Data privacy: how to counter the "I have nothing to hide" argument?
I know data privacy is important and I know that big corporations like Meta became powerful enough to even manipulate elections using our data.
But, when I talk to people in general, most seem to not worry because they “have nothing to hide”, and most are only worried about their passwords, banking apps and not much else.
So, why should people worry about data privacy even if they have “nothing to hide”?
My colleague gave me that response. I asked if I could go through his off-facebook activities for fun. “Sure, got nothing to hide” About 5 seconds in he could bare it and asked me to leave him alone. Lol
A lot of the rebuttals in this thread are non-sensical. Why would I let someone use my phone for no reason?
When people say they don’t care about privacy, they don’t really mean it. What they mean is they are willing to sacrifice some of it for the sake of convenience, safety, or something else they find valuable. That’s certainly a valid trade-off to make. If you’re trying to convince someone they should care more about privacy, that entirely depends on the person.
I don’t think so. Examples of it happening demonstrate that it can happen. OTHO, examples of it not happening does not demonstrate that it cannot happen.
It doesn’t have to be inevitable in order to serve as an example of what can happen when even seemingly innocuous information falls into the wrong hands. It’s happened before, and the consequences were horrifying. It will happen again, particularly if people refuse to learn from the examples of history.
Information is knowledge. Knowledge is power. And power in the wrong hands is dangerous.
That historic examples such as the Nazis, the Japanese-American internment, and the Rwanda genocide should guide us when deciding what sorts of large-scale demographic data harvesting we as a society want to allow in the first place. That the “right to privacy” in this case is not about personal privacy but of collective privacy.
Which is why even people who “have nothing to hide” should care about privacy rights.
You have to put the risks into context with upsides. Dentists serve a verifiable and vast positive. Can you equate that to sharing personal information?
IMO at least not generally, as a generic statement.
And (if they’re American) when they go “well, MY government wouldn’t do that!” counter with how Meta has already, numerous times, gotten people arrested for talking about getting abortions on Facebook
I like that comparison. It even allows you to explain that there are different levels of privacy.
Leaving the curtains open at night, while you have a light on, really opens you up to the world. But then opening the curtains a smidge during the day to let the light in at least serves a purpose.
Social security number, all of your tax records, banks statements, and purchase histories, your menstrual cycle timings, medical history, all the photos of your children, a copy of your house and car keys, oh and, let me know when you leave your house and when you are going to back…
I think part of the issue is that people in general don’t think very much beyond themselves. To be sure, privacy issues do affect them personally whether they acknowledge it or not, but it also has implications for the sort of society in which we live and what’s permissible for companies and governments to do. That affects everyone. In terms of how to get people to care about things on that level, clever memes is probably more likely to sway people than elaborate persuasive arguments. They’re just more effective at getting ideas into people’s minds when they’d otherwise not think about them at all.
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