What harm does public data have to you? Couldn’t one just ignore the ads? You can’t see anyone watching you, is public data good for public records? (I’m just curious). I know this sounds weird but is public data good for historical preservation and knowledge increasing the importance of the individual? And does public data lead to better products?
No offence, but I don’t know how people are still asking this question with the amount of large scale data breaches that are happening these days. People are having all their money, maybe even their entire identity, stolen by criminals who have access to their data via these breaches. Just recently an Australian woman was ordered by US courts to pay Adidas and the NBA $1.2 million because criminals gained access to her PayPal account through a data breach and used it to commit fraud.
Privacy isn’t just some abstract idea - there can be real world consequences for those who trust governments and companies with large amounts of their personal data. That’s why so many of us look to limit our digital attack surface by opting out of data collection and/or choosing privacy respecting alternatives where possible.
But to be clear, it isn’t solely about direct harm right now. Personally I believe everyone should have the right to privacy both online and offline, so I choose not to assist governments and corporations that seek to erode that right. This point doesn’t get made much, because normies don’t understand why something is important unless you can directly show it impacting their life, but it is arguably more important than any of the direct harm stuff. Even if the realistic threat to me is minimal, I will still continue to advocate for privacy because I believe it is the right thing to do.
Wow, that story is pretty insane.
In my mind that kind of post comes at best from completely naive people that confuse social media with Google to ask basic questions, and at worst someone with malicious intent to make it look like this is an open question that does not have a clear answer yet (while, as you mentioned, it totally does).
For the most part I think it’s the former. Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think the privacy movement has some sort of troll counter-movement like you see with the “carnivores” targeting veganism, for example. People don’t intentionally seek out privacy related stuff just to shill for big tech and try to get a reaction, or concern troll to cause confusion and mistrust. They are just genuinely ignorant, though it’s still baffling every time a post like this pops up.