Comment by FrojoS | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FrojoS | Hacker News Reader

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Best post in the thread. This is exactly the problem.

Now, an interesting question is, what happens if everyone knew almost everything? This is the alternative scenario. If the end of privacy is more ubiquitous and democratic, the power of the secret services would shrink. It might lead to a change of our laws and social norms to something that more realistically represents our reality.

I'm not optimistic that this would be a good or even better world, but this is the best argument I've heard from the people who are not afraid of the end of privacy. I would count Mark Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt into that group, but also many of my friends.

Which norms and laws would change? I can imagine that e.g. the use of certain drugs like cocaine and sexual behaviors like sado maso and yes prostitution would be the first to be tolerated by the majority. In some societies, that is already the case. A more difficult to swallow reality might be pedophily. I'm quite sure that child abuse would always be unacceptable but simply being pedophilic might be accepted as normal for a certain percentage of the population.

The power inherent in not allowing others to know what bad shit you are doing is unfortunately too great. Its always going to be possible to hide a conspiracy. Information asymmetry rules the world around you.

I find the logic of Schmidt and Zuckerberg to be extremely self serving, where can we know all the details of their online and offline life, like they seek to know about ours?

Death of privacy indeed, but for who?

> Information asymmetry rules the world around you.

True. Good point. But is information asymmetry becoming larger or smaller? I would argue that it becomes smaller, but I have nothing to prove it.

An anecdotal example out of my memory, is Kofi Annan saying in an interview, that he started to use Google, more and more instead of having to ask his assistants. Another example are journalists, able to uncover secret CIA locations with Google. Or a single whistleblower, Edward Snowden, able to leak a good part of the NSA's secret operations with just a USB stick. Sure, the NSA has more knowledge than ever. But the average Internet user, too, has unprecedented access to personal information of strangers. Just knowing your real name will likely allow me to find your location, employment, a picture of you and much more. So has the information asymmetry between us and the NSA grown or shrunk?

> But is information asymmetry becoming larger or smaller?

I think the asymmetry is becoming larger. Certainly in absolute terms we all have more information about one another than we did before, but the problem now is not having the information, it's searching through it to find the relevant information. Or being able to act on the information.

What can you as an ordinary individual do with a publicly available list of corrupt government officials? What can a corrupt president or FBI director do with a publicly available list of political opponents?

That favors the people, who will always have way more manpower to search and process the data than the elites who try to hide it. The more information in the public realm, the more that scores of interested scholars, journalists, statisticians, lawyers and other such professionals can use the tools of their trade to come to useful conclusions. Of course, most people could do nothing with such information, but released into the wild, even minor outrage can cause real change.

I think the biggest problem with this idea is the question of who gets to decide what the social norms and what is "acceptable". Our social norms are influenced by the media, the politicians and laws that they pass, so certain people in power positions will have an advantage. You can see this in a lot of countries (latest with gays in Russia, but countries like Iran and Germany are historic, extreme examples).

If for instance gays and atheists are exposed as "deviants" in the media, but corruption and hiring prostitutes are downplayed as something "every politician is doing", then it doesn't really matter who shares what: The openly gay, atheist politician will have a hard time (and perhaps be put in prison) while the corrupt ones walk free.

> our social norms are influenced by the media

Sure. But they are also formed by our personal observation. If you would find out that lots of your colleagues, friends, family members and celebrities behave in 'strange' activities, those activities might not be perceived as strange after a while anymore.

Of course, you're right to point to the negative examples of Russia, Iran and Germany. Laws and norms can change both ways. This has been the case with antisemitism. It used to be quite accepted to be Jewish during the Second Reich in Germany but wasn't anymore in the Third. As another example, as far as I know, the Dutch had census data about the religion of every citizen, which only became a problem when they became occupied by Germany with its laws against Jewish.

But what now? Its all to easy to imagine a future with hardly any privacy. How will it look like? How should it look like if we take the end of privacy as a given, at least as a gedankenspiel.

My slightly pessimistic view is that the ones with resources would be able to keep their privacy and use that to their advantage, while the less fortunate would not.

Popular opinion might change, but as we've seen laws can change much more quickly, and even things that most people would consider normal could become a punishable offense.

At that point, for the people who already have the data on their lives out there, it will be too late to do anything about it, while the people who have been smart enough to live "perfectly normal" lives with the correct political and religious views, or those who can hire people to cover their tracks, will be better off.

Please! Both Zuck and Schmidt go a long way and spend extraordinary amounts of money to safeguard their privacy.

If there is one thing Zuck has said that was true was calling his users "dumb fucks" for uploading all their private information.

I don't think he was referring to all his users. I use Facebook, and I don't upload all my private information. Just the stuff I don't mind the whole world seeing. I think that someone who just uploads everything is at the very least naive, I might even go so far as to call them "dumb fucks" in certain contexts.

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