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jrowentoday at 12:04 AM3 repliesview on HN

I think there's a very interesting duality forming around privacy. It seems like most people don't really care if they're being filmed, or if their data is being slurped up six ways from Sunday, as long as it's aggregated and going through automated systems. But as soon as it feels like an actual person is looking at individual behavior, it's creepy (which is, of course, always a possibility, but plausible deniability is a powerful thing).


Replies

singpolyma3today at 1:07 AM

Yes. This is it. People are used to "private conversation in public restaurant". It's not private because no one can hear, but because no one is listening.

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m463today at 12:29 AM

it's not a duality at all. the people don't know.

the people doing the "analytics" (surveillance) like their privacy too, because they are doing creepy stuff and don't want people to know it. And even if they aren't doing creepy stuff, the data might be used that way in the future (profile building, psychological tricks, personalized pricing, sharing behavior with others, etc)

latexrtoday at 12:49 AM

> It seems like most people don't really care if they're being filmed, or if their data is being slurped up six ways from Sunday

For the majority of people I don’t think it’s true that they don’t care, but rather that they don’t know, don’t understand the implications, or don’t have the luxury of being able to do anything about it.

In the instances where I was able to have a longer discussion with someone to really explain what’s going on, they did care. Even if they previously said they didn’t.

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