An even better analogy is health. Consumers say they want to be healthy, but don't do much about it. Well no duh. Going to the gym takes time, which people don't have. Nutrition advice is...
An even better analogy is health.
Consumers say they want to be healthy, but don't do much about it.
Well no duh. Going to the gym takes time, which people don't have. Nutrition advice is inconsistent and many sources conflict. And doctors are expensive.
Privacy is even worse, because it's not like there is an analogue to a "nutritionist" or a "doctor" you can see for expert opinions on this extremely technical subject. And most of the security/privacy advice people do get comes from "security hipster" types who have no sense of realism or proportion.
Most consumers probably don't have the money to buy the more expensive but "implements what I want for society in general" product without having to think about it. Since humans are by nature...
Most consumers probably don't have the money to buy the more expensive but "implements what I want for society in general" product without having to think about it.
Since humans are by nature extremely lazy, thinking about a product makes you less likely to buy it.
Conclusion; the "improves society/climate change/privacy" product needs to be the cheaper (or better service) default!
In the last season of South Park there were a few episodes that touch this topics very well. In S22 E06 Time To Get Cereal and E07 Nobody Got Cereal they address the unwillingness of people to...
In the last season of South Park there were a few episodes that touch this topics very well. In S22 E06 Time To Get Cereal and E07 Nobody Got Cereal they address the unwillingness of people to change the current lifestlye even when they know that they are most probably bringing calamities to the future, and doing it because selfishness and laziness.
But I believe that this is not that much related to the privacy issue.
In my opinion is about the lack of knowledge of the general-population/users/consumers (as the article call us). And on that note, I believe this post is not very trustworthy. One of the statements is
Yet despite high awareness of data scandals, an IBM survey showed most consumers don't take consequential action in response.
(emphasis mine), with a link to another of their post on Axios that expand on that idea, but none source whatsoever. Not a link to the survey, the actual name of the survey, nothing. So that right there is a red flag for this site.
And in my experience that statement contradicts what the normal non-tech-savvy people knows and understand about "data scandals". I do not believe that most consumers know why, how or how much this companies are recollecting of our data.
Now on the other topic about social pressure ("_If your entire social circle is only on Facebook or similar, do you alienate yourself by switching to something else? _"), I believe sadly that you are right, but I don't know if this would hold true if the consumers were actually informed; because if the data scandals were really understood by your average Joe, that may trigger a movement like in a mob mentality style and people could switch together.
I worked at a behavioral economics lab back in college, and one of the experiments focused on privacy. The experiment at its core was to incentivize you to give a juicy (but true) secret....
I worked at a behavioral economics lab back in college, and one of the experiments focused on privacy. The experiment at its core was to incentivize you to give a juicy (but true) secret. Regardless of the veracity of the secret, it would be exposed to the person next to you, the row you sit in, or the entire room (everyone would know it was you who wrote it).
The interesting part of the experiment is that when you factored in probabilities (e.g. it’s only a 10% chance everyone in the room knows your secret), no one changed their valuations. A rational actor would change their expected value of the situation, but when you talk about people’s privacy their emotional mind takes over, and it’s an all-or-nothing switch.
The outcome of the experiment was twofold: everyone feels their privacy is an inalienable right, but that they’re not willing to spend any money to protect it. I think this point is even more prescient with the current state of technology today. Here we are with privacy scandal after privacy scandal, and yet opt out rates remain abysmally small with only modest adoption of privacy tools.
Will the world get more privacy conscious and act on it? It’s unclear, but as others have alluded to in the thread, it might just be our human nature to ignore it until it’s too late.
I feel that privacy needs to be treated like many other things that are good for you, but the consumer rarely makes the right choice. A good example of this is 401k and saving for retirements....
I feel that privacy needs to be treated like many other things that are good for you, but the consumer rarely makes the right choice. A good example of this is 401k and saving for retirements. When you have to opt-in to saving, people generally don't bother. However, when you have to opt-out of saving, people also generally don't bother to change the default option. Privacy settings need to be opt-out, with the default being more privacy.
This will surely impact the profitability of many adtech companies (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but it could lead to more desperate/invasive moves to gather data. Apple has taken a good...
Privacy settings need to be opt-out, with the default being more privacy.
This will surely impact the profitability of many adtech companies (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but it could lead to more desperate/invasive moves to gather data. Apple has taken a good stance towards privacy-by-default, and it looks like Google will inevitably have to do something similar.
Rather than depend on the input of apathetic users (read: "I have nothing to hide, so why should I care" types), perhaps building privacy into products is the only way to protect it. Of course this requires the benevolence of corporations, and ones who make money off of advertising have an economic incentive to sandbag any increase in privacy, so we'll see how things net out.
You've just said, with more words and sourcing, what I was going to say: that people want their privacy respected without their having to do anything about it. They just want that no one even...
You've just said, with more words and sourcing, what I was going to say: that people want their privacy respected without their having to do anything about it. They just want that no one even tries to pry into it. Which is... unrealistic.
Nothing new here. Maybe this has nothing to do only with privacy on the internet. Maybe it's human nature in general. When people choose a politician, they don't read the fine print, don't go...
Nothing new here.
Maybe this has nothing to do only with privacy on the internet. Maybe it's human nature in general.
When people choose a politician, they don't read the fine print, don't go after the past, what that person did, who they are. They go with the face, with the propaganda. The inflammatory discourse wins.
People choose what is more comfortable for them. What doesn't burst their bubbles. They simply won't read the fine print because what's important is muddled with a lot of tiny unimportant words there.
An even better analogy is health.
Consumers say they want to be healthy, but don't do much about it.
Well no duh. Going to the gym takes time, which people don't have. Nutrition advice is inconsistent and many sources conflict. And doctors are expensive.
Privacy is even worse, because it's not like there is an analogue to a "nutritionist" or a "doctor" you can see for expert opinions on this extremely technical subject. And most of the security/privacy advice people do get comes from "security hipster" types who have no sense of realism or proportion.
Most consumers probably don't have the money to buy the more expensive but "implements what I want for society in general" product without having to think about it.
Since humans are by nature extremely lazy, thinking about a product makes you less likely to buy it.
Conclusion; the "improves society/climate change/privacy" product needs to be the cheaper (or better service) default!
In the last season of South Park there were a few episodes that touch this topics very well. In S22 E06 Time To Get Cereal and E07 Nobody Got Cereal they address the unwillingness of people to change the current lifestlye even when they know that they are most probably bringing calamities to the future, and doing it because selfishness and laziness.
But I believe that this is not that much related to the privacy issue.
In my opinion is about the lack of knowledge of the general-population/users/consumers (as the article call us). And on that note, I believe this post is not very trustworthy. One of the statements is
(emphasis mine), with a link to another of their post on Axios that expand on that idea, but none source whatsoever. Not a link to the survey, the actual name of the survey, nothing. So that right there is a red flag for this site.
And in my experience that statement contradicts what the normal non-tech-savvy people knows and understand about "data scandals". I do not believe that most consumers know why, how or how much this companies are recollecting of our data.
Now on the other topic about social pressure ("_If your entire social circle is only on Facebook or similar, do you alienate yourself by switching to something else? _"), I believe sadly that you are right, but I don't know if this would hold true if the consumers were actually informed; because if the data scandals were really understood by your average Joe, that may trigger a movement like in a mob mentality style and people could switch together.
I worked at a behavioral economics lab back in college, and one of the experiments focused on privacy. The experiment at its core was to incentivize you to give a juicy (but true) secret. Regardless of the veracity of the secret, it would be exposed to the person next to you, the row you sit in, or the entire room (everyone would know it was you who wrote it).
The interesting part of the experiment is that when you factored in probabilities (e.g. it’s only a 10% chance everyone in the room knows your secret), no one changed their valuations. A rational actor would change their expected value of the situation, but when you talk about people’s privacy their emotional mind takes over, and it’s an all-or-nothing switch.
The outcome of the experiment was twofold: everyone feels their privacy is an inalienable right, but that they’re not willing to spend any money to protect it. I think this point is even more prescient with the current state of technology today. Here we are with privacy scandal after privacy scandal, and yet opt out rates remain abysmally small with only modest adoption of privacy tools.
Will the world get more privacy conscious and act on it? It’s unclear, but as others have alluded to in the thread, it might just be our human nature to ignore it until it’s too late.
I feel that privacy needs to be treated like many other things that are good for you, but the consumer rarely makes the right choice. A good example of this is 401k and saving for retirements. When you have to opt-in to saving, people generally don't bother. However, when you have to opt-out of saving, people also generally don't bother to change the default option. Privacy settings need to be opt-out, with the default being more privacy.
This will surely impact the profitability of many adtech companies (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but it could lead to more desperate/invasive moves to gather data. Apple has taken a good stance towards privacy-by-default, and it looks like Google will inevitably have to do something similar.
Rather than depend on the input of apathetic users (read: "I have nothing to hide, so why should I care" types), perhaps building privacy into products is the only way to protect it. Of course this requires the benevolence of corporations, and ones who make money off of advertising have an economic incentive to sandbag any increase in privacy, so we'll see how things net out.
You've just said, with more words and sourcing, what I was going to say: that people want their privacy respected without their having to do anything about it. They just want that no one even tries to pry into it. Which is... unrealistic.
Nothing new here.
Maybe this has nothing to do only with privacy on the internet. Maybe it's human nature in general.
When people choose a politician, they don't read the fine print, don't go after the past, what that person did, who they are. They go with the face, with the propaganda. The inflammatory discourse wins.
People choose what is more comfortable for them. What doesn't burst their bubbles. They simply won't read the fine print because what's important is muddled with a lot of tiny unimportant words there.