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"People won't pay for privacy" is it, and it's really a subset of the larger truth that it's hard to get people or businesses to pay for security. (Privacy is a
by api 7y ago
"People won't pay for privacy" is it, and it's really a subset of the larger truth that it's hard to get people or businesses to pay for security. (Privacy is a part of security.)
I worked with a serial entrepreneur once who refused to tell his tech people to spend any time on security. He said "no company ever failed because of bad security... nobody cares about anything except UX and price." I dont think he was 100% right but I do think he was like 98% right.
Privacy is like legroom on flights. Everyone complains about it being taken away but nobody will pay even a little bit for it. Price signals say nobody really cares.
Meanwhile advertisers, governments, and political propagandists will pay handsomely for user data. If anything the price signals say to minimize privacy and maximize surveillance surface area.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIt's not like nobody will pay for it - usually, the option isn't available. When the market doesn't offer an option, or offers it bundled with a lot of other unrelated options, then you can't claim people "voted with their wallets" - much for the same reason you can't claim people voted for issue X in a typical democracy, given that they only had a choice between whole political parties. WRT. legroom - don't know the history here, but I doubt it was ever an isolated issue by which people could differentiate otherwise equivalent flights. Plus, there's the "boiling frog effect" involved, in which you remove conveniences in very small increment that at every point sounds like a reasonable trade-off, but it wouldn't if 20 years worth of changes were to happen immediately.
- saagarjha 7y agoMany people will pay a premium for privacy if you bundle it with the other things, though: see Apple’s market strategy.
- themacguffinman 7y agoSo, in other words, they're not paying a premium for privacy, they're paying a premium for the other things you bundle.
- joefourier 7y ago> Privacy is like legroom on flights. Everyone complains about it being taken away but nobody will pay even a little bit for it. Price signals say nobody really cares. That's not true at all, otherwise first class, business class and even premium economy would not exist. I've personally paid extra for a seat with more legroom on 2 hour Ryanair flights. It's just a question of what you value (and can afford). The same goes for privacy - there is definitely a portion of users out there willing to pay extra for services and companies that, at the very least, exploit your user data less than the others. See Apple's latest stance - they are basically packaging privacy as a luxury good. Or the VPN market, paid email providers instead of Gmail, chat applications such as Signal, Riot, Telegram...
- jstarfish 7y agoHe is wrong in that quite a few (smaller) companies have gone defunct due to bad security, but he was right in that the hare that cuts every corner, rushes its product to market and (maybe!) gets breached will outperform the turtle that gets hamstrung by the governance, security and bureaucracy within its shell and doesn't produce anything.
- FridgeSeal 7y agoPeople can’t pay for privacy if it’s not offered as an option, because most solutions are being offered by groups who have a vested interested in not offering privacy options.
- black_bird 7y agoIf these options do not exist - which is not true - it is because there is not enough consumer demand. No one produces wine in an abstemious society for obvious reasons.