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I'm relatively extremist on privacy and user autonomy in general. But I hesitate to say that privacy is so fundamental that people shouldn't be _allowed_ to dec

I'm relatively extremist on privacy and user autonomy in general. But I hesitate to say that privacy is so fundamental that people shouldn't be _allowed_ to decide they're okay with it. It's a while since the ruckus about privacy from techie types has penetrated the public discourse, and I think this is a very good thing. The non-tech-savvy people, if anything, overestimate the degree to which their privacy is compromised, convinced that every sound they make within earshot of their phone is scraped for ad targeting. But not one of the people in my anecdotal dataset change their behavior on this basis, nor even seem to be particularly bothered by it. I don't think you can even chalk this up to technical ignorance. Bush's warrantless wiretapping had something like 40% approval, and that wasn't even transparent or consensual! It really does appear there are a massive amount of people out there who look at the current cost/benefit tradeoff of compromising their privacy and decide that it's worth it. Awareness is still important, but I don't agree with your suggestion that everyone be effectively coerced into accepting the tradeoffs that you or I accept.

mindslight 5y ago
> massive amount of people out there who look at the current cost/benefit tradeoff of compromising their privacy and decide that it's worth it I don't agree with this characterization - it's too willful. To me, it seems more like a helpless coping mechanism. Since they "overestimate the degree to which their privacy is compromised", they resign themselves to not being able to do anything to protect their own privacy. The phone is listening to them, the satellites are tracking them [0], websites are recording them - basically every electronic device they encounter is not under their control. Their privacy is already gone. Then, they watch TV and see actors using surveillance systems to capture Really Bad People. Since they've already resigned themselves to the collection, the only thing they have left is to hope that said surveillance results in things that are good and just. And when you try to bring up real-world problems, they revert to coping mechanisms of how it doesn't bother them - because if it did, they're still ultimately powerless to change anything. To cross this divide, I think we need to give people actionable packaged-up solutions they adopt to protect their privacy. Part of the difficulty is that most people use their phone as their primary communication medium, and the phone ecosystem is a privacy dumpster fire. I don't have a recommendation for increasing phone privacy besides LoS+microg and also stop using your phone so much - do most of your communicating from a real computer running Free software. Incidentally this is why this Apple news is so terrible - they had seemed to plot a course for more user privacy. Even with Apple retaining control, it could have let people see there can be boundaries. But now they've basically thrown away user empowerment in favor of putting a government agent on every phone. And so we're right back to the understanding of "everything I do is surveilled". [0] I'm obviously describing their perspective. I've tried to explain to people that GPS satellites do not themselves track you, but rather let your phone figure out where you are. And by them taking an interest in the software on their phone, they could prevent it tracking their location. But I generally hit a wall of cognitive dissonance where the "satellite tracking" was really just some talking point, rather than something they think they could prevent.
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  > I don't agree with this characterization - it's too willful. To me, it seems more like a helpless coping mechanism. Since they "overestimate the degree to which their privacy is compromised", they resign themselves to not being able to do anything to protect their own privacy. The phone is listening to them, the satellites are tracking them [0], websites are recording them - basically every electronic device they encounter is not under their control. Their privacy is already gone. I don't doubt that some contingent of the market feels this way, but I'm positing the existence of a large section of the market that truly doesn't really care that much about privacy. There's a reason that privacy advocates spend so much time arguing against "if you're doing nothing wrong, privacy doesn't matter", and it's because so many see big institutions (tech cos, banks, gov't) as detached institutions that for the most part do the right thing. It's the same reason that most people don't have a coherent sense of government's monopoly on legitimate violence and coercion: instead of grappling with the nuances and trade-offs of this bargain, it's easier to just model them as "the good guys". Naturally, I'm going off of my perception here, as there aren't well-defined statistics that would give us a more reliable sense of the attitudes towards privacy that affect (or don't affect) people's purchase decisions. But a high enough proportion of my non-tech-employee acquaintances are unbothered by privacy concerns that I have to at least acknowledge that they likely represent a non-trivial segment of the market. > they're still ultimately powerless to change anything. This doesn't comport with my experience with these people. One finds niche cases here and there where the trade-off for privacy/autonomy provides a pretty decent ROI. I've occasionally been asked about some of these decisions of mine. In those conversations, the people I'm talking about don't look at these trade-offs and decide that the effort isn't worth the privacy benefit: they hear that the benefit is privacy and immediately go "oh this isn't relevant to me".

mindslight 5y ago

> massive amount of people out there who look at the current cost/benefit tradeoff of compromising their privacy and decide that it's worth it I don't agree with this characterization - it's too willful. To me, it seems more like a helpless coping mechanism. Since they "overestimate the degree to which their privacy is compromised", they resign themselves to not being able to do anything to protect their own privacy. The phone is listening to them, the satellites are tracking them [0], websites are recording them - basically every electronic device they encounter is not under their control. Their privacy is already gone. Then, they watch TV and see actors using surveillance systems to capture Really Bad People. Since they've already resigned themselves to the collection, the only thing they have left is to hope that said surveillance results in things that are good and just. And when you try to bring up real-world problems, they revert to coping mechanisms of how it doesn't bother them - because if it did, they're still ultimately powerless to change anything. To cross this divide, I think we need to give people actionable packaged-up solutions they adopt to protect their privacy. Part of the difficulty is that most people use their phone as their primary communication medium, and the phone ecosystem is a privacy dumpster fire. I don't have a recommendation for increasing phone privacy besides LoS+microg and also stop using your phone so much - do most of your communicating from a real computer running Free software. Incidentally this is why this Apple news is so terrible - they had seemed to plot a course for more user privacy. Even with Apple retaining control, it could have let people see there can be boundaries. But now they've basically thrown away user empowerment in favor of putting a government agent on every phone. And so we're right back to the understanding of "everything I do is surveilled". [0] I'm obviously describing their perspective. I've tried to explain to people that GPS satellites do not themselves track you, but rather let your phone figure out where you are. And by them taking an interest in the software on their phone, they could prevent it tracking their location. But I generally hit a wall of cognitive dissonance where the "satellite tracking" was really just some talking point, rather than something they think they could prevent.

wutbrodo 5y ago
> I don't agree with this characterization - it's too willful. To me, it seems more like a helpless coping mechanism. Since they "overestimate the degree to which their privacy is compromised", they resign themselves to not being able to do anything to protect their own privacy. The phone is listening to them, the satellites are tracking them [0], websites are recording them - basically every electronic device they encounter is not under their control. Their privacy is already gone. I don't doubt that some contingent of the market feels this way, but I'm positing the existence of a large section of the market that truly doesn't really care that much about privacy. There's a reason that privacy advocates spend so much time arguing against "if you're doing nothing wrong, privacy doesn't matter", and it's because so many see big institutions (tech cos, banks, gov't) as detached institutions that for the most part do the right thing. It's the same reason that most people don't have a coherent sense of government's monopoly on legitimate violence and coercion: instead of grappling with the nuances and trade-offs of this bargain, it's easier to just model them as "the good guys". Naturally, I'm going off of my perception here, as there aren't well-defined statistics that would give us a more reliable sense of the attitudes towards privacy that affect (or don't affect) people's purchase decisions. But a high enough proportion of my non-tech-employee acquaintances are unbothered by privacy concerns that I have to at least acknowledge that they likely represent a non-trivial segment of the market. > they're still ultimately powerless to change anything. This doesn't comport with my experience with these people. One finds niche cases here and there where the trade-off for privacy/autonomy provides a pretty decent ROI. I've occasionally been asked about some of these decisions of mine. In those conversations, the people I'm talking about don't look at these trade-offs and decide that the effort isn't worth the privacy benefit: they hear that the benefit is privacy and immediately go "oh this isn't relevant to me".