I have never heard any normal person ever talk about data privacy. It feels like there's this giant bubble that the tech world lives in, and they are the only people who care about this issue.
I hear normal people talk about it all the time. The only place where I hear that only people on HN care about privacy is on HN, constantly.
edit: I suspect that tech people who work on privacy-invading technologies live in a rationalization bubble that tells them that the complaints that they constantly hear are from a vanishingly small nerd contingent that they themselves just happen to immersed in. They don't believe their lying ears.
> I have never heard any normal person ever talk about data privacy. It feels like there's this giant bubble that the tech world lives in, and they are the only people who care about this issue.
Honestly, I don't know if I've just missed your irony here, or if you don't realize there are lots of 'normal' people out there who have been thinking about this since like... the 50s of last century or something? Most certainly, they were talking about it (freely that is) since at least the 90s of the same century. Like, people who grew up under a totalitarian regime which could assign spies to eavesdrop and collect data on anyone, anywhere for any reason at all. Like the GDR for instance[1].
Call me crazy, but I think most people care less about Nike knowing what their shoe size is, than they care about keeping their bank account safe or not running out of storage.
They don't care because they don't understand. "Most people" think their shoe size or what ad they see doesn't matter because they're right, those things don't matter. What matters is that all of the data being collected about them will be used against them at every opportunity so that other people can get more money and power at their expense.
The data they give up will be increasingly used in every aspect of their lives. Restaurants will use it to decide how long to leave them waiting on hold when they call for a reservation. Employers will decide to hire them or not based on their purchase history, their health, or their political views. Stores will decide how much to charge them vs their neighbors for the exact same products.
The data they've been handing over will be used by corporations to extract more money from them. It will be used by by politicians who want to manipulate them and to create maps that will limit the ability for their votes to make any difference. It will be used by activists looking for people they can target for doing things they don't like. It will be used by law enforcement who will use that data against someone anytime they think it might help them make an arrest, or win a case in court. It will be used by their health insurance company to raise their rates when fast food spending in their zip code goes up.
The data "Most people" gave up thinking it was about shoe size and ads will be leveraged against them in countless ways by people they've never had any direct interaction with at all. The data never goes away and it ends up in the hands of hackers and data brokers who sell it to others. "Most people" aren't allowed to know who is accessing their data, how accurate that data is, how (or if) it is being secured, or what the people who have their data will be using it for.
Well, although they'll never be allowed to know specifically what their data will be used for, in a general sense they can be pretty sure it will be used to manipulate them, to categorize (and often miscategorize) them and to assign them a position in one or more unregulated digital caste systems that will increasingly limit their options and cause them to spend more money.
They don't care about data privacy now, but as more of them figure out that what they've been giving up is going to impact the rest of their life in ways they couldn't imagine they're going to start caring more and more.
Industrial-scale data guzzling is exactly like every vicious playground rumour (or vindictive people you may still be unlucky to know). Think back to school and remember how the bullies never forgot. How names and reputations were made instantly and never really shrugged. They used that information (demeaning anecdotes) to their benefit in every way they could. You had absolutely no control over the spread of rumours about you.
Imagine that, but on a much grander scale. I wish more people saw that it is the same kind of predation, probably perpetuated by the same types who have no conscience but are now adults.
Because the information is only valuable when tied to you, misuse of it is always against your interest. The use and handling of "personal data" is never neutral, even if "anonymised".
I thought it was extreme at the time, but now who is laughing?
I now want my phone to work and that is why i use iOS. Having to replace the OS on your phone is already a step too far for most. The install instructions here require using the terminal and typing commands - not going to happen for most people.
IMHO, the easiest path to adoption is to have a hardware manufacturer put this OS on their phones. No installation required.
https://murena.com/products/smartphones/
No terminal/ADB needed, and in my experience, /e/ is not crashy.
I bought a phone from /e/ and have never had this happen in almost 2 years.
What is shitty is being on HackerNews and seeing (presumably tech-savvy) people more worried about the product's name and "marketing" instead of discussing the system on its technical merits. Or seeing comments like yours that think that privacy is something that only concerns a "small bubble".
That is just not shitty, it is profoundly depressing.