Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

One thing that is rarely discussed in relation to this urban myth is that it is widely believe and yet it doesn't actually effect the behavior of most believers. That is one of the major reasons why most companies and many governments don't care about privacy, the public doesn't really care about it either.

People will of course choose privacy over no privacy with all else being equal, but privacy is the first thing sacrificed when push comes to shove. If the average person is given the choice of having everything said within earshot of their phone being recorded and sent to Facebook or giving up Instagram, they'll happily choose Instagram and forsake their privacy.

If privacy advocates want to start turning the tide in this battle, the first step needs to be convincing the average person why privacy is important on a personal and tangible level. No arguments about future totalitarian regimes or hypothetical ideals. Abstract concepts like that rarely motivate people who have so many more practical political concerns. It needs to be something that is more important to people than having access to Instagram. And I have absolutely no idea how that could be accomplished which makes me concerned that we're already too late.

That's the main reason I care about this so much.

If people really do believe that their phones are spying on them all the time to show them ads that means that people are basically surrendering to an imagined surveillance state. They shut up and accept it, because they'd rather keep Facebook/Instagram installed than fight back.

I find that really depressing. I want people to have more agency than that.

We need people to understand the imagined v.s. the actual privacy threats, so they can push for better standards. If they believe in and submit to the conspiracy theories good luck getting anyone to campaign for actual meaningful improvements to the problems that are real.

That's a very good reason to talk about this.

I do think that this is a very "lightly held" belief. It's something people kind-of believe, they'll tell this to each other, but it doesn't affect any behavior - not because it's not important IMO, but because people mostly don't really, deep down, believe it.

And I do wonder if convincing people this isn't happening will have the opposite effect than we intend. Instead of being more aware of what actual privacy violations are, it'll just make people write off the whole idea of companies invading their privacy. Idk.

If you believe that google is recording all your audio, uninstalling instagram is not going to cut it. I think such a person would have to go back down to a really dumb phone to have any confidence at that point.

People have only vibes, they think that if they paid with cash it would proobably be more private than a credit card, but what data is being sold and to whom for what uses? Is that even the case or are there regulations? If I constantly make cash withdrawals at the bank am I actually inviting extra scrutiny by looking like a money launderer? If I install this browser add-on maybe it sells all my data. But I'm also using chrome literally made by the ad company, and that youtuber told me if I don't use a VPN I'm constantly being tracked anyways...

If you just have a giant morass of confusing information about every digital decision, and a lot of annoying first steps you would take are likely to be no-ops, you just don't engage. People are defeated by ambiguity and lack of attention span, same reason lobbying works and people were constantly being poisoned by food & drug additives before the modern era.

In my experience the people who believe conspiracy theories like this tend to have a fatalistic attitude towards them. They're not making any specific claims about specific apps listening in on their conversations. Rather it's more a vague sense that "they" (whoever "they" are) are always listening and that there's nothing that can be done about it without giving up on modern technology entirely.

The people I know who believe this myth go into their settings and turn off microphone access on an app-by-app basis.

I went back to my family for this christmas, and argued about privacy, I think it was about free email services again, and stuff likes this. And again - I just cannot understand it - the response was:

Yeah but I don't care, I have nothing to hide, let them have my data.

It's a slap in the face of me, trying to meticulously remove all internet access of programs and devices that don't need it, and moving from all free and not-privacy-friendly services to mostly paid and private-friendly ones - probably "losing" a big chunk of my lifetime doing this. I feel paranoid sometimes, when I hear this argument.

You are not losing your lifetime, you are building the future. If other people do not want to be on board it is a loss. I have spent years trying to teach people how to build their own websites and get away from the large walled gardens. Many will not come on board, but the community that does do it have built truly wonderful things. I think of the Neal Stepehson article "In the Beginning was the Command Line" where he compares Microsloths Family Sedan to the Free Tanks of Linux; there are all these Linux geeks yelling "come over here, we have free tanks" yet most people pay for the Family Sedan.

It sucks, yet I drive a Free Tank, and now help people online take care of theirs. The other day I was talking with one from the future generation about what type of computer they would want and they said "A Fedora gaming desktop". And that made it all alright :)

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