[jackfoxy]

Here is some anecdotal historical context. Recently my parents were reminiscing at a family event about mid 20th century small town American life. The local telephone exchange operator (always a woman) could freely listen in on any telephone conversation going through the switchboard. It was not unusual for a teenage girl to substitute for the regular operator. Everyone in town was at least vaguely aware. No one cared.

[raxxorrax]

But that girl probably couldn't listen to all calls simultaneously, did not have a photographic memory, didn't live in a society where a sentence could ruin your career, didn't share the deepest secrets with advertisers, didn't act as a spy for intelligence agencies and created a dosier on basically everyone.

I wouldn't have cared much either. But the environment is profoundly different today.

[Frondo]

People also didn't have a great deal of privacy at either end of the phone conversation, anyway. The phone would've been in a central location in a house, attached to a wall. Back then you wouldn't be hidden away in a bedroom, saying salacious things.

[vageli]

> Here is some anecdotal historical context. Recently my parents were reminiscing at a family event about mid 20th century small town American life. The local telephone exchange operator (always a woman) could freely listen in on any telephone conversation going through the switchboard. It was not unusual for a teenage girl to substitute for the regular operator. Everyone in town was at least vaguely aware. No one cared.

Would you agree to let your calls be recorded and posted on a website? How about when you call your bank and verify your identity? I truly doubt that "no one cared" but maybe less sensitive business was conducted over the phone in those days.

[jmalkin]

Yeah this is not the same at all.

That one phone exchange operator couldn't make hundreds of billions of dollars by selling access to the information for advertising for example.

When I think about the privacy I value, it's more like I don't want to be manipulated and have a soulless corporation benefiting from my private life.

Small town gossip and eavesdropping is human and harmless, but I'd be pissed off at phone lady too.

Maybe the townsfolk weren't because they knew her and she was harmless or not creepy or something.