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I think you're projecting the HN crowd a bit here. The majority of normal people probably don't care as much about "privacy" as some of the vocal folks here do

I think you're projecting the HN crowd a bit here. The majority of normal people probably don't care as much about "privacy" as some of the vocal folks here do. I'm not making a value judgement on that, it's simply how it is. People want to use services like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or Google search/Gmail/Google Maps that have the functionality they enjoy. If those companies can show them targeted ads vs random useless ads, the majority of people seem to be fine with that tradeoff. I want it to be the year of the Linus desktop for a long while but I've made peace with the fact that's not the majority view. Most people are happy with a proprietary desktop that just works.

syshum 6y ago
I think it is clear that the public cares about privacy but only when they are fully educated about what a given platform is doing. The public is not reading the privacy policies, or looking at the app permissions or do anything really to educate themselves on all the ways Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc are abusing their data But if a high profile news story comes out about some privacy issue they are outraged about it. This shows a education / knowledge gap, I dont know how to close it, or if it can even be closed but to say "no one cares about privacy" I believe is false
- v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
  The public cares about privacy, yes. But only as long as its presence doesn‘t inconvenience them in any way. People hate the GDPR pop ups. Most are badly designed (probably on purpose) and make it easy to accept all and difficult to customize/reject all. Most people are just going to click accept because it makes the box disappear faster. Let‘s say we have the new Apple opt-in rules for Facebook. There‘s a pop-up some day asking users: „do you want facebook to be able to track you?“ many people will say no. But only because it‘s really easy/frictionless and the app presumably functions as normal. So primarily users want to do want users want to do. They don‘t care about tracking/ads as long as avoiding them isn‘t completely simple.
JKCalhoun 6y ago
> The majority of normal people probably don't care as much about "privacy" as some of the vocal folks here do. I think you're correct, but then that makes it a no-brainer for Google. Let us opt-out, the other 99% will continue to be part of the data harvest (and they like it!). Google can say they give user's a choice.
SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
The majority of users do care about privacy but its a concept they struggle to understand and they do not know when they are being tracked, what is being tracked or how to stop it. The EU was on the right track about requiring tracking to be opt in while also having an option to say no without being blocked from the service.

syshum 6y ago

I think it is clear that the public cares about privacy but only when they are fully educated about what a given platform is doing. The public is not reading the privacy policies, or looking at the app permissions or do anything really to educate themselves on all the ways Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc are abusing their data But if a high profile news story comes out about some privacy issue they are outraged about it. This shows a education / knowledge gap, I dont know how to close it, or if it can even be closed but to say "no one cares about privacy" I believe is false

v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
The public cares about privacy, yes. But only as long as its presence doesn‘t inconvenience them in any way. People hate the GDPR pop ups. Most are badly designed (probably on purpose) and make it easy to accept all and difficult to customize/reject all. Most people are just going to click accept because it makes the box disappear faster. Let‘s say we have the new Apple opt-in rules for Facebook. There‘s a pop-up some day asking users: „do you want facebook to be able to track you?“ many people will say no. But only because it‘s really easy/frictionless and the app presumably functions as normal. So primarily users want to do want users want to do. They don‘t care about tracking/ads as long as avoiding them isn‘t completely simple.

JKCalhoun 6y ago

> The majority of normal people probably don't care as much about "privacy" as some of the vocal folks here do. I think you're correct, but then that makes it a no-brainer for Google. Let us opt-out, the other 99% will continue to be part of the data harvest (and they like it!). Google can say they give user's a choice.

SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago

The majority of users do care about privacy but its a concept they struggle to understand and they do not know when they are being tracked, what is being tracked or how to stop it. The EU was on the right track about requiring tracking to be opt in while also having an option to say no without being blocked from the service.