This is an open question on how to get the masses to care…
Unfortunately, if other people don’t protect their privacy it affects those who do, because we’re all connected (e.g. other family members, friends). So it presents a problem of how do you get people who don’t care, to care?
I started the Rebel Tech Alliance nonprofit to try to help with this, but we’re still really struggling to convert people who have never thought about this.
(BTW you might need to refresh our website a few times to get it to load - no idea why… It does have an SSL cert!)
So I hope we can have a useful discussion here - privacy is a team sport, how do we get more people to play?
Steal their identity and doxx them. They’ll play along after that experience
harsh! but might work lol
I have learned that the best game is simply not to play. You risk annoying the hell out of people. Let them get curious, maybe mention it but they have to come to you. Pushing it onto people who do not care is simply not worth it. You are wasting your time, this is real life. Some people will simply not want to care. It is their choice and sometimes that choice will not match yours.
The people I have so-called converted where people who actually were interest to know more. If you push it on people who are not interested then you risk being that annoying person who comes off as an activist or ideologue.
In my experience all the good arguments in governments that change, big companies making money etc are still too abstract to people.
But i have found one argument that at least made women and older men with daughters think about it. Stalking. With reverse image search and stupid people finder apps and ai that can estimate how you look now based on an old picture and vice versa, stalking got soooo easy. Anyone can just secretely take a picture of a girl they find interesting in public and find her social media profile and see where she usually hangs out etc. (Of course also all other genders get stalked - this is just the most known example).
That can work, but it could go the other way too. We’ve already seen scaremongering claims like “right to repair will allow creepy car mechanics to stalk your location”, “encryption is used by criminals”, “local image scanning prevents child abuse”, etc.
You’re basically studying viral pathology and immunology at that point. Remember how restaurant little can be for making and for vaccinations in American culture?
On top of it taking the slightest effort … We basically have to settle the solutions and then invite or incentivize them into it, which is hard when you’re against disinformation networks with better fundling.
Not to say it’s hopeless. Just that the incentives in a highly individualized society captured under surveillance capitalism are misaligned.
My first recommendation would be don’t call people normies. Not using a pejorative to refer to your subject even in private goes a long way towards being able to think about them more clearly. I’m not scolding you, I don’t care how you think about people but if you really want to get people to care about privacy the same way you do then it’s important to avoid stigmatizing them straight out of the gate so you can understand what is important to them.
I’d abandon the adbusters model of “here’s how you can stick it to the man and all you’ve got to do is change your entire life!” It reads as performative and relies on the false assumption that disorganized, individual opposition can lead to change. Instead, revise your message to focus on first recognizing the hostility of the information space around us and taking an appropriate posture.
I would also abandon any mention of self hosting. If you’re trying to get people to clear their cache and turn on adp and lockdown mode throwing self hosting in the mix is absurd. Oh yeah, and as a long time user and contributor to open source software, treating it as a privacy and security panacea raises a lot of red flags.
From the perspective of an old man with a lot of experience, the website has high school/college student energy. That’s not bad per se, but it may be working against your stated goals.
I’ll change the normie thing in the post - that was a mistake to use that term regarding privacy knowledge.
How could I reshape the message to be more about the hostility of the information space? Where would you start? I do talk about elections being swung, but since I’ve dumpted all billionaire-owned social media (and newspapers/tv news) then I’m actually not in a good position to write specific stories about hostile info. Your guidance is welcomed!
You’re mostly right about self-hosting, but in my ‘normie’ journey (I’m using it correctly there) into self hosting I’ve found that there are actually a few wins that non-techie people can achieve: Jellyfin, Syncthing and Calibre. They all give back some data sovereignty. but I suppose until I can explain that, it’s probably best not to even mention it.
As for the student energy vibe? lol fair. I’m rubbish at design, and probably so immature that my mental age stopped then 😂 In time, and if I can get any funding, I will pay someone to help with marketing and design. Someone quoted my £1200 to get some better visuals on there, but I just cannot afford that atm.
One thing I would like to do is gamify the process of changing away from big tech, but I’m not sure how to do that. Perhaps some web games baked into the site?
One method is to put a $ on privacy. Consider this: if you were offered $5 for every piece of information you shared about yourself, would you still share it? Probably not.
I mean we already know people would go for this no questions asked.
you should stop calling people “normies”, if you want them to care about what you have to say
noted, and you’re right.
I actually mis-applied that term in my post. I’ve been trying to learn about tech, and self hosting in particular, along this journey. I found that ‘normies’ is the term that tech-savvy people apply to people who don’t know about tech - i.e. me! - and I started using it. In the sense of “these install instructions will never work with normies”.
In this context I shouldn’t have used it to refer to people who do not care about data privacy. I’ll edit my post.
Thank you for pointing that out!
Privacy is a team sport - how do we get more more people to play?
now you’re calling them "more"s 🙂
I call them normies not because I look down upon them or I hate them I do that because whenever I educate them to use privacy oriented services they mock me saying “you are crazy” “you aren’t president” “nobody cares about your data” yada yada yada…
It makes me frustrated :(
The problem is there arguments are not wrong. Nobody does care about your data. Which makes it so hard to convince people about the dangerous.
Framing “them” as fundamentally different reinforces the mental barrier that your requirements and their requirements are different. Avoid it.
You’d better believe marketing execs and specialists in branding will divide and conquer market segments of apathetic typical people.
Addicts in recover programs can call the general population of non-addicts ‘normies’; people that have been marginalized for neurodivergent thinking often call the mainstream population of neurotypicals ‘normies’ etc.
Gatekeeping by commonly accepted language across diverse circles only serves for your own purity testing instead of focusing on the core issue of how to sell people on exercising their own basic self-interest.
Adult people talking like that lol
🤡
I generally tell them to put a ring camera in their bathroom and then see them get bent out of shape about they wouldn’t do that because…
I mean that is a stupid argument and probably does more to hurt your argument then help.
Sounds like something normies would say. 🤣
yeah that is definitely the core of the problem
I think certain arguments work, and certain don’t.
I live in a very high trust society, Norway. This has a lot of advantages, but also some downsides.
We trust eachother, our neighbours, our government and our media. Which is fantastic, and well deserved. The government deserves the trust.
This makes it hard for me to make people realize how important privacy is, because they trust organizations with their data.
During COVID, Norway made their own app for tracking who met to prevent the spread. Of all the apps in the world, Norway wanted to push about the least privacy friendly app in the world. This from a country with the highest press freedom and rankings for democracy. Most people though it was fine, because why not? We trust our government.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/06/norway-covid19-contact-tracing-app-privacy-win/
Luckily someone protested enough, and it got scrapped for something better.
When I try to convince someone I have a couple of angles:
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You trust the government and organizations with your data today. But do you trust the government in 30 years? Because data is forever. The US has changed a lot in a very short time, this can happen here as well
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You have a responsibility for other peoples privacy as well. When you use an app that gets access to all your SMSes and contacts you spy on behalf of companies on people that might need protection. Asylum seekers from other countries for instance.
This is a VERY interesting perspective - thank you for sharing!
You are lucky in Norway to have that level of trust, but I’d never considered the flip side: that it would create a dangerous apathy about privacy.
Your two angles are great:
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This is so true but for some it is so nebulous, and it countries like the UK (and especially if you are white and not struggling financially) then there is an exceptionalism that creeps into the thinking. Probably because we’ve never been invaded and occupied. I was in Norway last year, and Denmark this year, and no one wants that to happen again. It seems to have shaped thinking a lot - correct me if i’m wrong 😊
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This is a big one - privacy is a collective problem. It’s a team sport. I have had some success with this argument.
What’s very hard is to convey to people just how amazingly powerful and efficient big tech’s profiling models really are. Trillions of computations a minute to keep your creepy digital twin up to date. Most people cannot get their head round the scale of it, and I’m struggling to visualise it for them!
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Something similar happened in Denmark with the new Sundhedsloven, which had provisions allowing the government to forcefully isolate people in concentration camps, along with forcefully vaccinating them.
This was of course alarming for those who were in the know, but very few people protested (and the law was subsequently amended), but the general attitude from the public was “it’s not a problem because something like THAT would ever happen in Denmark.” 🤡
We had some emergency law that was almost passed recently. As in it passed the first of two rounds. The second voting round is just a formality, all laws are just passed after the first in practice. Luckily some law professor raised the alarms and it did not pass the second time. So within a couple of hours margin it was stopped.
The law gave the government the ability to force people to do a lot of stuff, work any job at any place in Norway. If you do not comply you could get up to three years in prison. It would not be a problem with the current or any government in the near future, but it is a law. And we can’t have laws that rely on trusting politicians. Because we might have politicians with anti democratic tendencies in the future
This is the same argument against trusting opaque algorithms from proprietary systems (usually billionaire owned). You just don’t know when they’re going to tweak it for their purposes.
The Swedish authorities have been known to mess with the reproductive rights of minorities, didn’t Denmark also meddle in extremely unethical bullshit? Is your comment an obvious reference I’m missing?
Convince them to trust open source
The only source that can be trusted ✊
While I agree in theory, in practice open source has a similar amount of expected trust as closed source can have in many cases. I use all sorts of open source software without reading the code. I ain’t got time for that.
I can trust that software from a lot of organizations are trustworthy even if it is closed source, but I can’t trust any open source repo without reading the code. I habe to use other ways to evaluate it, is it probable that someone has audited it? Is it popular? Is it recognized as safe and trustworthy? Is the published and finished build the same as the one I would get if I built it myself?
But yes, you can never be 100% certain without open source and auditing it yourself.
I do trust that my travel pass app from a government organization doesn’t install malware / spyware on my phone. I can’t trust a random github repo even if it is open source.
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Maybe start by not calling them “normies”.
You’re right. I replied to someone else about this - I’ll change the post.
I think it’s a good idea. People are more likely to cooperate and take advice from people who don’t call them names. Although i understand that “normie” was not meant as an insult. But it might be perceived that way.
What else? “Ignorant and inexperienced consoomers” doesn’t sound very nice…
Hard disagree.
Starting by not calling people that don’t know/care about privacy “normies”, and educating them I guess.
Also I’d say start with the “easier” ones, for instance anti-capitalist people are more open to find ways to avoid surveillance capitalism. If enough of these people care and educate their respective circles, eventually all people will care.
Also I’d say start with the “easier” ones, for instance anti-capitalist people are more open to find ways to avoid surveillance capitalism. If enough of these people care and educate their respective circles, eventually all people will care.
And pro-capitalism people should simply avoid being under surveillance of someone who can potentially help their competition with targetted info about them.
I have friends and family who occupy both sides of the political spectrum, so it’s impossible to have just one message that suits both. That’s why I’ve largely avoided politics my whole life…
But tech has become political, so it’s not that easy to avoid anymore 😬
On my website homepage Rebel Tech Alliance.org I try and make it clear that we’re trying to undermine a business model, not a political ideology. But the presence of the word ‘capitalism’ in surveillance capitalism does trigger some people to start talking politics.
Webpage not accessible
I emailed you, but wanted to reply here that I love this! I don’t have much to add as I’m having the same problem with my own project trying to make privacy easier for people like, say, my friends and family. They have to really WANT it to go through all those inconvenient steps of changing to alternative products. Even getting people invested in changing their app settings is hard enough!
I think the below commenter is right that people will start to care more when they see what’s going to happen with their data under the new administration (in the U.S., at least). We all thought it was a good trade-off for free and cheap products, and soon we may be faced with our data being used to target us personally.
The only thing I can think of is, have you tried sending info about your sites to relevant news outlets, newsletters, etc.? I got a little traction from being mentioned in two newsletters: Cory Doctorow’s newsletter and the DeleteMe newsletter Incognito. I’m planning on mailing out print press copies of my free book later in May…I have a PR friend who will be helping me with that.
OMG your book is amazing! You actually sent me a summary version before, and I’ve just downloaded the full one. I’ll add it to my Calibre library and share with others!
I love that foreword about the town square - “Are we in paradise yet?”
We should work together - you’re right your book covers a lot of the same ground as my website, but just better written and better researched lol
People want convinience. You’ll never get people to do it, unless it personally affects them. Realisticly, you can convert a few.
But most importantly. It shouldnt be that hard to have privacy. THATS the problem. People shouldnt need to do alot of things to get it.
Do something about the problem (political, legally change privacy laws) instead of every single person.
But I know that can be near impossible depending of where you live.
oh yes, convenience… a big problem when moving from the alternatives.
And I have to acknowlege that I’m an unusual case - I would rather use a less-good service than give my data to a better one. I know most people don’t think like that.
That’s why the alternatives we recommend are usually the zero knowledge encrypted ones, and they need to have a good experience. But privacy by design is sadly not that widely adopted in products. It has been increasing though, but just very slowly.
And about your point to hit the problem when mass change can happen e.g. political, legal - that is more the domain of our friends at other orgs like EFF, noyb, The Citizens etc. But you’re right, that is where change needs to happen. Not easy when the big tech firms lobby so hard and throw money at the problem.
Yeah, they really do throw money around to keep control…
And I know it doesnt help to always say “we need political change” because it’s also an easy escape to just say that.
Im also trying my best moving me and my friends to other platforms, and we shouldnt stop. Be the change.
Do something about the problem (political, legally change privacy laws) instead of every single person.
Anyone expecting the daddy state to help them here is out right delulu.
Privacy is just one battle ground of the class war. Once we lose here, it is a wrap. We will exist in a fish bowl under ruling class with limited if any accountability.
It seems most people are fine with it as of now. The longer critical mass keeps these cavalier attitudes about their personal freedom, the more likely we are all gonna get cooked.
At some point, we will hit a point of no return.
I guess some people are fine to be enslaved into a cycle of wage “labor” and consumption without any agency and autonomy.
Shoshana Zuboff says that privacy is already, effectively, dead. Or at least on life support. And there is no way we can reform the tech giants and surveillance capitalism. She says the only way out is around - to boycott them and use alternatives. That’s what inspired my site.
Then it’s a wrap already we have lost.
This is where it depends on country.
EU is making better privacy laws, others are making worse. (yes, I know about the encryption bill in the EU, that has never been voted through. I also know about all the privacy laws that actually work here)
How much privacy does EU law even provide though.
Faceberg transfered whatapps data into us despite it being condition for the buy out deal. Minor fine.
Another fine recently again sun 1b…
So the data is bring traded and exploited. I like that EU is trying to do a thing lol but let’s be real… It ain’t shite in grand scheme of things.
Take care of your own privacy or somebody is gonna do it for you. The “law” ain’t gonna do that, that’s for fucking sure
Tell them how governments, employees and scammers buy from data brokers the data collected from apps in their phones to surveil, blackmail or scam them. Do a research and send them a good summary with the links. When a told my brother in law about this, he was stunned. He’s still using his phone as always lol, so don’t have too much expectations.
I’ve had a bit of success with this - a cousin for example was shocked by a report I sent him about the RTB system - but I worry that if I send too many of those kinds of info then people will think I’m some kind of conspiracy theorist. 😱
People want to use the sites and apps that the people they talk to are using. I’m on hexbear because the chapo reddit was banned, not because privacy or whatever. 99% of people will always choose “app that lets me talk to the people I want to and also spies on me” over “app that doesn’t do either of those.”
Totally - if the same functionality isn’t there, most people won’t switch.
What about having both running in parallel for a while?
I have a feeling a whole bunch of people are about to start caring, when they see normal things being used as excuses to arrest friends, family, colleagues.
I’m in the UK and there’s a feeling amongst some that “we’re next” if we don’t curb the rise of the far right.
The Reform party’s victories here this week are another alarm bell.
I’d say those some are spot on. Governments love the "look what that country is doing!” while doing the same or worse, surreptitiously. Prestidigitation, really.
This depends on your country though. America sure.
Acknowledge.
By the time we hit this spot, historically, it is too late and fuckening will proceed as scheduled.
I can’t get on board with doomerism anymore. It’s giving up our power and either we have it, reclaim if or don’t. I’m seeing a lot of denial, "oh look a squirrel!” and hopelessness. None of these serve us.
