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I understand your point and I agree that individuals need to value privacy, but I also think it's important to recognize that the average individual on HN is mu

I understand your point and I agree that individuals need to value privacy, but I also think it's important to recognize that the average individual on HN is much more technologically literate than most. I would posit that most people do care about their privacy, but that most people aren't aware how exposed they really are. You could make the argument that being aware about what information you're exposing is the threshold for caring about your privacy, but the reality is that it's impossible to cover all of your bases and tech companies, and now NYT, are fully exploiting that to their advantage. The average individual isn't aware of how much specific information is collected when they use a credit card, when they connect to a cellular network, when they open a webpage with trackers, etc. Hell, Mr. Sulzberger in [1] admitted himself that NYT isn't even fully aware of what happens to the reader information they sell and whether it ends up in responsible hands. It's exhausting and impossible to care about privacy today. You can care about privacy today and still end up with all of the same information exposed as someone who couldn't care less. The responsibility doesn't fall on the individual, it falls on the companies that continuously scrape every piece of metadata possible. That's why I can't take NYT's Privacy Project seriously, because in [1] they justify their data collection methods by essentially saying "Well, everyone else is doing it, too! Look at these other publications and companies that also collect data!" instead of taking the opportunity to be transparent and setting a standard. It's disappointing and makes me question the motives behind the project.

joe_the_user 8y ago
I would posit that most people do care about their privacy, but that most people aren't aware how exposed they really are. Indeed, well. The average person cares about privacy but they don't understand privacy. I mean, it various ways I probably don't fully understand privacy. Which is to say, on reflection, that privacy and security are fundamentally intertwined just all the various points-of-entry for the bad guys are intertwined. And the thing with security is that it isn't a feature and an add-on. In an organization, everyone has to care or no can. And with individuals, the same. A given individual can't expect just AV to protect their security and they can't expect a website by itself to protect their privacy. Where, as I said above, I'm not optimistic on all these concerns.

joe_the_user 8y ago

I would posit that most people do care about their privacy, but that most people aren't aware how exposed they really are. Indeed, well. The average person cares about privacy but they don't understand privacy. I mean, it various ways I probably don't fully understand privacy. Which is to say, on reflection, that privacy and security are fundamentally intertwined just all the various points-of-entry for the bad guys are intertwined. And the thing with security is that it isn't a feature and an add-on. In an organization, everyone has to care or no can. And with individuals, the same. A given individual can't expect just AV to protect their security and they can't expect a website by itself to protect their privacy. Where, as I said above, I'm not optimistic on all these concerns.