I know data privacy is important and I know that big corporations like Meta became powerful enough to even manipulate elections using our data.

But, when I talk to people in general, most seem to not worry because they “have nothing to hide”, and most are only worried about their passwords, banking apps and not much else.

So, why should people worry about data privacy even if they have “nothing to hide”?

  • Melllvar@startrek.websiteEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    It doesn’t have to be inevitable in order to serve as an example of what can happen when even seemingly innocuous information falls into the wrong hands. It’s happened before, and the consequences were horrifying. It will happen again, particularly if people refuse to learn from the examples of history.

    Information is knowledge. Knowledge is power. And power in the wrong hands is dangerous.

    • Platomus@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      That feels like a scapegoat argument. That reduces down to “bad things happen when bad people do bad things.”

      You can argue against anything when you say that.

      "Dentists should be outlawed because some dentists have abused their clients " Isn’t a fair argument either.

      • Kissaki@feddit.deEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        You have to put the risks into context with upsides. Dentists serve a verifiable and vast positive. Can you equate that to sharing personal information?

        IMO at least not generally, as a generic statement.

          • Melllvar@startrek.websiteEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            That historic examples such as the Nazis, the Japanese-American internment, and the Rwanda genocide should guide us when deciding what sorts of large-scale demographic data harvesting we as a society want to allow in the first place. That the “right to privacy” in this case is not about personal privacy but of collective privacy.

            Which is why even people who “have nothing to hide” should care about privacy rights.