Comment by darkwater | Hacker News Reader

Comment by darkwater | Hacker News Reader

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> If you don't buy my belief then reframe the question to make things more apparent. Instead asking people how they feel about Google or Meta tracking them, ask how they feel about the government or some random person. "Would you be okay if I hired a PI to follow you around all day? They'll record who you talk to, when, how long, where you go, what you do, what you say, when you sleep, and everything down to what you ate for breakfast."

Yes and no, because people still will think that when it's done at scale it's different from some stalker following YOU explicitly, and not just following everybody. Also, the mental model is "they just want to sell me something, but I can just ignore and don't buy if I'm not really interested". And especially going down this second rabbit-hole opens a whole world about consumerism that not many people are comfortable with. At the same time there are people that are totally against consumerism that should be more informed and care more about tracking and privacy; with those people it's probably easier to have that conversation.

Some good counterpoints. But you're suggesting more people would be okay with 'PI following them' hypothetical than GP suggests—simply with the knowledge that others are subject to the same degree of surveillance?

I'm not so sure that counterpoint in particular holds. I think to say the "number of people that are going to be okay with that will [still] plummet" is an understatement. I'd go so far as to say no one, at least no rational person, would be okay with a "record [of] who you talk to, when, how long, where you go, what you do, what you say, when you sleep", etc., just because of the scale.

Let me focus it from a slightly different side: my believe - from observing the world around me - is that physical privacy violation is perceived differently from a software one because of the side-effects: you gaze out of your window and see the same car with some guy in it parked there, you see the same car following you when you are going to the mall etc. There is some similar side-effect with online tracking, which is the typical "ad in my Instagram feed for something I searched for last week in Google", and there are people that are "scared" by this. But since it's just about buying things, well hey I might actually tap on that Instagram ad!

I see some success by telling people "what if was our government doing the same thing to us, even by extorting private companies? what if that same government, or the next one, just hates you for whatever reason?"

I take your point about the 'abstract' nature of online privacy. But another angle might be suggesting to those that are ambivalent on the issue that the pervasive (and for all intents and purposes, permanent) recordkeeping nature of 'software surveillance' should be much scarier than some guy sitting outside. I mean, at the very least, even with some guy sitting outside, you'd still have privacy inside.

But again, I hear you. Most people unfortunately have come to view the issue as being just about targeted advertising (which some go so far as to espose as a good thing).

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