> Forward me all of your emails if privacy isn't an issue.
What do I get in return? Privacy is a trade off, and that's how it's sold. "We need more CCTV cameras to stop crime". Do you want more crime or more privacy? Depends on how bad the crime is, I guess. "We need to record your likes to show you more stuff you like". Is FB worth it? It is to many, apparently.
It's highly interesting that nobody would even dream of saying something like "apparently, most people on Earth think transsexuals are evil", or "do global warming and the increasing extinctions of species matter? not according to most, apparently". Why do people in "tech" outsource their judgement on this topic to people who aren't even in the room, a mythical "average person", every single time the issue comes up?
What was the breaking point for, say, to start fighting for and making headway when it came to sexual self-determination? Once more than half of the people on the planet were for it? Or did Rosa Parks decide "now is the time, most people in the US support the end of segregation, now that it's only a formality, I won't change seats?". No, that's not how it works. You figure out what you consider to be right, and then you fight for it. You don't know the outcome, you know what you know to be right, or wrong. You get sick of something, and then you refuse to participate in it, because you'd rather die. And historically, it sometimes takes a small amount of dedicated people to change things for the better.
I haven't seen a person who is really strong-willed about not caring about their own privacy. It's not like most people who "don't care about privacy" are fighting against it, they're sleepwalking. They'll just as happily sleepwalk into another direction, so that they don't care can't be an excuse, ever. Right now, it's easier, and less socially painful, to not care about privacy. That can be changed.
If people don't have experience with totalitarianism, and don't learn about it, and don't smell it in the wind today, then of course they will balk at any inconvenience to prevent it. But if it happens again on sufficient scale, it'll be a point of no return. There will be no more humanity; Earth will be an eternal torture chamber at worst, just empty of human agency at best, at any rate a boot stamping on a human face, forever. You would just need a way to give someone a really lucid dream, getting tortured for a few weeks in a dictatorship. Upon waking up, they will realize they need a few tools, privacy and human rights that apply to all being among them. People who don't have the empathy and imagination to have completed such thought experiments in their youth don't have any blessing to give, so I wouldn't even worry about ways to retrieve it from them.
> Why do people in "tech" outsource their judgement on this topic to people who aren't even in the room, a mythical "average person", every single time the issue comes up?
The same reason they use the "average person" as a straw man in arguments about OS usability and whatnot: deep down they believe that they are better than other people because they know tech stuff. People can sense this too, it's one of the reasons tech people, as a group, aren't well liked.
> Why do people in "tech" outsource their judgement on this topic to people who aren't even in the room
I'm not outsourcing my judgement, I don't use Facebook. But many people do, so they seem to view it as a net benefit, unless Facebook has literally started to strap people to their chairs and force them onto the app. You can argue that they are wrong and shouldn't value "connecting with friends and seeing memes" over privacy, but that's a different discussion.
You're conflating rights issues with a choice. You can choose to use Facebook just as you can choose to drink coffee, eat lots of sugar or live a sedentary life style. Sure, let's talk about free will, but that's completely unlike sexual self-determination, slavery, segregation etc.
> You figure out what you consider to be right, and then you fight for it.
No, I don't. I figure it's right to not drink alcohol, but I don't fight so that nobody may drink alcohol. I just don't drink it, but it's fine if you do. Be their free will or not, I'm not forcing anybody to live by my standards.
The point that the people who argue against privacy are liars which will abuse fears to try to get people on their side was missing so far. Thanks for adding it.
> "We need to record your likes to show you more stuff you like"
> The point that the people who argue against privacy are liars which will abuse fears to try to get people on their side was missing so far. Thanks for adding it.
Do you honestly believe that CCTV is completely useless wrt crime prevention and detection?
What do I get in return? Privacy is a trade off, and that's how it's sold. "We need more CCTV cameras to stop crime". Do you want more crime or more privacy? Depends on how bad the crime is, I guess. "We need to record your likes to show you more stuff you like". Is FB worth it? It is to many, apparently.