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Why does everyone make such a fuss about privacy?
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this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Asklemmy
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As another user said, it’s good to ask these questions. We shouldn’t shame people for asking. I’d rather ask a question and look stupid for needing to ask it once, than be ignorant forever. Could they have just searched “why should I care about privacy” online and gotten tons of answers? Yes. I’d also imagine that not everyone grew up with the norm of exhausting all other avenues of information before you ask other people for help.
As for how they asked the question, I’m just reading it as them saying they don’t care about privacy, not that we’re all idiot twats for caring. I think it’s an honest question, not a disingenuous “why does anyone care, you shouldn’t and you’re all stupid if you do.”
Well imagine coming to a vegetarian forum and asking: "Why does everyone make a fuss about killing animals? I eat meat three times every day, go on hunts every month, sometimes just for fun, I don't even eat those animals. Also I don't care about cages and all that, animals don't have souls anyway."
It may also be a genuine question, but sometimes it's good to spend 10 seconds before asking, either by just thinking or maybe do a very brief web search.
In general, questions of the "I don't care about X so I don't see why anyone else could" kind tend to be like that. You can ask, but you can also expect people won't want to talk to you.
I totally get your point about the vegetarian forum and agree with you, but this is c/asklemmy, not c/privacy. I’ve been around the Fediverse long enough to know it’s generally a pro-privacy environment, not everyone else has been.
Again, I’m really not seeing the “I don’t see why anyone else should” part in their question, I suppose we’re interpreting it differently.
My point is that if it's something that clearly lots of people care about, it's probably a good idea to think a little.
The "why anyone would" part is in the "why people make a fuss". I don't wish to be a teacher here picking apart every word, don't get me wrong, but people get upset if you invalidate what they care about. It's like telling someone who's angry to calm down.
Fortunately people here have more patience heh.
Once I wondered why everyone cared so much about something I didn’t. I wanted to give what seemed like most of the world the benefit of the doubt instead of dismissing their care as invalid and stupid, so I sat and thought about it and came up with a guess.
My guess was way off base. It correctly explained some tertiary aspects of why people cared, but totally missed the primary reasons. And until I had it explained to me, I probably would have continued to miss the primary reasons for my entire life. Sometimes it’s useful to get the answer from the horse’s mouth instead of guessing on your own.
But I definitely understand the bit about people getting upset when the things they care about are invalidated. One of my Things is people just assuming the best of each other or at least not namecalling each other when assuming the best is foolish or impractical, so I reacted to your comment and wondered if I should have because half the time I get a nice exchange like this one we’re having, and half the time I get some condescending, snarky replies. And the condescending replies feel very bad.
I understand and even appreciate that people have different priorities, worries and preferences. Which is why I dislike the attitude some take, "if you don't care about X, you're part of the problem". It may even be true in lots of cases, but we can't all care about the same things, less we all worry about everything all the time, and that's not good or realistic.
Funny thing though. I've seen people have civil debates about the most sensitive, divisive topics, as long as the initial question or statement comes from a place of genuine curiosity.
But whenever I see people ask the "why is privacy important?" question, it's never just "am I missing something?" but more of a "gimme all the ads, collect everything about me, I don't care", sometimes with the "you conspiracy theorists weirdos, nobody cares about you and you're probably pedos anyway" sprinkled in.
So it's a bit tiring to see this over and over, hence my snark at the beginning. And I don't know where the attitude is coming from. Maybe it's just a relatively new issue and people aren't used to constantly being exposed to the debate, like with some other topics?
But in that case I gather that it should be the opposite problem - we used to have much more privacy than we have now, that just has to be obvious (hence the questions in the first place), so the proper question to ask would be "wait, why is everyone so interested in everything I do all of a sudden? Why is every corporation suddenly collecting all my data and giving me free stuff in return while raking in billions of profits? Hm, sus"
Eh maybe I'm missing something.
I definitely haven’t seen questions like this asked at all, let alone repeatedly, which is probably where part of my patience comes from.
This never occurred to me. I found articles about privacy and the risks that were out there as a young child, way before I noticed any kind of change in levels of privacy (didn’t notice any change myself). As a kid I wasn’t aware that certain corporations were making billions, I just enjoyed the free ride and then saw all the articles about privacy risks. And nothing bad ever happened to me and I didn’t see articles about bad things happening to people, so I still didn’t care (after all, I was on Android, I could just… deny this app permission to access something, problem solved! At least that is what I thought) until I saw someone get doxxed. I’m 18+ now, but sometimes you have kids online who don’t obviously seem like kids because you can’t see them online, and thEy Arent TypIng l11k3 dis!!!! or making constant baysic english lenguige missteaks but use regular English at the same level of fluency as adults. If you transplanted my 10-year old personality into a 10-year old today I could easily see them getting on the Fediverse and passing for an adult for awhile, because my 10-year old self spoke and wrote basically the same way I do now, minus the swear words and life experience.
And also, the fact is most people just don’t care about stuff until it affects them or someone close to them. It sounds nasty and I want to be better than this, but the fact remains we all have a limited amount of care and energy to go around. I mostly try to fix my own issues, not exacerbate anyone or dismiss anyone else’s, and help out where I can.
I’d imagine if you’re not in tech circles you also don’t find out much about privacy risks. I really try to extend the benefit of the doubt to people, give a way they could reasonably not know things, because I know I’m arrogant and want to counteract my own “oh my god how do you not know that you fucking idiot lmao I’m so much better and smarter than you” tendencies. And I truly cannot know what things are actually like outside of my experience, at most I can just read about them and get some idea.
Point taken... Altho personally I don't care about how old someone is. When I game online or just squat on Lemmy/Reddit/forum, I'm fine taking to people whether they're 13 or 70. If anything, younger people tend to be more open minded, which possibly comes with having access to all the information.
But yea I guess some topics probably hit different when you grow up in a certain style of environment. Still, when I babysit kids, I find they are curious about everything and are willing to change their mind if they get explained something realistically. And I don't see younger people ask loaded questions as often as older folks do.
I don't begrudge people for not knowing things. What I find interesting is how they react when they learn about something, or their initial train of thought. You probably know the experiment of asking randos "should dihydrohen monoxide be banned?"
I have this hobby almost, I like finding new things, weird and divisive stuff. Oddball topics, weird fetishes, strange habits, crazy hobbies, wild art, whatever. If there's a community with "weird" in the title, I'll probably subscribe to it.
And it also gives me some insight into how outsiders react when they stumble upon that stuff. Most people, when confronted with something out of their ordinary, tend to go "damn good thing I'm normal, everyone is weird" or worse. So I guess it is human nature, but you can also imagine how tiring it can get.
It is quite amusing to see how local men desperately want make the site known to the general public while opposing everyone who isn't a linux-minded privacy-concerned fag