I think the average person just simply doesn't care about their privacy.

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

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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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Average person does not understand why privacy is important. They were lucky enough not to (yet) experience repression, censorship or surveillance and often throw banal one liners like I've got nothing to hide.

It's only once you lived a while with someone (person or an institution) watching your every step you realize how it definitely changes you. You decide not to state your opinion, not to raise your hand, not to make the choice you would of you were truly free.

Same goes for welcoming your data against you.... But you're on fediverse. I'm packing to the choir here.

Mark was right to call the people he’s leaching off of fucking idiots.

It was "dumbfucks". In context, people who trust Zuckerberg with their personal information are dumbfucks. His words.

I think people only care about their privacy if the consequences is something they can see/feel directly (e.g. privacy related to election)

I think the average user feels "They have nothing to hide" or "I don't really care". However they feel this way because they think they still have the ultimate control over their privacy. They believe that if they wanted to they could pack up every byte of data and quit the internet and that their digital ball of privacy info goes home with them.

Most user probably don't realize that the camera, gps and microphone on your internet connected devices are actively gathering data all the time.

They think that there is a special wall between what they post and what they do with the rest of their day; it's not.

The amount of time that you use the service, what you click, how long before clicks, etc etc etc is all tracked too. There is a data profile to "anticipate" and "guide" the users to further engagement. And all of that is before you talk about how much data-selling and brokering occurs.

I think a big part is people don't understand the impact of what they are losing. It's not something tangible like their wallet or car being stolen, it's just "information" and they don't understand how that data can be used against them. Even when examples are given, such as the Cambridge Analytica incident, they think they are smart enough to be impervious to the manipulation so it doesn't matter.

Can confirm. I don't really care about internet privacy all that much, though I don't consider myself average.

That being said, I refuse to engage with Meta, for no particular reason.

It's because privacy is not a trivial matter, especially in those sites. You have to go through endless legal jargon to see how exactly the platform is using your data. Your average user has the attention span of a goldfish because of Tiktok, he/she would never read the platform's privacy policy and will prioritize convenience over digital rights.

Most people do not have to a reason to care about privacy, until the day their private comms/data gets leaked and abused is when they will give a damn.

I feel like the average person doesn't understand their options and doesn't want to understand them because it's difficult to them. When I try to help explain privacy issues to others, their eyes glaze over instantly. They don't want their private information to be collected and sold, but they don't have the attention span to learn about "tech stuff".

Mots people do care about privacy, but most people see more pressing issues that goes first. It's hard to care about something intangible when it's hard to have a roof over its head, or to pay the bills.

Also musicians won't hesitate to put their audience at risk. They doesn't care about what they're asking their audience, because they 'feel' like they have no choice. Which is objectively wrong.

And musicians are often ignorant about copyright laws, so how can they protect their audience if the don't know how to defend them self?

Americans don't care about privacy unless it's China collecting data.

The problem is that is a very complex problem and even privacy minded people often get it completely wrong. They use this massive blockers and think they don‘t give away any data. In fact most of them block advertisements and trackers but in return they created a very unique fingerprint which makes it easy to track them and get the same data as if the would have seen the advertisements. Not giving away any data and making sure the fingerprint is not unique is a very rocky road with a ton of roadblocks for the use of modern conveniences. The average user shares all data that meta is collecting anyway, most likely already with meta. They have at least 3 apps that completely track them, they have a personalized advertisement id and so on. So why would they care? That is like worrying about getting wet while taking a swim.

For every other person, they have friends that use these services and so share your contact information with e.g. Meta. They work somewhere in an office and most user accounts are name based. There aren‘t usually a ton of anti tracking tools in big corps so Meta knows what you do for a living…

Riding the privacy wave is the wrong argument, because most people can not escape the tracking if they want to keep „a normal life“.

You have to advertise you are better then the competition! Nobody cares about who takes less data, but most people want to be part of the „next big thing“, the cool thing or just the same experience but without advertisement. That resonates with people. Customization is often also a good entry point.

I get the feeling that the average person doesn't understand what privacy means in relation to the Internet.

its perplexing when i talk to my siblings and realize how little they actually care about their privacy online, its almost if they enjoy giving out their private information to companies

I was always taught to keep my real life off the internet so my thoughts on privacy as it pertains to the Internet largely are irrelevant. They're going to profile my online persona; not me, the real human being behind the keyboard.

Of course part of that includes not giving my real name even if they ask, and not using apps that are really egregious in the data they collect (like with the app permissions Threads requires).

I am for data collection to a certain degree. Using it to target ads may be kinda cringe, but I don't see it as evil. Collecting usage data to improve the thing I am using is also okay. The data I don't want collected is, like, my name. My address. My phone number. My bank info. Etc.

Privacy is complicated and often a luxury. Not everyone has the technical understanding to protect their privacy, nor the money to always choose the privacy-conscious option (which are almost always paid options). And to be honest, they shouldn't really have to if governments did their jobs and brought in effective privacy protection laws.

People do, but have no clue.

Just think of all those posts we see that go "so I looked in my Google history and see they've been recording everything for the last decade and holy shit this is creepy" oh-snap moments.

It's just not something a normal person thinks about. I mean, just like a normal person wouldn't consider the thoughts of a serial killer, similarly people don't consider that stalking mega corporations could do what they do.

I mean, ActivityPub as a whole sucks at privacy.

Not just that, but I think the average person also thinks with social media being around 15-20 years already, that their data is probably already out there on the Internet anyways.

So because of that, they just don't care.

I think that the average person is just ignorant about the issues regarding privacy, or doesn't have the time and energy to find out/care about it. Big societal issues such as privacy require some digging into to find information on, and they require some (a lot of) thinking to fully understand the problems and the consequences of these issues. A lot of people are already struggling to deal with their daily lives. Big issues like internet privacy and data collection are too big and too distant for them to care about, and the short-term convenience gained from giving in is too good. It's currently quite a hassle for the average layman to learn how to use and implement the tools to protect your privacy (not helped by the big businesses deliberately making things difficult).

@BraBraBra Convenience will always win out with the masses. There needs to be more tangible benefits for doing something more inconvenient than losing privacy for that to change.

I really wish there could be a law that says that if they want people to use their platform so they can use their data they have to pay people for their data. Data is money, but only to the companies that suck up my data and use it to make money. If my data is worth money I want money for my data. If companies had to pay me for my data I would consider using Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, et. al. if the price were right. This is no doubt a very impossible wish. They also say time is money and there is no law requiring people to pay me when they waste my time. But, I can dream. Imagine getting a nice check in exchange for signing up for Instagram.

I understand your frustration entirely. And for the most part, I agree with it. But for music producers, especially if they're indie, they have no choice. Content creators trying to make a living off of their art rely on putting themselves out there on the biggest platforms to maximize the amount of exposure they're going to get. The importance of social media with millions upon millions of users for an indie artist cannot be understated. It is the difference between them paying rent, and getting evicted.

As for the average user, as others have stated, they have friends, family, and content creators that they like to follow. Digital privacy comes at a cost. We cannot afford to create the misconception that acts protecting our digital privacy are free actions. And the level of cost and willingness to pay it varies from person to person. I don't need Facebook to keep up with my parents. But many people do. For their parents and the rest of their family and loved ones. I was willing to make the switch to Linux, but it cost me some simplicity in my gaming; some titles aren't just plug n play. Even ones that were on Windows. Switching to Lemmy was nothing for me, but for some people, they're giving up subreddits they loved, or they have to keep using Reddit to access them. And there are some valuable resources there.

Privacy isn't free. It's invaluable and sometimes the price tag reflects that.

Most people do not but over the past five years, privacy has become more of a concern in peoples lives I would say

I think that it's a little bit of don't care and a little bit of that it's a ton of work I think. It's a lot of work if you actually use online services because they all want your data. You have to be very aware of every app and site that you visit. Changing settings, browser extensions, complex opt out methods. It's more effort than a lot of people will make.

I guess I don't care about lots of data things normally. Honestly at this point I care more about the Elon V Zuck fight.

There is no semblance of privacy anymore. Most people need a bank account or a credit card. Boom someone has (some of) your data.

In the US, at that point, credit agencies also have (some of) your data.

Even in something like Lemmy, someone could easily scrape all the data about what you post/do/etc. At some level almost everything you do is public to some extent.

Edit since I thought of something else: Even if you drive in a big city: something is tracking your license plate. In NYC they do it for EZ-Pass, and in the Bay Area they do it for Fast-Trak.

I've been online for years and years. Enough to know that, we've been giving our data away before social media took off. Social Media and search engines like Google, have accelerated it and made it a farming thing as the basis of their foundations.

So what I'm referring to about giving our data away before the social media era, is that we have registered on to forums and we have registered to chat rooms and other services. We willingly gave them our names, even beneath the screen names we registered under. We willingly discussed a lot of ourselves within those forums and we can't preemptively assume that they aren't keeping some record of what we're doing and saying. We know all sites keep a stamp of our IP addresses, so it's a safe bet that they're also collecting everything we do within their site's boundaries.

I'm not trying to say that we should all just expose ourselves, en masse. But I will say that you are responsible and you've been responsible for what you decide to put there online. You are right to be questioning and working against things like Google needing your street address to recover a simple password when there had been other proven methods to recover your password by. However, it comes off a little ridiculous when you're griping about privacy while also being someone who dumps their life stories on that platform or this platform.

They don't care because they don't know the immediate consequences, if any.

My sister told me about a friend of hers who was about to get blackmailed by some random guy who claimed to have her child, he used a Facebook photo as proof. Aside from the bullshit extortion intent, after hearing the story, my sister became more cautious with the information she shared on social networks.

The extortionist thing can be extrapolated to the large companies that use our data for their own benefit, but the common citizen cannot see the danger in that because the companies are not "extorting" you, they just want to sell you their shit at any cost.

That’s your dumb average person. Personally I am fine with it cause it’s a choice they make.

People obviously enjoy The Algorithm. They enjoy a feed that is constantly full. The fact that it is full of noxious shit is irrelevant. Those that come here from The Algorithm to mastodon or lemmy or anywhere else where The Algorithm is not present are immediately put off. Effort is required to fill your feed, it is an active rather than a passive experience. There is something entirely sexual about this dynamic. People enjoy being brain fucked by The Algorithm.

At this point I think they have everything they would want from me. Even if I started to care now I feel like it's too late.

The average person definitely doesn't imo. Threads is easy to get into and has a fast growing user base. Those make it more appealing then privacy ever would for the average person.

Ease of use comes first. Normies are very ignorant when you try to indulge them into technicalities. They do care about privacy, but then have a real life to worry about, than leaving a unique fingerprint while browsing the internet. Most of all of them, are unaware about this situation.

Someone(GAFAM) at some point have made a decision for the internet to fill it up with bloat shit to track what you're doing, else there wouldn't be a need for a privacy guide.

To be fair, you basically have to give up on your privacy if you want to be a public figure these days. To make it most musicians have to constantly evangelize themselves, which means being omnipresent on social media platforms.

I am not an average person having worked in IT for a couple of decades now and I can tell you no, the average person is either not aware or doesn't care.

Even I, and my peers who are very aware, don't care

I think where privacy minded people fail to understand is that for most people we are not committing crimes or shady shit online therefore why care? A lot of us understand that if you type anything in a computer it is assumed to be on the public record either easily found or through a few hoops to get it.

If you want privacy write it down on paper or talk about it in person with your peers. Those are the most secure things.

Online and privacy are oxymorons. People need to understand this.

My brother in law is like this. He keeps a yearly journal on google drive and his logic is that since he keeps it on google drive he doesn't care if google know everything about him or not. The convenience of having it heavily outweighs any privacy that he might have. Though I wonder if him growing up in an authoritarian country has something to do with it.

Privacy is abstract to people until something happens to make them realize how valuable it is. "I don't have anything to hide" is from people who don't feel threatened by anything, who've never been stalked or targeted.

So there's a lot of doom and gloom here, but what do we actually do about it? How do we do it? ~Strawberry

I showed my friend all of the privacy problems with threads and his response was ‘I don’t care, they already have everything anyway’.

I told another friend and their response was ‘I don’t care if they have my data, it’s not much use to them and it doesn’t have any effect on me’

The world is hopeless.

It's more that the average person doesn't have a clear understanding of what the cost is of not protecting your privacy.

The Internet is basically a privacy economy, where you sell your privacy in return for free services, and to most people this feels like a very one sided exchange. They're giving away something that to them has no percieved value.

What privacy advocates need to get better at is actually explaining to people what the value of their privacy is.

Sigh, just tell me which team to join, so I don't have to make anxiety producing decisions and alienate anyone. Don't wanna rock the boat!

Bigger is better, right?

/S in case it isn't obvious.

In the case of content creators they typically would not care as much about privacy from a social media platform. They are going to do anything that gives them a commercial/marketing edge, so why wouldn’t they try to be visible in the most popular place?

Same here. I've tried so hard to get people to care about their privacy. But it's one of those things that human brains are designed to fear things they can see and feel. We aren't really good at fearing the stuff that creeps up. (aka heart disease, diabetes, privacy creep lol)

how do you think we got here (gestures all around) in the first place

People have a lot going on in their lives.

Unfortunately it's just not that much of a priority for most people. They value convenience much more than privacy.

You could tell that from the number of users having a meta account

Normies are cancer that make EEE & surveillence possible

Yes, I think it is blatantly obvious how little many people care about their privacy and data. This is the result of an astonishing lack of knowledge and education on the consequences of giving away your data. They cannot imagine how many types of data are stored about them and analyzed to gain all sorts of insights into their life, thoughts, ideas, views and social life. Often people don't believe they have anything to hide which is always false because we are humans. The other is they underestimate or refuse to believe the the information which can be drawn from your data or the fact that ads and other forms of manipulation do in fact work on them.

What do you mean when you say "privacy"? Threads isn't more or less private than using any other federated service-- they all share everything you do on them with everything else anyway. I guess federation doesn't share things like your email and IP address, so there is some privacy-related concerns, so maybe that's what you meant?

The big distinction between threads and, say, Mastodon is that Mastodon doesn't have an algorithm. The minor distinctions are more along the lines of it being open source and not controlled by a giant corporation. I am not surprised that most people don't care about (or maybe actively seek out) a service with an algorithm, let alone about the benefits of FOSS.

The problem isn't privacy. It's how they use the data they get from you to lie to you.

Most people just don't even realise despite everything that all of these huge corporations are tracking their every move and, of those that do, many do not see or simply refuse to acknowledge the dangerous implications of handing people like Mark and Elon what are, in many cases, essentially the keys to their personal lives.

I think a lot of people don’t care, and a lot more people just have no idea what’s going on. You have to be hyper-aware of how your data could get farmed in order to prevent each new service from collecting it.

Most people do not care as long as they do not feel immediate negative consequences. Plus there is a certain pressure (social and economical) to use spyware for the benefit of some gigacorp. People need to have a certain mindset to value privacy and data sovereignty and be willing to take action

Unfortunately this is so true. Even my family believe that I'm weird just because I have brought this concern few times.

That’s sad right? When I was starting my privacy journey, I really thought people that’s closest to me would also care about privacy. But no, like for example, when I started using signal, about 2-3 of my friends join.

Most people don't care and don't understand the implications, and the convenience is too great to ignore.

I recall getting my first email address through school in 1993 or so.

I remember having minimal presence on the Internet until perhaps 1997 - when I worked in a highly technical environment and internet communities were still very nascent. People had to search out how to find meaningful communities online. If non-technical people had access to anything like internet communities, it was usually some angelfire cookie cutter site.

Then friendster, myspace, fark, somethingwful,diig, facebook, reddit and many others rapidly expanded the options. People without the knowledge or inclination got into spaces that started with nerds nerding out.

I see this recent split as something like a natural evolution of the people who would've originally been on fark when the user numbers were sub 50,000 and fb- was new, or who were skeptical of facebook because it was only for college kids, or who originally started reddit seeking the spaces they've always sought. Maybe non technical people will eventually take up these spaces - but those people have NEVER cared about the intracacies of their online privacy...or where their data is stored....or their cell phone data...or any of that. They cheered on The Patriot Act and they don't care about net neutrality.

This is nothing particularly new.

Is there a business angle to this? Perhaps it's more about continuing to actively establish an online presence which benefits them directly as musicians than supporting the platform.

I'm not writing that I agree with it, but I can at least understand it if it's more of a business move. You don't want to be late to the party if, for example, you're in the business of parties.

Yeah, I noticed that too, I just hope the amount of people who do care is big enough to have a nice and thriving community outside of corporate control.

These products - Googles convenience products as well as the Social Media shite - were introduced gradually at the time. The single steps people took towards using these products seemed innocuous. Before you know it, your whole life is enmeshed in a privacy nightmare and the convenience and quality you were used to is gone. It's like buying an apartment in a nice place of town and then within the next two decades the area turns into a shady ghetto slum.

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Oh you think?

I’ve given up on privacy. Like I knew in my heart of hearts they were recording everything long before Snowden confirmed it.

It honestly feels kinda like being on Twitch, knowing I’ve got watchers.

I think they either don't care or don't know. I hady partner reread the tos she clicked away without reading and was horrified

I try, but at this point I think it might be too late. I've been on the internet pretty much my whole life and didn't realize how big of a deal privacy was until I was in my 30s.

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I don't think there's a good reason to be worried about this aspect of my "privacy," and I think the people who care are borderline chemtrail-level mistaken about how this data is used.

I am pro data collection, as a whole.

i'm like somewhat computer literate but ive basically just come to the conclusion that online privacy is sorta unobtainable so its a myth anyways. if someone much more clever than me wanted my online history they can probably find it through some tech trick ive never heard of. the main defense i have is that no one fucking cares about what ive done online because im not anyone with any political influence and i don't commit crimes, so theres just 0 incentive for anyone to steal my shit or care in the first place

The average person also doesn't care about their own right to free speech or their right to bodily autonomy or agency over their own lives.

There's people out there that jumped at the chance to have an ID chip put under their skin and to have a QR code associated with all their identity info.

People don't realize the threat of centralized supreme authority that's accountable to no one. And it's really sad.

I get downvoted for being in favor of free speech, because I bring up free speech rights whenever someone says something bigoted. If you don't support the free speech rights of the people you hate the most then you're against free speech. Censoring a bigot is only going to make them double down on their beliefs. But reaching out and having a civil conversation with a bigot can make them realize that the people they hate are going through the same problems they are.

Everyone gets fucked on their taxes, everyone is getting a lower wage than what their employer could give, everyone is paying more rent than they should, everyone is paying a higher interest on their debts than they should.

No shit! Think of how stupid the average normie is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.