this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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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.
I think most people realize they're too boring for anyone with access to individual info to care who they are. Do you really care to know what porn I look at or what I'm buying online at 3am on a week night?
Nobody cares what porn you are into. Probably.
However, women using period trackers were free to do so in the US up into recently. Now that data can be subpoenaed and used to help prosecute if it is believed she may have had an abortion.
You never know when information posted online, or collected otherwise, could be used against you. It's best to seek privacy respecting options whenever possible.
True, in that it's a balance of risk versus reward. But there's a middle ground between putting your SSN on a billboard and faking your death to go off the grid and burn off your fingerprints. I'm willing to bet 99.9% of people aren't worried about it because they'll never have to be.
What if I told you that you can increase your privacy a lot without having to fake your own death? You don't even have to burn off your fingerprints! All you have to do is use alternatives to certain popular apps. Isn't that great?
Just use Signal or Matrix instead of WhatsApp. Use Firefox instead of Chrome. At some point you could even replace Windows with GNU/Linux (an operating system that doesn't spy on you! crazy right?). Some of those are tiny sacrifices, some are bigger, but none of them are impossible.
I get it. But I am experiencing absolutely zero drawbacks to any privacy concerns, so any potential sacrifice is almost completely unnecessary. I'll support some similar things because I consider them good causes, but I have no problem being an open book. To bring everything back full circle, I assume most of the population feels similarly, and that explains why most people don't care (which was what I was originally replying to).
So you see no problem in living in a world where everything is recorded. That's crazy.
If the only people with access to it don't even know who I am, it's pretty inconsequential, especially since I'm often not doing things online or with a phone or computer. Everything isn't being recorded.
For a lot of people we don’t know anything different. So to a lot it’s making a ton of extremely inconvenient sacrifices to try to claw back something we’ve never had in the first place.
Absolutely. Most folks will never have to worry about it. I would bet those using period tracker apps didn't think it was a big deal either.
As a middle aged white CIS male, I am sure I have nothing to worry about. However, people in marginalized communities can't be so confident.
Protecting basic privacy isn't that hard and should be of interest to everyone. Governments and big corps shouldn't know everything about us.