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It is a legitimately difficult question to explain in an environment where everyone already feels naked to data mining.
“How hard do I really want to work to protect information I’m being told everyone already has on me? What is the actual upside for my efforts?”
It’s not a trivial question to answer.
For me, at least, that answer is very simple.
Spite. It’s just spite. I had my data harvested and money made off my information without my consent, and without any reimbursement. I have been used and abused by these corporations, and I’m done putting up with it. I already don’t give Meta and Amazon my money because I don’t think they deserve it, I’m damn sure not letting them make even more free money by stealing from me.
I don’t even care that much, really, about being private on the internet. I talk about a whole bunch of bullshit on here, loud and proud. But I do care about the naked lack of consent surrounding these practices.
I don’t put up with people in my life snooping on my business and then trying to milk money out of me about it. Why would I put up with a corporation doing the same?
Spite. It’s just spite.
Which is fine. But that’s entirely different from privacy as a form of personal safety.
If you aren’t Canadian, I think you have our mindset down perfectly lol
I mean, everybody knows what I’m doing on the shitter, I’m gonna close the door anyways.
Damn that’s good
It would be better if Facebook wasn’t actually watching you shit
Fuck I just opened this as I sat down to take a shit
I use this as well as “if I need service from a plumber, I’ll give him my address and let him in my house to service my plumbing. But he should not be going through my cabinets and drawers and sharing the contents with others.”
I’ll admit to feeling like this sometimes. I recognize it’s bad, but I also feel totally useless to actually do anything about it, so why wouldn’t I at least take the convenience win?
Theres no point in me trying to protect my data privacy because my wife has every last store loyalty rewards card, insisted on wanting smart tvs, everywhere she shops has her email for special offers, shops on amazon and uses google maps to go literally everywhere.
That’s why we need to fight back more than ever and make a world where that isn’t the case
JC Denton: “How about a report on yourself?”
Morpheus: “I was a prototype for Echelon IV. My instructions are to amuse visitors with information about themselves.”
JC Denton: “I don’t see anything amusing about spying on people.”
Morpheus: “Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are.”
JC Denton: “Some people just don’t understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance.”
Morpheus: “The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.”
JC Denton: “Electronic surveillance hardly inspires reverence. Perhaps fear and obedience, but not reverence.”
Morpheus: “God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment and punishment. Other sentiments towards them were secondary.”
JC Denton: “No one will ever worship a software entity peering at them through a camera.”
Morpheus: “The human organism always worships. First, it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment.”
JC Denton: “You underestimate humankind’s love of freedom.”
Morpheus: “The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization.”
“i have nothing to hide”
Orly? Gimme your phone.
I always hit em with: “then why are you wearing pants…?”
I read the first two panels in Tom Scott’s voice, lol.
Oh wow, yeah, that’s his style alright. Although it’s not nearly windy enough in that comic to have the full effect.
The more normal these become the easier it is for goverments to say “Hey [big tech company], this guy insulted DJT, we don’t like him and decided to lock him up. Give us everything you know about him.” You don’t need to do something wrong to be a victim of government surveillance.
This was posted in another thread a few months back, and I found it particularly persuasive: https://thompson2026.com/blog/deviancy-signal/
There’s a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, “I have nothing to hide.” It’s not the gentle pity you’d have for the naive. It’s the cold, hard anger you hold for a collaborator. Because these people aren’t just surrendering their own liberty. They’re instead actively forging the chains for the rest of us. They are a threat, and I think it’s time they were told so.
…
On a societal scale, this inaction becomes a collective betrayal. The power of the Deviancy Signal is directly proportional to the number of people who live transparently. Every person who refuses to practice privacy adds another gallon of clean, clear water to the state’s pool, making any ripple of dissent … any deviation … starkly visible. This is not a passive choice. By refusing to help create a chaotic, noisy baseline of universal privacy, you are actively making the system more effective. You are failing to do your part to make the baseline all deviant, and in doing so, you make us all more vulnerable.
Maybe I’m in a bubble, but I have never seen a single person make the “I have nothing to hide,” argument. Not a single one.
When people post arguments against “I have nothing to hide,” I always wonder who they’re arguing against. It’s never posted as a response to someone making that argument. It’s always posted as a non sequitur like OP and this blog post. Maybe we should make a c/popularopinions community for these kinds of posts. “I think we shouldn’t kill people. Is anybody else with me?” “I think having pizza is better than going hungry.”
That brain must be smooth as a shark.
