Comment by simonw
1 year ago
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.
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.
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.