[imiric]

> It seems sad that in 2022 it still needs explaining what privacy is and why its a good thing.

Because for most people privacy on the internet isn't important. They either don't care it's being abused ("I've got nothing to hide"), or are OK with paying the price of giving it away in exchange for the services they get, and think are entitled to, for free.

This has many reasons, and a major one IMO is that we didn't build privacy-focused tools from the beginning. The web was built with a consumerism model where the user is only meant to browse it. When corporations grew larger based on a very lucrative market and adtech was born, there was no going back. Now, privacy-focused individuals are desperately trying to educate people and reverse the trend, governments are attempting to catch up and fight it, but that train's not stopping anytime soon.

The sad part is that majority of people won't even be interested in this article, let alone use the tools it suggests.

As for the tools themselves, as someone who's been using a de-Googled phone for years now, I'd never use any of these. It's great that they're FOSS and request no permissions, but the fact they're built by the same team and market being "privacy-friendly" as their main selling point just feels off to me. There are similar alternatives already on F-Droid and I'd rather use apps from different developers, in case someone goes rogue I don't lose all my eggs, so to speak.

[pessimizer]

> Because for most people privacy on the internet isn't important.

This is untrue and the only place I see people claiming it's true (ironically) is here on HN. Privacy is intentionally made as difficult as possible when using anything where control could conceivably be centralized. These services are also made crucial through the elimination of others that are more privacy-respecting. In the case of the internet, this is inevitable because internet business don't have to make a profit, and they destroy the previous businesses that did.

I don't meet anyone who doesn't want privacy as the default. It's weird to even have to say that when Snapchat is winning among the generations that get most accused of being comfortable with this corporate and government-imposed lack of privacy.

[nl]

I don’t care particularly much about privacy.

This is a nuanced view where there are specific privacy features I care about in some circumstances. But I don't really care about the strong privacy against corporates or government that some do.

This view is informed by my migration from being strongly privacy focused in the 1990s and a subsequent careful analysis of actual harm.

Also I'd note that Snapchat is a great example of this. Privacy for things I care about but little from corporate advertising or governments.

[imiric]

> This is untrue

> I don't meet anyone who doesn't want privacy as the default.

We're both speaking from experience. You can't claim that my experience is untrue, just as I can't claim that yours is.

Most people I've spoken to--particularly outside of HN--in the baby boomer and generation X demographics, and even some millennials, have expressed what I said above. Practically speaking, almost anyone who is not technically savvy certainly wouldn't be concerned about protecting their online privacy, since the internet (or "Facebook") is just a tool they use to stay in touch and keep (mis)informed.

As more and more people come online their first exposure to the internet will be via these services. The failure of web developers has been not building privacy-focused tools from the beginning, and not educating people about what they're sacrificing by using "free" services. We can work on the latter, but the former will always be an uphill battle, as the momentum of adtech has taken over the web.

> Snapchat is winning among the generations that get most accused of being comfortable with this corporate and government-imposed lack of privacy

What makes you think Snapchat respects users' privacy? Snap is an opaque corporation, running a profitable ad-based business, like most tech giants.

I'd reckon that most Snapchat users don't use it because they think it's private, but because it has the content they're interested in. This is the same demographic obsessed with TikTok after all.

[izacus]

> Because for most people privacy on the internet isn't important. They either don't care it's being abused ("I've got nothing to hide"), or are OK with paying the price of giving it away in exchange for the services they get, and think are entitled to, for free.

The fact that "privacy" doesn't mean the same thing for all people isn't helping. Privacy fundamentalist use the same rhetoric and fundamentalism as Stallman does, where they use a definition of "privacy" which is disconnected from what most people are worried about when talking about "privacy".

Counting clicks on a button in an app (privacy fundamentalists: "spying") is far from concerning for most people while uploading their private messages, leaking their private pictures or having their coworkers read their messages is concerning. For an example of that, consider that in another comment thread on HN, the networkers were vehemently defending their right to reading anything and everything on "their" networks while still demanding privacy from their phones.

And as long as the definition of "privacy" is abused to harvest clicks and outrage, meaningful progress can't be made.

[autoexec]

> Counting clicks on a button in an app (privacy fundamentalists: "spying") is far from concerning for most people while uploading their private messages, leaking their private pictures or having their coworkers read their messages is concerning.

People aren't concerned about "clicks on a button" because they don't know what that means. It's never just "clicks". That's the problem with privacy. Everyone understands why it's bad when their coworkers can read their private messages, but nobody knows that because of the data they've given up but "don't care about" they got turned down from the last job or apartment they applied for, they're paying more for the exact same items than their neighbor while shopping online, companies are telling them their polices are one thing while others are getting better terms, they wait longer on hold when they call for tech support, or that it's why their health insurance bill went up again.

If people saw all the ways the data they gave up was being used to exploit them at every opportunity they'd care a whole lot more about what "privacy fundamentalists" consider spying, but unless the consequences are immediate and right in their faces they can continue to be manipulated without being aware.

[bornfreddy]

Yup, well said. And it's not like there are no alternatives. Even for "normies" there is /e/ OS (now Murena) where you can buy a ready made private (or at least mostly degoogled) phone. And for "techies" there is LineageOS, GrapheneOS,... maybe even Linux.

[bdominy]

End-to-end encryption will make a big difference as people choose applications that offer a great experience while protecting their data from 3rd parties. WhatsApp, Signal, and Apple are all making big pushes in this area and working to inform people about why it is important for their privacy. When I explain e2ee to people and how it is used in my own app for contact info sharing, they immediately get it and want it as a feature.

[imiric]

> WhatsApp, Signal, and Apple

One of these is not like the others. I have a hard time trusting Meta's and Apple's claims about privacy, including E2EE. They're both billion-dollar corporations with a history of deceiving marketing practices and data leaks. Meta's business model in particular is based on advertising and abusing users' privacy. Why should we trust WhatsApp has their users' best interests in mind, when the company that runs it makes a profit from exploiting user data? To say that it's a conflict of interest would be an understatement.

Good luck with your app, but please don't recommend Meta and Apple products to users concerned with privacy.

[bdominy]

Meta and Apple can both be sued or fined heavily if they are misrepresenting their use of e2ee. Signal has maybe 100 million users, but WhatsApp and Apple account for over 2 billion. They've done more to improve security in the text messaging space than any other group. Maybe they are doing it because they don't want data leaks any more than you do, or they sense the trend towards respecting user's privacy and want to at least appear to care. In any case, we should encourage this adoption of end-to-end encryption and support it where it makes sense.

[disadvantage]

> Because for most people privacy on the internet isn't important

That's changing. There's a movement online to get people weaned off big tech and surveillance capitalism. The thing about privacy online is that it's hard to measure, since many opt out of telemetry so you can't easily gauge just how many people have opted out of big tech & surveillance. I imagine the number is exponentially rising as each year passes.

Now I don't expect everyone to be fully private in 10 years, and you'll always get freeloaders exchanging personal data for something free. That's just a fact of life. You have to think of this in terms of 'radioactive waste'. They say data is 'the new oil' but it's really the new radioactive waste!

[imiric]

I wish I had your optimism.

> There's a movement online to get people weaned off big tech and surveillance capitalism.

This is a niche movement at best, ironically mostly followed by people who are already concerned about privacy. I doubt they manage to convince many others into joining them and abandoning big tech. My own attempts at doing so have mostly been met with a few responses: "I have nothing to hide", "It's too inconvenient to switch", "I just use it for X and don't spend a lot of time on it", or "I don't care".

> The thing about privacy online is that it's hard to measure, since many opt out of telemetry

Hah, right :) I think we can track it by simply seeing how the user bases compare between big tech and privacy-focused services. So far the numbers are several orders of magnitude apart, it's pointless to even compare them. There are many reasons for this, and I hope things keep improving, but I doubt we'll even make a dent in 10 years.

[nonrandomstring]

> This is a niche movement at best

No, really you are wrong. I am watching this closely and if you have not noticed the tectonic political shift going on you're living on Mars. Just the other day the US signed with 60 other signatory nations on a bill specifically set to burn down widespread privacy violations. And the US is tepid compared to a groundswell in Europe.