Let's Discuss: Privacy

I think we should have far, far more privacy and a reasonable expectation that our conversations, data, ideas, and communications are only received by the intended party.

That's not what I expect though. Right now we have an odd situation of where you can kind of expect basic privacy with most things, but that privacy could be unexpectedly violated at any time. For example, I treat my SW communications are private but uh it's clearly not. You could doxx me easily if you followed back, or find this site if you knew any of my real information.

My text messages to friends are only as private as my phone. My google search history is all stored by google, scraped by AI, and the metadata is bought and sold by endless companies.

So I have no privacy but I also.. kinda do have privacy at the same time. The problem, of course, if that if someone powerful wanted to violate that privacy I'd be powerless to stop them. -That's- the real issue. Our information is owned by so many people, and they can use it to hurt us if they so wished.

reasonable amounts

A whole load of variables have to be considered to answer that...

There’s privacy and then there’s using platforms, networks, and social media that make money using our data. You have to be more private to have more privacy.

I guess I can only express my opinions through examples: nobody should open someone else's letter without asking them if they may do so first. Nobody should go through someone else's phone without asking first either.

I'm of the mind that privacy should extend right up until the point where someone might be a danger to others. That still leaves a lot of room for questions of surveillance though. Someone could argue that anyone could be beating their spouse in private and so we should have cameras in every home. I think we need a higher level of actual suspicion.

When it comes to something like data privacy, I believe that should be absolute. What videos I've streamed on Netflix are nobody's business. The only reason people might want to know that is to target me for advertising - which I do not view as a legitimate excuse to harvest my data.