[wilkskyes]

It is good that people don't care about privacy. It means they are no longer afraid of being seen, that they have nothing to hide from the world, and in a way they are moving toward a more liberating existence.

Keeping so many aspects of your life private comes with a price. There is inconvenience, there is overhead, and there is always fear that one day your private assets will be compromised and laid bare.

The less private you are, the more you have to share, and the more you have to share, the richer and more meaningful your experiences will be: with other people, and even with other businesses.

But if you are very private, you have little to share. You miss out on the social conversation of humanity, and businesses will treat you as another generic faceless entity, throwing whatever crap they can at you hoping it sticks. Why would anyone want that?

[malvosenior]

I would put a slightly different spin on this thought. Most people's problem is that no one is paying attention to them. We struggle to get people to notice us and listen to us. Even if it's only an algorithm, I think most people would think being looked at and considered is a feature not a bug.

[feanaro]

> But if you are very private, you have little to share. You miss out on the social conversation of humanity, and businesses will treat you as another generic faceless entity, throwing whatever crap they can at you hoping it sticks.

And mass surveillance and data collection combined with blackbox machine learning techniques are somehow producing a different outcome?

I think it is very misguided to conclude that people don't need privacy from all of this. Most of what people use Facebook and friends for is private, they just haven't been seriously and obviously burned enough from the fact that a large number of corporate entities are siphoning it up.

Maybe they'll never get burned enough. Maybe it all turns out well. But concluding that no people do not need privacy as a basic psychological need is wrong. I know I do and I don't have a bad social life because of it.