Privacy Apathy Debate

People keep saying this, but i don't think it is true. People do care about privacy quite allot, many will lower the shades when they undress, not all of them speak about their sexual identity for instance, a good number of people are nervous about the census, or get worried about NSA wiretapping.What seems to be the case is that people are largely unaware what kind of data collection mechanisms are in place.There is a growing concern, and it is not just facebook, it is very distressing to

I respectfully disagree with you. Most people (in the US) do not care. I used to work for an adtech company which engaged with all sorts of third party vendors (like Axciom, BlueKai, etc) and every time I would explain my job to most friends or strangers, people often rightly assumed that shady data dealing is what was going on behind ads and services like Facebook and seemed not to care. There has been little appetite to change this until recently, and frankly only because of Donald Trump. No o

Not everyone care about privacy, it's that simple.

The reality is super majority of user base don’t care about data privacy or what government can see as long as it doesn’t affect their day to day lives. There was a big outrage when WhatsApp changed their privacy policy, everyone is still using it. Supermajority of people who live in China are not using any of the western social media. Or how nobody cares when there’s a breach of personal data, and it gets leaked online. Again, unless it affects them directly, it really doesn’t matter. We (peopl

People claim this every day on HN but I never see any proof.I have never seen or spoken to a person who fully understands the implications of privacy violations and still doesn't care. I meet some people who do care and understand, but don't know how to fight it so they give up. I meet tons of people who think they're trading off privacy for convenience, but when I question them they're completely unaware of the extent to which it's happening. When I explain it to the

The general public may have the knowledge and imagination - they just don't give a shit. Life is complicated enough to be worried about someone being able to match my face to my name. As if this weren't possible today with social media. Who knows?Am I really going to change whatever is going on in my day because maybe, someday, some evil corporations will match my likes on twitter to my real-life preferences?I'm aware of all that can be done with the data. I program for a li

Sorry but I think you’ve read my comment wrong - this writing style may not be popular everywhere: "you" in my previous comment is figurative, interchangeable with "one", as in "one may think...". It's not referring to you in particular.Rephrasing, I think people don't care because they are only thinking of their own "personal secrets", and don't realize the big-data aspect of this type of data collection (which is understandably a bit ha

I'm willing to accept that that is your viewpoint, and the viewpoints of others. We'll also have to disagree with each other due to different viewpoints, obviously.I think that people being complacent or uncaring about what is going on without them is usually (but not always, its also possible I can be wrong too :) ) due to either being ignorant, misinformed, or not understanding the implications of an act.If you do a highly dangerous activity in a town that hasn't <i

Regarding your second point, I think it's more that people don't care as much about privacy if the consequences seem to be low/nonexistent, and they weigh their interest in platforms like Instagram, TikTok, etc. more highly than the potential negative impacts of their privacy being violated. I know users of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Slack, etc. who will almost definitely never move to encrypted email because they like the platform and the community. Folks on HN and in the tech

I'll reiterate a point I believe to be true.I don't think it's a case of the public not really caring about their privacy, I think it's a case of them not fully understandind exactly what data is collected on them and how it can be used nefariously by companies and by their government.We in the tech field tend to have an above average knowledge of these things but Joe Public is very ignorant of it.I believe if people knew exactly what was being collected and how prof