Fediverse

I care. I’m just increasingly convinced it’s too fucking late.

Even if you get them to care once you show them all they need to do to have a shred of privacy they shrug say something along the lines of "well I don't have anything to hide anyways" and go back to their merry way. The path of least resistance will always win sadly

The Average person, in my experience, doesnt give a shit about their privacy..because they are stuck on the notion of "what do I have to hide? I didnt do anything wrong!" with a heaping helping of not wanting to give up convenience on top of it.

And all attempts to explain them that you dont have to have anything to hide for your privacy to be important and be protected fall on deaf ears and accusations that you, the one trying to protect them must be some kind of bad/evil/criminal person to be that concerned with privacy.

These people tend to be absolute delights to deal with when their shit gets stolen, and they expect everyone else to fix it for them.

I'm just curious if you're a tech worker? (or a teenager interested in tech)

I ask because I feel like people who work in tech are basically exposed to the dangers of web privacy all the time. I remember having to implement a facebook pixel on a website, and realizing the network of surveillance that facebook have spread across the web at that time. So I have pretty decent privacy behaviors, still far from great but maybe slightly above average.

But when I go to the doctor and I mention how often I eat fast food and drink alcohol, or when I go to the dentist and admit I don't floss everyday - I'm sure those people are thinking 'most people seriously don't care about their health'. They might stop short of 'fucking idiot', hopefully.

I stopped using Facebook 10 years ago, but I'm loathed to actually delete my account because every once in a while, a long lost friend or relative contacts me there. It would be a shame to lose touch with people. Ultimately I care about that more than privacy. It's the same with Whatsapp. I've made a concerted effort to convince my immediate family to try XMPP, Delta Chat and Signal, but they just won't install another app unless everyone they know is using it. I find it a bit frustrating, but that's reality. So I have to keep using Whatsapp.

They probably don't know what actually involves giving away their data and what actually concretely means. I'm a tech guy, developer, here in the Fediverse and neither I do know actually what it means. It's the lack of information the problem. I could imagine it though, but it's not the same thing. I could imagine that with my data big corps become more powerful, creating more addicting ads, contents and algorithms that eventually will fuck up the world even more. And that's a nightmare, I know. Metaphorically it's like intensive farming. "I eat meat because I love it and I can't give up on it" and as soon as no one sees what actually happens to the animals inside those farmings, no one cares.

I really think this thread is a great example of why the average person doesn't care that much.

The whole thread is full of comments like "the issues caused by giving away all your data are too abstract, too far away, or too difficult to understand". This is true by the way, I completely agree.

But I haven't seen a single comment trying to explain those possible issues in an easily understandable way. The average person (or, at least me) reading threads like this won't learn anything new. Give me a practical issue that I might face, and if I agree that it's an issue, I'll focus more on avoiding that issue.

In other words, an example:

• Let's say I'm a person using lemmy/mastodon, only using privacy-focused search engines etc.
• If I would now change to using facebook/threads, started using Chrome as my browser, etc the usual mainstream tracking stuff - what problems can this cause for me in the future?

PS. I do agree with the notion of "minimize the data you give away", which is one reason I'm here, but I really don't have an answer for these questions. I'm like "I understand the point of privacy, but can't explain the reasons".

People do, but ease of use will trump it every time.

I'll go a step more general. People can't be inconvenienced. Climate change,politics,etc...

If it slightly inconveniences people you'll need a good leader to push it

It’s like music streaming. The streaming quality is worse and wireless earbuds don’t sound great, but the convenience of it all made that industry huge.

Convenience over quality.

Zuck is proof that sociopaths and narcissists run the world. This is obvious theater at this point.

Ultimately, even for me as someone who cares about it, it's just become one of those things that I don't prioritize. Life is hard and at some point I'd rather get something cool done with gmail reading all my private conversations than struggle with my own email server.

Not saying it's a great choice but ultimately life is short and we need to focus on doing what feels right. People have to pick their battles and that's life.

First of all most people, not just the average person, simply do not grasp what privacy is exactly - especially in the US, where the view on privacy is skewed by its obsolete constitution.

I mean, just the fact that anyone would think if you personally don't mind sharing personal affairs or being public, then privacy isn't much of a concern proves the lack of understanding of that principle. It's like saying, I'm not religious so neither the lack of freedom of religion or the separation of church and state would have any impact on me.

The most important function of the human right to privacy is not the thwarting of interference with one's property or dignity, it's the maintenance of the control and power an individual has over their own self - and by extension that of a people.

A simple example: If I give you my phone number, I give away some control over myself because you now have to power to use that property however it fits you. That may mean to just keep in touch with me, to save the number in your contact list that is accessible to ChatGPT, Tiktok or some malware on your phone, or share it with someone who wants to dig up some dirt on me.

The key point is not whether any of the possibilities affect or matter to you but whether you would have any say in how that information is obtained, handled, kept, etc. The effect of the resulting consequences may appear only gradually and sometimes take years but those in control ultimately shape politics, the economy, culture, society. This is also one of the reasons why the US is run by so many monopolies and oligopolies in their respective market segments.

I think this is relevant for anyone that has not read it,

A Cypherpunk's Manifesto Eric Hughes March 9, 1993

Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.

If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of their interaction. Each party can speak about their own memory of this; how could anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it, but the freedom of speech, even more than privacy, is fundamental to an open society; we seek not to restrict any speech at all. If many parties speak together in the same forum, each can speak to all the others and aggregate together knowledge about individuals and other parties. The power of electronic communications has enabled such group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might want it to.

Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to a transaction have knowledge only of that which is directly necessary for that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, we must ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In most cases personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at a store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I am. When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages, my provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying or what others are saying to me; my provider only need know how to get the message there and how much I owe them in fees. When my identity is revealed by the underlying mechanism of the transaction, I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively reveal myself; I must always reveal myself.

Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system. An anonymous transaction system is not a secret transaction system. An anonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity when desired and only when desired; this is the essence of privacy.

Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one's identity with assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.

We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak. To try to prevent their speech is to fight against the realities of information. Information does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. Information expands to fill the available storage space. Information is Rumor's younger, stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and understands less than Rumor.

We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.

We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.

Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of the software we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.

Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes information from the public realm. Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its violence. Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible.

For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one's fellows in society. We the Cypherpunks seek your questions and your concerns and hope we may engage you so that we do not deceive ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course because some may disagree with our goals.

The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for privacy. Let us proceed together apace.

Onward.

Eric Hughes

Ultimately, it's because the concerns of privacy are simply too far removed from people, or they trust certain entities more than others.

For example, if your next door neighbour knows all your browsing history, people would be bothered, but people are not bothered if Google knows as it feels they would have no direct effect on their life, whereas your next door neighbour might.

This can be easily seen in the whole discussion regarding privacy on Mastodon.

A lot of people refuse to use Mastodon over Twitter, because "Mastodon admins can see my DMs", even though Twitter absolutely could as well (Twitter apparently has encrypted DMs since May 2023 though). The reason for this is they see a Mastodon admin as someone who could potentially have an effect on their digital life, whereas they trust Twitter not to do anything with the data since they're a big corporation who has nothing to do with their personal life.

Unless it is an effect they can directly observe (or imagine to occur), people simply don't care. This applies to almost all discussions around the big picture, such as things like climate change or unions, or whatever.

Whether we like it or not, people absolutely trust corporations.

Is this the community where we just talk about drama with other social networks? Because if so, I guess I'll just unsubscribe.

The average person doesn't understand modern technology even on a basic level. Most people don't know what Free Software is or what end-to-end encryption is and you can't have privacy without those two. And those things have existed for decades. What about more complicated topics such as cryptocurrencies or AI? It's easy to see that most people don't understand them either.

So when it comes to some basic aspects of modern technology, most people are decades behind. Sometimes I even meet software developers who don't fully understanding those topics.

Everyone has to chose what's right for them. The reality is Facebook having and selling that data will never impact the average person. But not be part of the family because you are not on Facebook is a real thing that will affect people.

you're right, the average person doesn't care about their privacy.

and not only do they not care about their privacy, they resent being called stupid for not caring about their privacy. "you're an idiot" seems to be most privacy advocates go-to argument as to why we should all care more about privacy, and it's really not making a very good case.

In my opinion, they do care about privacy from people around them like you and me, they just don't seem to care when it's big tech companies like Meta or Google. Like for example, they won't show you or me their "sensitive photos", but it's fully backed up to iCloud or Google Photos, yknow.

Recently i was hanging out with my brother. He look at some search result on my phone and asked about Neeva, that was the search engine i was using then. I explained how it worked and how it didn't push add on you.

His response was basically "so".

Yeah lots of people just don't care at all. either they think it is pointless because someone out will know about you or they don't see privacy as important

One thing you don't understand is not everyone knows or even cares or has enough energy to fight for privacy. Not everyone knows how bad tracking is on websites or hell even know about tracking. Not everyone is a computer guru and can figure out how to use Linux and use a bunch of open source confusing programs. It's a balancing act between privacy and convenience. It's sure as hell convenient to use a default Samsung,apple, Google, LG, phone but oh the other end of you want max privacy you have to basically make your own phone from scratch which almost no love is going to do.

Most people don't know or have the energy to care about companies watching them 24/7.

I'm not sure that they ever did.

The turning point for me when I really got a concrete realisation about people absolutely not giving a shit about this was when Snowden came out and I saw the majority of people just go "Eh, that's pretty fucked, whatever", and then immediately jump straight back into scrolling facebook all day long.

I realised then that there probably wasn't any point expecting anything from them. I don't have much sympathy left for people in this regard anymore.

Most people legitimately don't give a shit about this issue. I think that they really should, but they absolutely don't for the most part.

I just use my name and say whatever I want here.

No one will ever believe you anyways.

Most people aren’t aware of these things, and even if they are, they don’t want privacy to hinder their normal life in any way.

I think the abortion and trans kids situations are putting into sharp relief the danger of large third parties knowing too much about us. Facebook is absolutely scanning its servers for signs of unwanted pregnancies and relaying that information to red state law enforcement. Other platforms may be doing the same thing.

Women in the US are advised not to use period-tracker apps, given they do often sell the data they glean, and don't discriminate against far-right interests. And anti-abortion organizations are shopping.

People DO care about general and online privacy, but to a point. They will sacrifice some privacy if it means they can see their friends on social media. They will sacrifice some privacy in exchange for free apps.

Most of the public is unaware just HOW much they are being tracked and what is happening to their data. Most people are a bit unsettled when the data is shown to them. We need to educate more people.

Most people are completely ignorant about how much they are known to the tech companies, what the data is used for, and the dangers emanating from it. They don't know the risks, so they don't fear them.

What is shocking is the apathy of states. Slightly more movement in the past years, but it's still extraordinary how spying laws are now being circumvented through the use of industry, and states are just mostly looking away.

I don't agree, whenever I take someones phone and start reading their private messages or browsing history, they always get nervous, even if I can't find anything.

People certainly care, even an average person is aware of problems with digital privacy and they would love to get it solved. But people care about a lot of things, global warming, homelessness, police brutality, they just don't organize well enough to fight those issues and fighting them alone is hard.

Also don't forget the amount of propaganda there is to live a certain way, to chase promotions on your job, earn more money and have a high social status. All of these things get in the way of deleting instagram,whatsup and etc.

There is also a problem with lack of marketing of alternatives, most people haven't heard of lemmy or XMPP chat.

I suggest we try to get people to start using these alternatives first, until there are enough users that they actually have a choice to choose either network and then a lot of people will delete mainstream apps. First step is to make it popular, second is to delete these bad apps. However even getting someone to use a new app is hard, since they are bombarded everyday to install some new app and are even financially motivated (with deals and discounts).

It is a hard battle, but a necessary one. Without privacy there is no democracy, voting is secret for a reason. We need a real democracy, where we choose laws directly, not by someone else we are forced to vote for due too lack of better choice. That requires safe and private digital communications. In person communication is very limited.

This is what Zuckerberg keyed in on early internet days. Tech savvy users understand what is at stake, but to the average user, it gets in the way of using apps that people socialize on. It didn't matter how much preaching I did back in the early days. Eventually people fall in line and do what their friends do.
Nobody cares. I mean, have you seen armature porn? That used to not be a thing on line, once upon a time. Nobody cares anymore apparently, because there's a sense of anonymity in a large enough group.

No, I disagree. When you ask the average person to show you their private chats, emails and passwords, they will refuse because of privacy.

Instead of not caring about privacy, people prioritize convenience over privacy. Big tech companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft offer really good, stable products which are mainstream and generally don't cause problems. At least, Windows 10 is way less troublesome than Linux and it's easier to use the stock Android with Google instead of installing a custom ROM such as GrapheneOS.

To really push the privacy friendly alternatives towards the mainstream, the alternatives should become more user-friendly, less tech-savvy, and preinstalled.

The problem isn't that people don't care. The problem is that the negative consequences are too abstract/too far to see. Not so different than smoking or climate change denial.

I think there has been a huge shift in the privacy concerns of the average people. 10-15 years ago we shared our (LIVE) locations constantly and everything defaulted to doing that. People tagged everyone on all photos (with locations) and initially there wasn't even a way to consent to that. Today that sounds really extreme. Now many people will lock down their accounts and they aren't sharing as much as they used to. You are right that the average person doesn't care as much, but it's not entirely true that people are completely careless.

Not caring about privacy is one thing. There is also a network effect; that is caring about privacy leads to poorer contact with family, friends, and people they care about. Privacy has been correlated with disadvantage.

The sad thing about it is that none of it is natural, the big wigs have rigged it this way. Sometimes I feel like the only winning move is to choose your peers, and if you cannot choose your peers, you cannot win this game.

Haven't we known this for literally decades now? After the Patriot Act passed in 2001 and precisely zero fucks were given by the general population. Then a few short later facebook comes out and I realize oh ok not only do people not care about their privacy, but they'll freely and gleefully hand it over in exchange for a digital dog park where they can go around sniffing each others butts.

I feel like many people care deeply about their privacy. I certainly do. The problem is, protecting it is exhausting.

The constant vigilance it takes to maintain your privacy along with dealing with the day to day stress and strife of just trying to live is too much. Sometimes it’s too heavy to carry.

I’m on top of that, the deck is stacked against the average person.

Ignorance is much stronger than apathy.