Whenever i talk to people about privacy, specifically my friends when i tell them why i switched to Signal and stopped using WhatsApp, i’m always met with people saying that i’m just making no sense and “why would you care so much if you have nothing to hide? I don’t care that meta sees that stuff” and some people are just so stubborn to understand that they might even settle on the “what would a billion dollar company want from me specifically?”. It makes me mad how people refuse to even consider alternatives and open their mind a bit. What do you think?
do you shit with the door open?
“If you have nothing to hide, you must be one boring-ass, useless mutherfucker.”
Let me your phone unblocked and tell me your banking app password then
You have nothing to hide until what was once acceptable rapidly changes.
“Do you have nothing to protect?”
The big perspective shift for me, is not that I feel obliged to privacy in public. It’s when the institution observing is so big and centralised that it becomes a power issue. I don’t care if you (the people) see all that I do in public, I have nothing to hide. I do care when your agenda is to see everything and gain power from it.
- me some time ago
My go to was typically pointing to MLK and COINTELPRO.
“I have nothing to share” It’s healthy to want privacy and to say I don’t want to share.
Spot on.
“Okay, whip it out” and then start unzipping your fly.
Sometimes asking if their private conversations (about spouse or kids) conversation would be different with an active observer in the room. Or if they are OK with a stranger at each window watching you. But some see that as paranoia, so it is fruitless.
The real issue is things like: how ICE is requesting records without subpoenas from telecom industries and they comply. Which lets them target protestors, and arrest them an trumped up charges. That’s the slide into 1984 distopia. But it still comes off as paranoid.
I saw someone on YouTube respond with “give me your phone and let me go into the other room for an hour”
“post hole”
They don’t think they have anything to hide because they think of it as “evil activity”
Reframe it, like sure you are not doing anything bad but these companies don’t care about criminal or evil behaviour. For them you are like livestock you only serve one purpose: making them money, there are no morals involved. They would sell your data to absolutely anyone for any reason! YOU can’t think of anything bad they could do with your data because YOU are not evil but THEY absolutely are. If an evil person wants your data you shouldn’t give it to them because they WILL find a way to use it against us, its a law of nature just like gravity.
“So why do you wear clothes or don’t share your credit card details online?”
…for now.
What happens if they outlaw being gay, trans, communist, Jewish, Muslim, autistic…
The way regressive bigots and their toadies are gaining power all over the world? We’ll probably find out in a couple of months.
