> I believe the message needs to be that anonymity is not only desirable but mandatory as well, especially because of the rise of platforms that literally track each and every possible metric about your daily life and habits
Normal people don’t care if their metrics are being tracked - that is happening to practically everybody all day every day, and very few people are experiencing any direct and measurable negative consequences. In their defence, why should they weigh the hypothetical-risk above the real-benefits of giving up privacy (ie, convenience and price)?
I believe if the message of privacy advocates is to have any effect at all on normal people, we really need to start focussing on things that normal people care about, not hypothetical and philosophical arguments
It's a frog in a steadily boiling water problem. People not caring about their privacy enables certain actors to increasingly encroach it and then suddenly you find that these actors know everything there is to know about you including what you buy, eat, use, discard etc. This is not just a hypothetical scenario. For instance, look at any digitally capable dictatorial regime. No one now has the power to speak up in these regimes because everything they say is tracked and can be traced back to them and they themselves gave the regime this power happily in the past.
Normal people don’t care if their metrics are being tracked - that is happening to practically everybody all day every day, and very few people are experiencing any direct and measurable negative consequences. In their defence, why should they weigh the hypothetical-risk above the real-benefits of giving up privacy (ie, convenience and price)?
I believe if the message of privacy advocates is to have any effect at all on normal people, we really need to start focussing on things that normal people care about, not hypothetical and philosophical arguments