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Comment by ranger_danger | Hacker News Reader

> The real issue is that the public wants a right to digital privacy.

Legitimate question, is there any concrete evidence that the majority of the public actually does want this?

There is not. In fact, many users will gladly give away any notion of privacy whatsoever in exchange for a Candy Crush lootbox.

I want digital privacy… but a lootbox is a lootbox.

As long as the cost/benefit calculation is high enough on your side, you’re fine with it?

I have felt great pity for Snowden all these years, his personal sacrifice was all for nothing, a short news cycle later and nobody cared.

People care but lots of people were brainwashed by politicians and the media to think it's no big deal, and even that Snowden is a bad guy. I've met somewhat intelligent people in real life who have zero appreciation for his disclosure, seemingly oblivious to the fact that whistleblowers are unwanted by the establishment. Does anyone seriously think they didn't know that what they were doing was highly illegal and inappropriate?

How many users are aware of their loss of privacy, and of those who are, how many are aware of its extent? These are not trade-offs with clear and obvious implications written on the tin.

Have you tried talking to normies about this? Sure, nobody likes bad things happening to them, but they usually neither understand what would be bad about a loss of privacy, think the long-term consequences are just paranoid fear-mongering, and will shrug away the implications next time they encounter a decision between comfort and privacy again.

It reminds me of Jamie Oliver (I think it was him) showing a group of pupils how Chicken Nuggets are made, in all its brutality; afterwards, when asking them if they would like to eat some nuggets now, guess what they said? "Yeeeeees!"

I think that if you explain it properly, most people would be concerned.

Privacy is a nebulous term, but what does it enable? The right to be yourself, to expose what you want, to take back mistakes, to keep for yourself somethings that you don't want to share.

Privacy is therefore the right to be yourself. You do have something to hide, you don't want everyone knowing your deepest thoughts, aspirations, all of your past mistakes, etc.

But instead we always explain it in ways that people don't connect with.

I don't think people would be concerned about that explanation either... I think they need to hear real-world consequences, of which the only one I can remotely think of would be identity theft, and the chances of that happening I think are still slim among all the people whose info has even already been exposed publicly.

How does privacy enable one to "not know your deepest thoughts" if you're aren't giving that information out in the first place?

> I don't think people would be concerned about that explanation either... I think they need to hear real-world consequences

I think you're right. I'm not hopeful the general population will change and suddenly say "E2EE matters, dammit!". Because the small scale consequences are boiling the frog, and the major ones "could never happen to me".

I'm sure we've all seen the Google account that got nuked [0, 1], but pointing that out to people is likely to garner responses ranging from "But I need Google for $thing" to "I don't have kids, so I'm fine". We unfortunately don't have any medium-scale fallout - just ghost stories of one guy, one time, being bitten.

[0] Costing the guy his phone number, photos, emails, contacts, any paid apps, documents in Google Drive, and presumably associating his credit card, address, and name with a banned account. Given how Google relies on automation for flagging and harassing accounts, I'd expect his troubles aren't over just yet should he make a new Google account.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/21/23315513/google-photos-cs...

We really have _plenty_ of identity theft, personalised scams (hi Tess' mom!), accounts hacked, large scale photo leaks, etc. People just a) don't hear about it enough, or b) quickly move on to the next crisis with their hands up bexause what can you do.

Privacy-preserving options are also often not as easy/convenient/friendly to use.

People, perhaps, don't care. But that's a cynical assumption. They supposedly don't care about the environment and yet we're moving the needle on that.

> They supposedly don't care about the environment and yet we're moving the needle on that.

Actually, good call, and nice analogy, thank you. That's a nice reminder that when cause and effect are far apart, it's easy for people to not conenct the dots; it actually makes for a nice explanation, and helps me be less cynical about it.

We can point to how data brokerage/mining/analysis is being used to undermine democracies, sway elections, manipulate consumers into purchases they wouldn't make, change the pricing or even denial of coverage for insurance, and so on. These are all quite tangible, and all stem from people giving up their data too willingly. We all fuel the Shit Economy of ‘free with personalised ads’ which ultimately allows those with the data to hold power/influence over everyone else.

And to your last point, plenty of people were shocked Google Chrome incognito wasn't really a private experience, or don't know that what they type into an LLM prompt gets collected, etc. People do give these out in the first place.

I understand what you're saying, but IMO for ordinary users that only care about things that they can easily see tangibly affecting them directly, I don't think this is enough to convince them of anything.

Perhaps. But you can tell them they might lose their health insurance because of their online profile. In some countries that's quite scary.

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/10/18/how-american...

80% are concerned.

…and if you ask them, most people don't want animals to suffer. Guess what they're ordering next time at the restaurant? It's not the vegan pasta.

And how exactly does that analogy apply here? The current situation is more like the government banning vegan pasta.

What I was trying to say was that people are "concerned" about lots of things, but that doesn't mean much on its own. As soon as they actually have to give up some immediate comfort for the long-term better option, they will not act upon their concerns but choose satisfaction right now, reliably.

People I know are sick to death of all the advertisements in everything.

The personalized ad economy is the most obvious and personally impacting symptom of this legislative failure.

I wonder what an actual referendum on Chat Control would actually say as well.

The official title is 'Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse' and I imagine most people would be inclined to vote in favour of that without context.

And yet people don't realise that Epstein was talking in clear text for years through a gmail account that the government could access - and the powers that be didn't do anything about it. It's got nothing to do with protecting children, it's about controlling and monitoring the population.

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