this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
116 points (98.3% liked)
Privacy
38001 readers
523 users here now
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.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I am privacy conscious and care about privacy even though I don't care too much about my own personal privacy just for privacy's sake.
Privacy advocacy runs deeper than just protecting your own data. Convincing someone to care about "their privacy" is more straightforward when they face a real threat. For example, a journalist in Mexico writing about a politician linked to organized crime has every reason to avoid being easily tracked. That person is not going to post their location on Facebook.
But most people aren't under direct threat. If you read my texts, you'll find casual conversations with family and dinner plans. I'm not afraid of someone showing up at my door, so I’m fine sharing my address to get a package delivered. Getting ads is a minor annoyance.
Still, I care about privacy. Not necessarily mine, but privacy as a principle. I care about what surveillance capitalism does to society. Even if my personal threat model is easy, I want tools and systems to exist for people with harder ones. Privacy is part of the kind of world I think we should live in, and its erosion usually points to larger structural problems.
So back to the question. It's easier to convince someone to care about privacy if they feel directly threatened. But if they don’t, you need something else to make them give up convenience in the name of privacy. That something is ideology. You're asking how to shift someone's ideological framework. That’s hard, and not something you can do for them. You can recommend good material, share your reasoning, explain what led you to care. But they have to engage with the ideas themselves. Like with exercise, you can’t build someone’s muscles for them. You can’t implant the ideology, but you can create the conditions for it to take root.