4 ms·

Is there any evidence that the general public's attitude toward privacy and surveillance is changing? Is _anyone_ persuaded to care who isn't already privacy-co

Is there any evidence that the general public's attitude toward privacy and surveillance is changing? Is _anyone_ persuaded to care who isn't already privacy-conscious? I see articles like this all day long about Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, telecom providers, device manufacturers, DHS, Walmart, etc, etc. Snowden's revelations about the NSA were in 2013, for God's sake. And I don't evidence of any systematic change: no legislation to protect personal privacy (like the EU's GDPR), no effective boycotts of companies that abuse privacy. It feels like we're losing, or have already lost.

salawat 7y ago
I got my grandma on board with avoiding Facebook. She thought that the principle of "don't broadcast me, just make my stuff accessible" was in play. I sat down with her and explained what they really do, and it really turned her off. I've been pondering whether I could implement something better. A "this is me" web-connected data vault with fine grained, easy to adjust access controls; but I'm not sure there's any way to streamline the process enough where you could hand it to the user and not have them instantly be out of their depth. I don't believe a centralized solution is the way to go. Too much potential for abuse, and it makes it too easy to manipulate. Plus, Mastodon may beat me to it. Also, I've gotten my family/friends to give the various voice assistants a wide birth, sans Siri unfortunately. Funny how being the techie in the family has turned me into a comparative Luddite. Then again, no one I talk to tends to like being productized either.
- andrei_says_ 7y ago
  Could you elaborate on what you explained to her?
- KumarAseem 7y ago
  Do you have any points written out with examples when you explain to your folks? I could use those. Thumbs Up!!! for being successful in weaning a person off from such portals and getting them to understand Privacy and Security.
  - salawat 7y ago
    Basically, I just took some time to sit down and talk with her. Spent about a week with her on vacation. Talked about a lot of things. Specifically though, if I had to hone it down to something I think it was when I connected the dots for her about how Facebook really works. She'd thought it was more of a "place I can put stuff where friends could reliably get to it." A sort of classified ad as a service as it were I think is how we boiled down her understanding of it. Then she had said she kept getting flustered because people she didn't know kept popping up in her feed. That's when I explained to her that Facebook wasn't like a passive paper. They were actively utilizing any data she made available to them to expand their network, to the point of actively putting her information in front of people she hadn't even met, and may very well not care to. Then I explained to her the whole "Big Data" thing. Basically how more and more, things one would just do were being made in ways that they generated data trail that businesses would sell to other businesses. There was no such thing as professional discretion anymore. She really didn't like that and honestly never realized that that sort of thing happened. She knew they were a valuable company, but didn't realize it was because they were selling access to the user base. Talked to her a bit about the history of the company, and it's CEO's more controversial statements, and connected those with a couple of personal experiences I've had fighting to "do the right thing" in the industry with minimal luck. I learned that week that people want somewhere to provide a "social media experience" as it were, but what I got from her is there was a much higher expectation of privacy and control of who got access than she was experiencing. She still "checks it" occasionally to keep up with other members of the family, but I"m happy to say, she's much more satisfied with how I streamlined her email client than what she gets out of her Facebook account. I don't know if it'll work for anyone else. She was already only tentatively dipping into the platform as it was, so it just may not have taken as much convincing to get the dots connected. Hell, it may not have been anything I said about it, but just that it disturbed/stressed me out so much that did it. But nevertheless, I got Gram to back slowly away from Facebook. That means I've at least convinced one person. Should get easier from there right?
    - andrei_says_ 7y ago
      Thank you.
- kermitismyhero 7y ago
  >Funny how being the techie in the family has turned me into a comparative Luddite. It's the same mechanism at work for accountants. You'd be surprised at how many of us are leftist, if not straight-up socialist. We see how the sausage is made and we don't like it. (And we generally have no respect for those fucking koolaid-drinking reality-denying economists.)
rchaud 7y ago
The only time I've ever even mentioned it was when I was at a friend's house, saw he had a slick new Samsung smart TV, and relayed a news story about the microphone on the TV being 'always on' and phoning home. It felt overly preachy to bring up this stuff if it's not related to the topic of conversation. I mean, he already spent $500 on it, an always-on mic isn't enough for him to send it back. Me, I'm going to hold on to my "dumb" TV as long as possible. I have no reason to upgrade except for 4K, which, outside of live sports, really isn't of any interest to me. 1080p is good enough for me.
- McDev 7y ago
  Also have a Samsung "Smart" TV. I banned it from the internet when it started showing me ads inside the OS. Since then it's been great, although I've had to invest (had is strong, I could have gone with a cheaper solution maybe) in an Apple TV box to get Plex/Netflix and the like.

salawat 7y ago

I got my grandma on board with avoiding Facebook. She thought that the principle of "don't broadcast me, just make my stuff accessible" was in play. I sat down with her and explained what they really do, and it really turned her off. I've been pondering whether I could implement something better. A "this is me" web-connected data vault with fine grained, easy to adjust access controls; but I'm not sure there's any way to streamline the process enough where you could hand it to the user and not have them instantly be out of their depth. I don't believe a centralized solution is the way to go. Too much potential for abuse, and it makes it too easy to manipulate. Plus, Mastodon may beat me to it. Also, I've gotten my family/friends to give the various voice assistants a wide birth, sans Siri unfortunately. Funny how being the techie in the family has turned me into a comparative Luddite. Then again, no one I talk to tends to like being productized either.

andrei_says_ 7y ago
Could you elaborate on what you explained to her?
KumarAseem 7y ago
Do you have any points written out with examples when you explain to your folks? I could use those. Thumbs Up!!! for being successful in weaning a person off from such portals and getting them to understand Privacy and Security.
- salawat 7y ago
  Basically, I just took some time to sit down and talk with her. Spent about a week with her on vacation. Talked about a lot of things. Specifically though, if I had to hone it down to something I think it was when I connected the dots for her about how Facebook really works. She'd thought it was more of a "place I can put stuff where friends could reliably get to it." A sort of classified ad as a service as it were I think is how we boiled down her understanding of it. Then she had said she kept getting flustered because people she didn't know kept popping up in her feed. That's when I explained to her that Facebook wasn't like a passive paper. They were actively utilizing any data she made available to them to expand their network, to the point of actively putting her information in front of people she hadn't even met, and may very well not care to. Then I explained to her the whole "Big Data" thing. Basically how more and more, things one would just do were being made in ways that they generated data trail that businesses would sell to other businesses. There was no such thing as professional discretion anymore. She really didn't like that and honestly never realized that that sort of thing happened. She knew they were a valuable company, but didn't realize it was because they were selling access to the user base. Talked to her a bit about the history of the company, and it's CEO's more controversial statements, and connected those with a couple of personal experiences I've had fighting to "do the right thing" in the industry with minimal luck. I learned that week that people want somewhere to provide a "social media experience" as it were, but what I got from her is there was a much higher expectation of privacy and control of who got access than she was experiencing. She still "checks it" occasionally to keep up with other members of the family, but I"m happy to say, she's much more satisfied with how I streamlined her email client than what she gets out of her Facebook account. I don't know if it'll work for anyone else. She was already only tentatively dipping into the platform as it was, so it just may not have taken as much convincing to get the dots connected. Hell, it may not have been anything I said about it, but just that it disturbed/stressed me out so much that did it. But nevertheless, I got Gram to back slowly away from Facebook. That means I've at least convinced one person. Should get easier from there right?
  - andrei_says_ 7y ago
    Thank you.
kermitismyhero 7y ago
>Funny how being the techie in the family has turned me into a comparative Luddite. It's the same mechanism at work for accountants. You'd be surprised at how many of us are leftist, if not straight-up socialist. We see how the sausage is made and we don't like it. (And we generally have no respect for those fucking koolaid-drinking reality-denying economists.)

rchaud 7y ago

The only time I've ever even mentioned it was when I was at a friend's house, saw he had a slick new Samsung smart TV, and relayed a news story about the microphone on the TV being 'always on' and phoning home. It felt overly preachy to bring up this stuff if it's not related to the topic of conversation. I mean, he already spent $500 on it, an always-on mic isn't enough for him to send it back. Me, I'm going to hold on to my "dumb" TV as long as possible. I have no reason to upgrade except for 4K, which, outside of live sports, really isn't of any interest to me. 1080p is good enough for me.

McDev 7y ago
Also have a Samsung "Smart" TV. I banned it from the internet when it started showing me ads inside the OS. Since then it's been great, although I've had to invest (had is strong, I could have gone with a cheaper solution maybe) in an Apple TV box to get Plex/Netflix and the like.