I always gotta love the “why do you refuse the cookies? The site might not work!”.

Sweety I need you to understand that I do not care whether or not the site works. If it doesn’t then it’s not worth my time.

arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

- Edward Snowden

"i have nothing to hide anyways"

"theyre tracking me anyways so it doesnt matter"

"i dont do anything illegal so i dont care if im being tracked"

these quotes make my blood boil

I just go full anti tech, which people find ironic since I'm in the tech industry, and they poke fun at that

No matter what you do, no matter what you think or say, people will try their darnedest to poke holes at it

But what you *don't * do? That's pretty hard to poke holes at.

"I don't have a Facebook account" is a brickwall to the conversion. That way in their mind, it's not that I don't trust the company, it's that I don't even slightly value the product. I have a damn phone, I have to am required to_ pay for the damn phone. It has group chats. What is the value of Facebook again?

Marketplace? I buy everything brand new and keep it until it's dead

Doomscrolling? Bad habit, not interested

Family connections? I cut most of them off but maybe 4, who know to call/text

Now even thermostats are getting microphones and listening devices, which will absolutely be used to collect data on people from their homes see ecobees new TOS, and the new HoneyWell/ring camera integrations frankly I'm just done with the bullshit. I'm full blown get any phone home technology the fuck out of my house levels of done

But I don't say that when people ask why I changed my thermostat from the $400 Ecobee, which was a standout feature in my home when they walked in.

No. I say "their servers kept going down and causing issues when I needed it to work", because people who somehow manage to live without concerning themselves of targeted pricing or snooping practices do care about slight inconveniences, and for whatever reason "they changed their TOS to get people to agree to let them spy on them without legal reprecussions, and if you don't agree they'll lock you out of your account barring you from using half the stuff you paid to use" is less logical to their pre-occupied brains than "I got inconvenienced twice a year from down servers"

It's by design. If 80 to 90% or more of people blindly agree to share their contacts and email then the rest of use are caught up in it every time we communicate with them.

You cannot both participate in mainstream social networks and communications platforms and have any real privacy.

That's par for the course my friend. But the response to these cliché statements is what can start to change perspectives! I like highlighting how Big Tech knows them better than they know themselves. Then get into how this means big tech has the ability to change how they view a topic based the specific search results. I then zoom out and explain how this happens for every user similar to them, as well as for every other "group" big tech classifies people under.

I often get something like "But what can we even do about it then?" in response, which more often than not, eventually leads to them admitting they're lazy and things are too convient to switch away from or stop using lol

Whenever I hear the "only people with something to hide" comment I reply "oh? Then unlock your phone, hand it to me and leave the room." They always backtrack immediately.

Its wild, I remember when my first paycheck came in and a family member posted a picture of it to their social media........ with my name and all on there.

“There is, simply, no way, to ignore privacy. Because a citizenry’s freedoms are interdependent, to surrender your own privacy is really to surrender everyone’s.

You might choose to give it up out of convenience, or under the popular pretext that privacy is only required by those who have something to hide. But saying that you don’t need or want privacy because you have nothing to hide is to assume that no one should have, or could have to hide anything – including their immigration status, unemployment history, financial history, and health records.

You’re assuming that no one, including yourself, might object to revealing to anyone information about their religious beliefs, political affiliations and sexual activities, as casually as some choose to reveal their movie and music tastes and reading preferences.

Ultimately, saying that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say. Or that you don’t care about freedom of the press because you don’t like to read. Or that you don’t care about freedom of religion because you don’t believe in God. Or that you don’t care about the freedom to peaceably assemble because you’re a lazy, antisocial agoraphobe.

Just because this or that freedom might not have meaning to you today doesn’t mean that that it doesn’t or won’t have meaning tomorrow, to you, or to your neighbor – or to the crowds of principled dissidents I was following on my phone who were protesting halfway across the planet, hoping to gain just a fraction of the freedom that my country was busily dismantling.”

-- Edward Snowden

I don't talk about privacy with normies. If they bring it up, I'm happy to discuss.

I think privacy is very slowly becoming more mainstream and a large part of that is thanks to google. Installing "ai" on devices, deleting peoples' accounts, making installing non-play store apps more difficult, will ultimately encourage more people to degoogle their lives.

Nice resource that goes over the main objections to people who don't value there own privacy:

https://blog.rebeltechalliance.org/common-objections-debunked/

I think people reject that it's as bad as they're told because that don't like to believe it's that bad, or that there's no way companies would do that to them. People don't accept being told "you're making a big mistake" and to feel dumb about it.

That's my take. I had somebody at work ask what I do regarding privacy and I realized I lit up with excitement to share and had to immediately dial it back to not freak them out. I started out small and simple and emailed them since basics after chatting. Said, if they wanted additional info let me know " so that it's up to them to continue the journey (down the rabbit hole lol).

But just glad to see others gaining the knowledge. My journey wasn't immediate, it's gradual, so I have to be mindful of their process too.

Yeah if I talk about how everything is routed through VPN people just assume I'm deep into porn or worse.

The really creepy one is stuff like 23andme where your genealogy obsessed extended family all does it and now they can statistically estimate your genome from your known family history and it’s all in a database for sale and Trump’s DOJ is likely buying

Yeah absolutely. My friend asked if i wanted to go to a palestine protest... over sms. Told him I wont talk about politiical activity over insecure means. On his part he did agree at least... but then refused to download signal

It’s genuinely baffling. My spouse is not a very bright guy and sees zero issue with all of our online erosion of privacy, saying all the age verification stuff going on is completely irrelevant and you can just lie about your age so it will never be a problem in the future either… it drives me crazy how short sighted it is

You are becoming one of these "privacy weirdos" as some think. Fighting for own privacy and using all means to keep it in tact is a lonely battle. Its tough to find someone irl who share the same values. It looks like everybody just got into the same train and go with the flow. For them you are disruption, something uncommon, strange.

It is worse than that. They often share your information directly, or initiate services that require your participation, and of course you must prove who you are to do so.

No the one that pisses me off are the people who understand that computers take effort and the only way to fix that is to have an organization that takes care of that effort for you.

For example to replace discord your only options are: Corporate shit Startups which are a few extra users away from IPO'ing into corporate shit Something open source selfhosted

I get why normal folk don't wann self host. What I can't stand is the complaints about using other peoples self hosted servers because you can't be fucked to remember more than two URLs/passwords as if your browser doesn't have bookmakers and you don't have a password manager.

Like fuck sure, its cool you don't want to do system administration. But the only way an extra site is inconvenient is if you're incapable of the computer equivalent of wiping your own ass.

These are young anticapitalist, chronically online queers I'm talking about too.

If they're not willing nobody is and its fucking soul crushing to know.

For as much as your average American loves big government conspiracies, and harping about other people violating the sanctity of their property, they have absolutely no actual privacy and security sense

Agree. One thing that I've noticed is that if it's about social media I say I "had to delete it for mental health, that shit is so bad for you", and generally get a much more receptive response than when I explain it's primarily for privacy and that I don't trust them with my data.

Though Zuck and others are making it way easier to point out how creepy their platforms are, so that becomes a good entrypoint re: privacy also.

If you think you have nothing to hide, imagine pooping with the bathroom door open all of the time.

I thought you were going in a different direction (Even without a Facebook account, Meta has your contact info because they scanned your friend's phone) but both are true. I've had similar conversations about it and privacy is not a value most people think is worth standing for. The convenience always outweighs what, for them, is a non-issue.

Look, you might be saying it's the fault of people around you, but look at what you're doing here, you give out your real name without a second thought, Mr. Robot.

;)

Same issue with DNA tests. I tried to choose not to hand over my DNA so freely but my sister already did it. I didn’t get a choice in the matter.

Most of us have been trying to educate the boomers since the beginning of the internet. Curiously, some people have become more receptive to security since the rise of techno fascism and scam calls. I've convinced several to use a vpn.

I agree, there is government policies and social policies, both supports the use of big tech and forces it into your home.