this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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This is an open question on how to get the masses to care...

Unfortunately, if other people don't protect their privacy it affects those who do, because we're all connected (e.g. other family members, friends). So it presents a problem of how do you get people who don't care, to care?

I started the Rebel Tech Alliance nonprofit to try to help with this, but we're still really struggling to convert people who have never thought about this.

(BTW you might need to refresh our website a few times to get it to load - no idea why... It does have an SSL cert!)

So I hope we can have a useful discussion here - privacy is a team sport, how do we get more people to play?

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[–] cardfire 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You're basically studying viral pathology and immunology at that point. Remember how restaurant little can be for making and for vaccinations in American culture?

On top of it taking the slightest effort ... We basically have to settle the solutions and then invite or incentivize them into it, which is hard when you're against disinformation networks with better fundling.

Not to say it's hopeless. Just that the incentives in a highly individualized society captured under surveillance capitalism are misaligned.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Interesting you say viral pathology and immunology. Can you expand on what you mean on that a bit? I find it a useful analog for what's going on.

[–] cardfire 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I'm sorry, first of all, for the egregious typos in my last remark. I won't be fixing them or future typos, lol.

Second, vaccines work by every person in a network being a less-weak node with less attack surface than if the whole network is without. Every person that armors up is protecting the whole system, just a little bit, until the network is complete with less attack surface.

Privacy restrictions, antivirus, healthy infosec, follow similar principals as masks and shots in arms, and you have to start studying how the threats respond to shifting attack surface.

At the point the effort to execute on the securing behavior is lowered, adoption improves, but at the point it conflicts with competing values you have to start marketing to people to do the right thing. Selling them on collective interest and on self interest. It's ironic.

How you do ANY of this, well, I can only speculate. I come from a backwards country where 1/3 of our population successfully installed a national health director that admits to not believing in germ theory, and I half expect civilian encryption to be outlawed in the next 18 months.