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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

what? we learned that digital privacy does not exist. anyone that can make a dollar for information that they can glean from their users via any mechanism they offer will sell that data. we've learned that there are more people doing that very thing than would seem obvious at first. we've also learned that if the product/service you are using is free means you are the product is no longer true as things like smart TVs and other items that you pay for are also data hoarders to the point they make more money of the analytics sales than they do the actual product they are known to sell. we've learned that the rules for thee but not for me is rule of the land for gov't TLAs.

so, it seems to me that we've learned a lot, but the "nothing" you claim would be more appropriately describing the response from what was learned.

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If we as a society have changed nothing in response to new knowledge, have we really learned anything?

I'd agree with the parent that no, we haven't.

If you want to be flippant about it, fine. Just because you know that other planets exist around stars outside of our solar system but you can't visit them, did we actually learn anything? Having knowledge of something does not immediately mean you are able to take action with that knowledge. Sure, the typical HN reader might have been able to take action with things like installing various extensions in their browsers, running PiHoles on their private networks, using VPNs when on public networks, etc, but we've also learned that these are not enough and avoiding the tracking that we've learned about is nigh impossible. We now know things about persistent tracking that was not shared by Snowden, but we only started looking because of the revelations from Snowden got the wheels turning.

There is a humongous gap between stars we can't reach and not putting every little detail of your life on the internet for all to see. Keeping information to yourself isn't something locked away behind extensive technical prowess.

Heck, if we are playing this game: most still make fun of their 'weird tech relative/friend' who can do this rather than ask them to help for what they will probably do for free. The people have spoken and continue to speak very clearly.

Sure, not publicly listing every meal you have followed by every bowel movement would be a good start that is never going to happen because the world needs to know this information.

However, that's not the only data that is gathered and sold. The information that is gathered passively from extensive efforts to track individuals across the internet is the elephant in the room that you seemingly want to ignore. These are direct attempts by companies to subvert individuals that might actually NOT be posting every little thing they do on social platforms. Things like tracking people as they move about brick & mortar stores or other types of beacons for whatever purposes they are being used for are examples. SmartTVs gather metrics, grocery stores gather metrics, and the million other "little" things that when gathered together all paint a very very detailed picture about someone without them necessarily knowing about.

so you're "don't be so public on the internet" is not such a simple little thing

We learned that digital privacy doesnt exist and nobody cares about that.

By nobody I meant the amount of people who care is rounding error.

But isn't that pretty telling information to have learned? As evangelists against tracking, we hope that by spreading the gospel of evil tracking uses to those unaware might actually convert them into the flock and they would change their habits. instead, we learned we are outcasts in society, and that if we keep singing the hymns in places people are not interested in hearing them, that we will become (have become) a mocked group of society that becomes meme-worthy and never taken seriously. so, the Prophecies of Idiocracy are doomed to come true.

What we knew already, if you were aware of conversations amongst datacenter employees et al, just got official names like Prism

It's akin to how we seem to be getting more and more info about UFOs lately. When it's finally confirmed, we can't just act like we knew nothing about UFOs existing, we had a clue for a long while - just no official confirmations.

> What we knew already, if you were aware of conversations amongst datacenter employees et al, just got official names like Prism

right, and for the 99.999% of the population that is NOT, we learned all about it. what a weird caveat you've added that assumes "we" are only HN readers that could have possibly have learned anything.

It was widely reported as well (I remember a video of some govt agency installing a device in an AT&T datacenter siphoning a huge amount of internet traffic, it should have incited outrage and gone viral), just not much interest without a smoking gun. The laypeople you speak of weren't interested, they were blissfully ignorant. I honestly still believe with a smoking gun and 10 years later many people just don't have much interest, they tend to abide by the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" views of privacy (in US at least)

I think it is more of a Douglas Adams type of SEP. These are things that are too complex for the average person to understand, and they might actually know deep down that if they were to allow themselves to understand it that they might actually have to do something about it which would disrupt their lifestyles. So their brains make the situation out as Someone Else's Problem which allows them to stick their head back into the sand.

It's much more nuanced than "nothing to hide, nothing to fear", as it's just wrong. Everyone does something that is against regulations every day. It's just a matter of time before that is truly enforced using this "nothing to hide" data, and then people will be "I guess I did need to hide that".

I tend to think people do know or have some clues into these type of things, they just think their probability assigned to "just a matter of time before that is truly enforced" is so low, they don't want to waste energy on it. They also view the consequences as low, hence the erroneous "nothing to fear" part.

A current thought experiment on this is, if Trump won 2024, it wouldn't be a surprise to anyone if he went off the rails and tried to punish anyone that spoke poorly of him. Citizens included. Meanwhile, half the country has been posting openly on social media about hating the guy for the past 8 years. Some of us, thinking we did so anonymously behind a @non account. We collectively just don't fathom the risk of that type of institutional upheaval. But, it's bound to happen at some point, in some way.

An example with less consequences (perhaps?), everyone knows that something is listening to them even when they don't know what. We all have stories of something unusual coming up in conversation, then immediately you notice you're being targeted for those ads. Even though you never search for it, etc. it just came up at the watercooler in conversation with Bob in accounting or something. Everyone knows it's happenings, for years now, but nobody is really too concerned or asking for real answers about how this occurs. It might be a complex of an answer for the average joe, but he's not even asking the question because the consequences are perceived to be low.

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