Fediverse

Zuck is proof that sociopaths and narcissists run the world. This is obvious theater at this point.

Americans don't care about privacy unless it's China collecting data.

Not just that, but I think the average person also thinks with social media being around 15-20 years already, that their data is probably already out there on the Internet anyways.

So because of that, they just don't care.

Privacy is complicated and often a luxury. Not everyone has the technical understanding to protect their privacy, nor the money to always choose the privacy-conscious option (which are almost always paid options). And to be honest, they shouldn't really have to if governments did their jobs and brought in effective privacy protection laws.

I think that the average person is just ignorant about the issues regarding privacy, or doesn't have the time and energy to find out/care about it. Big societal issues such as privacy require some digging into to find information on, and they require some (a lot of) thinking to fully understand the problems and the consequences of these issues. A lot of people are already struggling to deal with their daily lives. Big issues like internet privacy and data collection are too big and too distant for them to care about, and the short-term convenience gained from giving in is too good. It's currently quite a hassle for the average layman to learn how to use and implement the tools to protect your privacy (not helped by the big businesses deliberately making things difficult).

I was always taught to keep my real life off the internet so my thoughts on privacy as it pertains to the Internet largely are irrelevant. They're going to profile my online persona; not me, the real human being behind the keyboard.

Of course part of that includes not giving my real name even if they ask, and not using apps that are really egregious in the data they collect (like with the app permissions Threads requires).

I am for data collection to a certain degree. Using it to target ads may be kinda cringe, but I don't see it as evil. Collecting usage data to improve the thing I am using is also okay. The data I don't want collected is, like, my name. My address. My phone number. My bank info. Etc.

I understand your frustration entirely. And for the most part, I agree with it. But for music producers, especially if they're indie, they have no choice. Content creators trying to make a living off of their art rely on putting themselves out there on the biggest platforms to maximize the amount of exposure they're going to get. The importance of social media with millions upon millions of users for an indie artist cannot be understated. It is the difference between them paying rent, and getting evicted.

As for the average user, as others have stated, they have friends, family, and content creators that they like to follow. Digital privacy comes at a cost. We cannot afford to create the misconception that acts protecting our digital privacy are free actions. And the level of cost and willingness to pay it varies from person to person. I don't need Facebook to keep up with my parents. But many people do. For their parents and the rest of their family and loved ones. I was willing to make the switch to Linux, but it cost me some simplicity in my gaming; some titles aren't just plug n play. Even ones that were on Windows. Switching to Lemmy was nothing for me, but for some people, they're giving up subreddits they loved, or they have to keep using Reddit to access them. And there are some valuable resources there.

Privacy isn't free. It's invaluable and sometimes the price tag reflects that.

They don't care because they don't know the immediate consequences, if any.

My sister told me about a friend of hers who was about to get blackmailed by some random guy who claimed to have her child, he used a Facebook photo as proof. Aside from the bullshit extortion intent, after hearing the story, my sister became more cautious with the information she shared on social networks.

The extortionist thing can be extrapolated to the large companies that use our data for their own benefit, but the common citizen cannot see the danger in that because the companies are not "extorting" you, they just want to sell you their shit at any cost.

I guess I don't care about lots of data things normally. Honestly at this point I care more about the Elon V Zuck fight.

There is no semblance of privacy anymore. Most people need a bank account or a credit card. Boom someone has (some of) your data.

In the US, at that point, credit agencies also have (some of) your data.

Even in something like Lemmy, someone could easily scrape all the data about what you post/do/etc. At some level almost everything you do is public to some extent.

Edit since I thought of something else: Even if you drive in a big city: something is tracking your license plate. In NYC they do it for EZ-Pass, and in the Bay Area they do it for Fast-Trak.

I mean, ActivityPub as a whole sucks at privacy.

I've been online for years and years. Enough to know that, we've been giving our data away before social media took off. Social Media and search engines like Google, have accelerated it and made it a farming thing as the basis of their foundations.

So what I'm referring to about giving our data away before the social media era, is that we have registered on to forums and we have registered to chat rooms and other services. We willingly gave them our names, even beneath the screen names we registered under. We willingly discussed a lot of ourselves within those forums and we can't preemptively assume that they aren't keeping some record of what we're doing and saying. We know all sites keep a stamp of our IP addresses, so it's a safe bet that they're also collecting everything we do within their site's boundaries.

I'm not trying to say that we should all just expose ourselves, en masse. But I will say that you are responsible and you've been responsible for what you decide to put there online. You are right to be questioning and working against things like Google needing your street address to recover a simple password when there had been other proven methods to recover your password by. However, it comes off a little ridiculous when you're griping about privacy while also being someone who dumps their life stories on that platform or this platform.

Most people do not but over the past five years, privacy has become more of a concern in peoples lives I would say

At this point I think they have everything they would want from me. Even if I started to care now I feel like it's too late.

I'll go a step more general. People can't be inconvenienced. Climate change,politics,etc...

If it slightly inconveniences people you'll need a good leader to push it

I am not an average person having worked in IT for a couple of decades now and I can tell you no, the average person is either not aware or doesn't care.

Even I, and my peers who are very aware, don't care

I think where privacy minded people fail to understand is that for most people we are not committing crimes or shady shit online therefore why care? A lot of us understand that if you type anything in a computer it is assumed to be on the public record either easily found or through a few hoops to get it.

If you want privacy write it down on paper or talk about it in person with your peers. Those are the most secure things.

Online and privacy are oxymorons. People need to understand this.

Can confirm. I don't really care about internet privacy all that much, though I don't consider myself average.

That being said, I refuse to engage with Meta, for no particular reason.

They probably don't know what actually involves giving away their data and what actually concretely means. I'm a tech guy, developer, here in the Fediverse and neither I do know actually what it means. It's the lack of information the problem. I could imagine it though, but it's not the same thing. I could imagine that with my data big corps become more powerful, creating more addicting ads, contents and algorithms that eventually will fuck up the world even more. And that's a nightmare, I know. Metaphorically it's like intensive farming. "I eat meat because I love it and I can't give up on it" and as soon as no one sees what actually happens to the animals inside those farmings, no one cares.