reserved

Thank you, Gazeta.  What means much more to me than the forum merit is that somebody cares.  Not many people do.  Vide the results—this world in which we live...

I do intend to edit OP as a living project.  I do not think that I will produce a long-form essay; rather, it should be a list of principles to be learnt by heart, as thereby stated.  Meanwhile, I will take this opportunity to bring here a discussion that really started in an inappropriate topic:  In the big picture, why is privacy culture important?

Subject: Re: DEMAND PRIVACY!

Facebook is certainly a major reason for the pervasive lack of privacy in modern society. But people do—to an extent—have control over whether or not they use Facebook. Appreciate there's not much that can be done about "friends" sharing your information, but there is at least some degree of control.

But the general position is that you have to go to often ridiculous lengths to opt out of being tracked and surveilled. Internet tracking is a good example, particularly here in the EU, where we have the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to (ostensibly) protect us from surveillance and data-harvesting. The legal requirement is that we specifically have to opt-in to surveillance; there can be no implied consent:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/lawful-basis-for-processing/consent/

In practice of course, companies disregard this entirely. I posted an example of this a year and a half ago.
Often, your choices when visiting a website are:
a) click okay to the pre-ticked consent box, or
b) navigate a labyrinthine sprawl of sub-pages to individually untick every aspect of surveillance and every partner organisation.

... but this is just the internet. It barely scratches the surface. Consider your phone spewing out your physical location all the time, to whoever wants to listen. Consider the fact that there are estimated to be 1 billion surveillance cameras around the world by next year (ignore the somewhat sinophobic nature of the article, it's obviously a global problem).

Everything comes down to a yearning for power. Money has always been a manifestation of power, but now—as we are so often told—we live in the information age, and data is* power. Everyone who wants to increase and entrench their power wants your data, be it companies or governments. We can be aware of it, we can rail against it, but it looks like a losing battle. Take the US election as a disheartening example. Biden has made it clear that he despises Zuckerberg, and has raised the possibility of revoking Article 230. There was speculation he might try to break up the big tech firms. And what happens when he wins the election? He fills his transition team with tech and surveillance-capitalism insiders...

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/16/the-biden-teams-tug-of-war-over-facebook-436672

https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/bidens-transition-is-stacked-with-tech-players

"Where to elect there is but one,
'Tis Hobson's choice—take that, or none."


_*are

I was wrong. It's more of a Morton's Fork. 'Choose nothing' isn't an option.

Yes, there is no surprise that Biden cozies up to big tech. He's hardly an outsider. I never said Biden was perfect, but still, he's vastly preferable to Trump. Trump isn't a way out, he's not anti-establishment, that's just how he positions himself. Trump pits one side against the other in order to benefit personally. The Trump endgame is not a revolution, it's chaos within the system. If there is a key to unlock the door, then Trump doesn't have it. He's only pro-privacy in the context of his own tax returns. If we have to live in a box, I'd rather the box is not on fire, that's all. If there's a way out of the box, let's look for it... but it's not here.

How about Biden?

... from the above link. Of course, Biden will do nothing about it, just as Trump did nothing.



BTW - thank you for the merit for my 2001 joke in the other thread. I'm glad someone appreciates my devastating wit.

Propaganda? Ha! I stand by the below comments. This is pure, unvarnished truth.

Moderation hat on:  Much though I appreciate this discussion in itself, I respectfully request that the thread remain on topic.

There are already numerous threads (including some of my own) for discussing the politics of the American Federal government.  That is a top-down approach, and very specific to the United States.

The question hereby is:  What bottom-up, grassroots social norms are needed so that people demand privacy?

What can we do to make respect for privacy into “the new normal”?  —Starting at home, and in local communities, and otherwise in everyday interactions?

---

A good start may be to question why people continue to expose their social graphs and private communications a service whose founder is reported to have said, “They ‘trust’ me.  Dumb fucks.”

—And thereupon to ask:  What acculturation, leadership, and peer pressure could push the herd-mentality masses to do otherwise?

Section 230 is separate and distinct from privacy related to social media.

---

I am generally a private person, and I do value my own personal privacy. I also am willing to acknowledge the benefits related to giving up privacy.

On an interpersonal basis, giving up privacy is what allows people to have intimacy with other people. Intimacy with other humans is one of the most rewarding things. Refusing to give up some amounts of privacy will not allow you to reap these rewards.

Somewhat similarly, giving up some amounts of privacy to companies may allow those companies to provide a more customized experience that is more interesting to you. The benefits are not the same as the above but are still benefits.

Ultimately, individuals should be in control of how much privacy they desire.

This is of course true, but privacy from other individuals is only the most visible aspect. The insidious side is not identifiable individuals, it's the abstract them. The whole social media business model, the surveillance capitalism, the data harvesting, and the subsequent modelling through behavioural profiling and ever more advanced analytics software... so that they can build a digital you, not just predicting your next move (and purchase), but also surreptitiously guiding you towards it. Location data from your phone tells them that you've spent an hour at the gym, and have just left. Your phone pings: a personally-targeted offer, 20% off drinks at the shop 50m away, but only for the next hour... you have to buy right now! And they know you will; the data tells them that you're thirsty. The fact that Bob can snoop on Alice's profile and see what she's been doing is immaterial. 'They' see all, that's what matters.


The easiest answer is misleading as it doesn't resolve the underlying problem. You make people demand privacy by making them value it. The problem is how people perceive value. Society has a ready-made and neatly quantifiable manifestation of value: money. Data is worth money to big tech companies, but is given away for free by the marks customers. If laws are put in place to force social media companies and the other data vampires to pay users for their data, then the users will value it. Of course, the users will then happily sell all of their privacy to the highest bidder, which resolves nothing.

As for bottom-up, grassroots solutions... I'm not convinced that these can ever work in western 'democracies'. The system is too advanced. The people at the top want power, but the majority of people want comfort and an easy life. In rich countries, the slave-masters provide the overwhelming majority of people with a guaranteed comfortable standard of living. The people who want comfort have comfort. They have no incentive to rebel. And even if they did rebel, they have no power. The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles... but the proletariat no longer has any power. They can struggle all they want; they will not make even the slightest disturbance. Automation has meant that there is no longer much of a need for a workforce. Muscle power has largely been replaced by machine. Brain power is in the process of being replaced. This isn't the fourteenth century any more.

The populist right works to entrench the current value system. They are not outsiders, they are ultra-insiders. This is why they get elected. The populist left (Sanders, Corbyn, etc.) works to redefine our value system such that money is not the principal driver. They are outsiders. This is why they are demonised (often by their own parties), slandered in the press, and why they fail to get elected. They do build grassroots solutions, but these are mercilessly trodden underfoot. I'm against equality of outcome, but in favour of equality of opportunity, as this works to reduce the oppositional, rat-race nature of society, and entrenched inequalities.

There are many potential ways to solve the privacy problem, but each seems wildly improbable. Modification of the general understanding of what constitutes value, away from money and towards people, is perhaps the least unlikely. The election of a Bernie Sanders type figure who can apply a brake on the excesses of capitalism. The alternatives are unpalatable. Continue as we are, and watch the situation deteriorate ever further. Or await a revolution that can never happen, and an anarchist utopia that can live only in the minds of idealists, or a communist utopia that is as dead as the idea of labour as power.

... no longer has any power, is:


Come on, read to the end of the post. Don't stop at your trigger words!