketing edge, so why wouldn’t they try to be visible in the most popular place?
You could tell that from the number of users having a meta account
People have a lot going on in their lives.
The problem isn't privacy. It's how they use the data they get from you to lie to you.
Unfortunately it's just not that much of a priority for most people. They value convenience much more than privacy.
I think a lot of people don’t care, and a lot more people just have no idea what’s going on. You have to be hyper-aware of how your data could get farmed in order to prevent each new service from collecting it.
Most people don't care and don't understand the implications, and the convenience is too great to ignore.
Is there a business angle to this? Perhaps it's more about continuing to actively establish an online presence which benefits them directly as musicians than supporting the platform.
I'm not writing that I agree with it, but I can at least understand it if it's more of a business move. You don't want to be late to the party if, for example, you're in the business of parties.
Unfortunately this is so true. Even my family believe that I'm weird just because I have brought this concern few times.
That’s sad right? When I was starting my privacy journey, I really thought people that’s closest to me would also care about privacy. But no, like for example, when I started using signal, about 2-3 of my friends join.
I recall getting my first email address through school in 1993 or so.
I remember having minimal presence on the Internet until perhaps 1997 - when I worked in a highly technical environment and internet communities were still very nascent. People had to search out how to find meaningful communities online. If non-technical people had access to anything like internet communities, it was usually some angelfire cookie cutter site.
Then friendster, myspace, fark, somethingwful,diig, facebook, reddit and many others rapidly expanded the options. People without the knowledge or inclination got into spaces that started with nerds nerding out.
I see this recent split as something like a natural evolution of the people who would've originally been on fark when the user numbers were sub 50,000 and fb- was new, or who were skeptical of facebook because it was only for college kids, or who originally started reddit seeking the spaces they've always sought. Maybe non technical people will eventually take up these spaces - but those people have NEVER cared about the intracacies of their online privacy...or where their data is stored....or their cell phone data...or any of that. They cheered on The Patriot Act and they don't care about net neutrality.
This is nothing particularly new.
Most people do not care as long as they do not feel immediate negative consequences. Plus there is a certain pressure (social and economical) to use spyware for the benefit of some gigacorp. People need to have a certain mindset to value privacy and data sovereignty and be willing to take action
Yeah, I noticed that too, I just hope the amount of people who do care is big enough to have a nice and thriving community outside of corporate control.