This is an open question on how to get the masses to care…
Unfortunately, if other people don’t protect their privacy it affects those who do, because we’re all connected (e.g. other family members, friends). So it presents a problem of how do you get people who don’t care, to care?
I started the Rebel Tech Alliance nonprofit to try to help with this, but we’re still really struggling to convert people who have never thought about this.
(BTW you might need to refresh our website a few times to get it to load - no idea why… It does have an SSL cert!)
So I hope we can have a useful discussion here - privacy is a team sport, how do we get more people to play?
People want convinience. You’ll never get people to do it, unless it personally affects them. Realisticly, you can convert a few.
But most importantly. It shouldnt be that hard to have privacy. THATS the problem. People shouldnt need to do alot of things to get it.
Do something about the problem (political, legally change privacy laws) instead of every single person.
But I know that can be near impossible depending of where you live.
oh yes, convenience… a big problem when moving from the alternatives.
And I have to acknowlege that I’m an unusual case - I would rather use a less-good service than give my data to a better one. I know most people don’t think like that.
That’s why the alternatives we recommend are usually the zero knowledge encrypted ones, and they need to have a good experience. But privacy by design is sadly not that widely adopted in products. It has been increasing though, but just very slowly.
And about your point to hit the problem when mass change can happen e.g. political, legal - that is more the domain of our friends at other orgs like EFF, noyb, The Citizens etc. But you’re right, that is where change needs to happen. Not easy when the big tech firms lobby so hard and throw money at the problem.
Yeah, they really do throw money around to keep control…
And I know it doesnt help to always say “we need political change” because it’s also an easy escape to just say that.
Im also trying my best moving me and my friends to other platforms, and we shouldnt stop. Be the change.
Do something about the problem (political, legally change privacy laws) instead of every single person.
Anyone expecting the daddy state to help them here is out right delulu.
Privacy is just one battle ground of the class war. Once we lose here, it is a wrap. We will exist in a fish bowl under ruling class with limited if any accountability.
It seems most people are fine with it as of now. The longer critical mass keeps these cavalier attitudes about their personal freedom, the more likely we are all gonna get cooked.
At some point, we will hit a point of no return.
I guess some people are fine to be enslaved into a cycle of wage “labor” and consumption without any agency and autonomy.
Then it’s a wrap already we have lost.
Shoshana Zuboff says that privacy is already, effectively, dead. Or at least on life support. And there is no way we can reform the tech giants and surveillance capitalism. She says the only way out is around - to boycott them and use alternatives. That’s what inspired my site.
This is where it depends on country.
EU is making better privacy laws, others are making worse. (yes, I know about the encryption bill in the EU, that has never been voted through. I also know about all the privacy laws that actually work here)
How much privacy does EU law even provide though.
Faceberg transfered whatapps data into us despite it being condition for the buy out deal. Minor fine.
Another fine recently again sun 1b…
So the data is bring traded and exploited. I like that EU is trying to do a thing lol but let’s be real… It ain’t shite in grand scheme of things.
Take care of your own privacy or somebody is gonna do it for you. The “law” ain’t gonna do that, that’s for fucking sure
I have learned that the best game is simply not to play. You risk annoying the hell out of people. Let them get curious, maybe mention it but they have to come to you. Pushing it onto people who do not care is simply not worth it. You are wasting your time, this is real life. Some people will simply not want to care. It is their choice and sometimes that choice will not match yours.
The people I have so-called converted where people who actually were interest to know more. If you push it on people who are not interested then you risk being that annoying person who comes off as an activist or ideologue.
People want to use the sites and apps that the people they talk to are using. I’m on hexbear because the chapo reddit was banned, not because privacy or whatever. 99% of people will always choose “app that lets me talk to the people I want to and also spies on me” over “app that doesn’t do either of those.”
Totally - if the same functionality isn’t there, most people won’t switch.
What about having both running in parallel for a while?
Education.
This is my attempt at that: Rebel Tech Alliance - Learn Section
I’d like to crowdsource this learning section but not sure how. I linked to the Codeberg site on the homepage but that probably won’t work as too techy.
In my experience all the good arguments in governments that change, big companies making money etc are still too abstract to people.
But i have found one argument that at least made women and older men with daughters think about it. Stalking. With reverse image search and stupid people finder apps and ai that can estimate how you look now based on an old picture and vice versa, stalking got soooo easy. Anyone can just secretely take a picture of a girl they find interesting in public and find her social media profile and see where she usually hangs out etc. (Of course also all other genders get stalked - this is just the most known example).
That can work, but it could go the other way too. We’ve already seen scaremongering claims like “right to repair will allow creepy car mechanics to stalk your location”, “encryption is used by criminals”, “local image scanning prevents child abuse”, etc.
I think making it as easy and feature packed as the big commercial apps and services would go a long way.
Right now asking someone to switch to a more private service/app is not only the work of switching over, but also learning an often much more complex system.
My first recommendation would be don’t call people normies. Not using a pejorative to refer to your subject even in private goes a long way towards being able to think about them more clearly. I’m not scolding you, I don’t care how you think about people but if you really want to get people to care about privacy the same way you do then it’s important to avoid stigmatizing them straight out of the gate so you can understand what is important to them.
I’d abandon the adbusters model of “here’s how you can stick it to the man and all you’ve got to do is change your entire life!” It reads as performative and relies on the false assumption that disorganized, individual opposition can lead to change. Instead, revise your message to focus on first recognizing the hostility of the information space around us and taking an appropriate posture.
I would also abandon any mention of self hosting. If you’re trying to get people to clear their cache and turn on adp and lockdown mode throwing self hosting in the mix is absurd. Oh yeah, and as a long time user and contributor to open source software, treating it as a privacy and security panacea raises a lot of red flags.
From the perspective of an old man with a lot of experience, the website has high school/college student energy. That’s not bad per se, but it may be working against your stated goals.
I’ll change the normie thing in the post - that was a mistake to use that term regarding privacy knowledge.
How could I reshape the message to be more about the hostility of the information space? Where would you start? I do talk about elections being swung, but since I’ve dumpted all billionaire-owned social media (and newspapers/tv news) then I’m actually not in a good position to write specific stories about hostile info. Your guidance is welcomed!
You’re mostly right about self-hosting, but in my ‘normie’ journey (I’m using it correctly there) into self hosting I’ve found that there are actually a few wins that non-techie people can achieve: Jellyfin, Syncthing and Calibre. They all give back some data sovereignty. but I suppose until I can explain that, it’s probably best not to even mention it.
As for the student energy vibe? lol fair. I’m rubbish at design, and probably so immature that my mental age stopped then 😂 In time, and if I can get any funding, I will pay someone to help with marketing and design. Someone quoted my £1200 to get some better visuals on there, but I just cannot afford that atm.
One thing I would like to do is gamify the process of changing away from big tech, but I’m not sure how to do that. Perhaps some web games baked into the site?
I’m not suggesting you treat the word normie as a slur against some group, but that it betrays a type of thought process that will ultimately work against you. If you want to understand why, compare it to my generation’s equivalent: sheeple. The word is intended to express how people are concerned with what everyone else is doing, not on the consolidation of power after the fall of the Berlin Wall or the reliance of Nordic social democracies on the immiseration of the global south or the removal of tassels from flags or the reemergence of lemuria. The language creates an out group and invites the reader (or listener) to join the in group. It’s not useful for understanding what people outside your circle think about data or privacy because it assumes what they think broadly and its context provides the specifics of what they think.
That’s all just to clarify that it’s not a no-no word, but a word that asserts a premise that probably needs to be examined and rejected if you want to have success in your stated aim.
As far as shifting the message, I’d actually avoid talking about election conspiracy or any other conspiratorial use of data. Most people recognize the surveillance state. You can just talk directly about the way people’s information flows into the hands of data brokers and from there into the state surveillance system. People are already under the impression that they’re being tracked, just give them a way to impede it.
“You can stop yourself from being tracked, here’s how:” is gonna be a lot more effective than trying to convince people that they’re being tracked for the purposes of election manipulation.
You have a section about that but it’s way too far down and you need to lead with it. Of course that also means putting together straightforward steps for accomplishing that task that cover all current versions of android (yes including the bobo vendor specific versions), windows, macos and ios.
I feel the need to be clear that I wasn’t trying to be rude when describing the overall vibe as student. There’s nothing wrong with being a student and I don’t think it indicates immaturity at all. A few specific elements that contribute to me calling it that are the white on black text, anti corporate imagery with overtones of incitement and use of hot colors like red instead of cool colors like blue.
Those things make me think student because they’re the elements of a flyer or band tee instead of an informational pamphlet. The reason that comes across as student is that together they say “I’m freaked out/excited and you should be too!” Which is not something that helps your stated goal of helping everyday people become more aware of the importance of data privacy.
I chose the word student to describe it because i had hoped it would convey all that and some measure of how “crank” a lot of that messaging strategy comes across.
You don’t want to be ranting in the street, handing out flyers or selling newspapers if you’re worried about actually reaching people.
I’d avoid gamifying privacy. It’s kind of a masters tools situation.
good points, well written.
On the conspiracy point: Would it help to distinguish between standard use of micro-targeting (flooding the zone with shit and targeting swing voters) and foreign gov interference?
I find both to be shocking, but perhaps the latter is more conspiracy like. And the latter requires the misuse of the RTB system (e.g. the Russian military paying to pose as advertisers to get access to the RTB data), whereas the former is just an ugly byproduct of using the RTB system legally.
I would avoid both targeted political advertising and foreign government interference altogether.
With targeted advertising you run the risk of being seen as or provoking “their invasive advertising scheme versus our scrappy outreach program”. It’s better if even people you disagree with politically have more privacy, so take steps to not align yourself against them and avoid that perception.
It’s also more of a description of something that can happen as opposed to a way to protect yourself. Knowing that, for example in America, voter rolls including address are provided to hundreds if not thousands of political organizations isn’t gonna help you make better choices unless that choice is not to vote.
Which is completely valid but aligns you against a bunch of ingrained ideas people have and makes it harder for them to take your positions seriously.
Foreign government interference is another one to avoid because you’re literally only gonna drive people away when you talk about it. What steps does a person even take to avoid foreign government interference? To the extent that a person can they’re the same steps people should take to avoid law enforcement infiltration. Just use that.
I’d also argue that individuals can’t really avoid foreign government interference at all or take any individual steps to prevent it, but that’s neither here nor there. Getting people ready to take action is the full extent that it’s useful to your stated goal and like I said, everyone already knows they’re being surveilled.
But even if all that weren’t true you’re just setting yourself up for another “our allies reasonably making their needs known/benevolent motherland looking out for her diaspora/unjustly targeted minority taking part in protected speech versus their repressive government trying to thumb the scale”.
Now heres the part that you knew was coming from just my username: the politics of data privacy and open source software are the politics of anarchism and communism, not the politics of capitalism. If you want to chart a political line to serve as a guiding ethos for your project, you want to be looking those directions.
Maybe start by not calling them “normies”.
You’re right. I replied to someone else about this - I’ll change the post.
I think it’s a good idea. People are more likely to cooperate and take advice from people who don’t call them names. Although i understand that “normie” was not meant as an insult. But it might be perceived that way.
Hard disagree.
What else? “Ignorant and inexperienced consoomers” doesn’t sound very nice…
I emailed you, but wanted to reply here that I love this! I don’t have much to add as I’m having the same problem with my own project trying to make privacy easier for people like, say, my friends and family. They have to really WANT it to go through all those inconvenient steps of changing to alternative products. Even getting people invested in changing their app settings is hard enough!
I think the below commenter is right that people will start to care more when they see what’s going to happen with their data under the new administration (in the U.S., at least). We all thought it was a good trade-off for free and cheap products, and soon we may be faced with our data being used to target us personally.
The only thing I can think of is, have you tried sending info about your sites to relevant news outlets, newsletters, etc.? I got a little traction from being mentioned in two newsletters: Cory Doctorow’s newsletter and the DeleteMe newsletter Incognito. I’m planning on mailing out print press copies of my free book later in May…I have a PR friend who will be helping me with that.
OMG your book is amazing! You actually sent me a summary version before, and I’ve just downloaded the full one. I’ll add it to my Calibre library and share with others!
I love that foreword about the town square - “Are we in paradise yet?”
We should work together - you’re right your book covers a lot of the same ground as my website, but just better written and better researched lol
Thank you! I got your email, will reply soon.
I have a feeling a whole bunch of people are about to start caring, when they see normal things being used as excuses to arrest friends, family, colleagues.
I’m in the UK and there’s a feeling amongst some that “we’re next” if we don’t curb the rise of the far right.
The Reform party’s victories here this week are another alarm bell.
I’d say those some are spot on. Governments love the "look what that country is doing!” while doing the same or worse, surreptitiously. Prestidigitation, really.
By the time we hit this spot, historically, it is too late and fuckening will proceed as scheduled.
I can’t get on board with doomerism anymore. It’s giving up our power and either we have it, reclaim if or don’t. I’m seeing a lot of denial, "oh look a squirrel!” and hopelessness. None of these serve us.
I surely aint giving up! There is but so much a single person can do but they should be doing it. But most people can’t be bothered to fix their consumption patterns or address privacy in any meaningful way. If a mean person can’t do that, I don’t see any progress.
Either we hit critical mass between gen y and gen z to get something done, or techo lords gonna take over and in the future there won’t be much of any accountability for them.
Oh, I see it too. I’m just a “keep getting up until you can’t” kind of person. Apathy at home and entertainment culture in general serves the money masters well. I’m just wondering if the public will actually move or continue circuses, once the bread is gone.
This depends on your country though. America sure.
Acknowledge.
I’ve noticed many people tend to look for alternatives when their mainstream apps are either temporarily down or become greedy.
I remember a few years ago Meta servers were down which resulted in my whole family and some friends at least partially moving over to Signal. Now it’s important that the alternative has at least the basic features people want. Most people are not ubernerds like us willing to sacrafice GIFs, emoji’s or whatever and would switch back once they realize it’s missing features.
For instance, I’ve noticed people becoming increasingly frustrated with Windows but won’t switch to Linux due to missing program or game support.
So ultimately I think the focus should be for privacy-respecting apps to be feature-complete. It’s much easier to convince someone to switch if there’s a reason to stay.
This probably means sacrificing on security features but I don’t think the goal should be for everyone to be on Qubes OS and SimpleX. Rather having at least basic online privacy and the ability to remove data on demand.
Steal their identity and doxx them. They’ll play along after that experience
harsh! but might work lol
Starting by not calling people that don’t know/care about privacy “normies”, and educating them I guess.
Also I’d say start with the “easier” ones, for instance anti-capitalist people are more open to find ways to avoid surveillance capitalism. If enough of these people care and educate their respective circles, eventually all people will care.
Also I’d say start with the “easier” ones, for instance anti-capitalist people are more open to find ways to avoid surveillance capitalism. If enough of these people care and educate their respective circles, eventually all people will care.
And pro-capitalism people should simply avoid being under surveillance of someone who can potentially help their competition with targetted info about them.
I have friends and family who occupy both sides of the political spectrum, so it’s impossible to have just one message that suits both. That’s why I’ve largely avoided politics my whole life…
But tech has become political, so it’s not that easy to avoid anymore 😬
On my website homepage Rebel Tech Alliance.org I try and make it clear that we’re trying to undermine a business model, not a political ideology. But the presence of the word ‘capitalism’ in surveillance capitalism does trigger some people to start talking politics.
Webpage not accessible
Threats & intimidation?
Just spitballing here…
lol you’re right up there with the person suggesting doxxing just to show them it can be done…!
Having said that I did read about someone who tried to locate themselves using publically findable information, and they managed it. It freaked them out a bit, so to do it to someone else would be wild.
There’s several overlapping problems:
First, that the problem is complex. It’s not just “Microsoft bad.” There’s a turducken lasagna of layered problems that make it hard for the average person to wrap their heads around the issue.
Next, there’s no direct monetary incentive. You can’t say “you lose $500 a year because data brokers know your address.” Most people also have relied their whole lives on free email, so the average person in already in “debt” in terms of trade offs already.
You’re also starting from a point of blaming the victim in a way. It’s the same problem companies have with cybersecurity, blaming everyone except the executive that didn’t know the risks of skimping on cyber budgets. Hiding the problem to avoid public shame is the natural human response.
Finally, that resolving the problem is fucking hard. I know, we all know, it’s a constantly moving target that requires at the very least moderate technical skill. My partner wants to have more privacy online, but would rather have conveniences in many cases. And has zero patience for keeping up with changes, so I have to be a CISO for a household. So the average person, and the average household, does not have the skillset to care “effectively” if they wanted to.
The data broker one is kind of week though addresses have never been private. I mean we used to give everyone a book with everyone’s address and phone number. Also anyone could look up who owns what land you would have to do some serious stuff to hide owning some land and most people are not going to do that.
First of all, it’s May 4th so happy Star Wars day Han Solo!
Your points land… hard. Yes it is so messed up that privacy has been pushed on the end user as ‘their problem to fix with consent choice’. As you all know here it’s not a real choice.
Yes this should all be solved at the regulatory / gov level, but whilst the EU has been doing some great things recently, and the US has just kicked Apple and Google and Meta in the balls for antitrust, it’s never enough - there’s just too much lobbying and money washing around.
So, sadly, it does come down to the individual. My position is “if huge numbers of people starve the system of their behavioural data, then the surveillance economy is less effective, and perhaps other business models will have a chance”. Do you think that holds water?
And may The Force also be with you.
And don’t take it personally, it’s a fair question with an answer that it’s exactly why people get degrees in things like public policy.
The way to “solve” this for the average person is two steps: services like DeleteMe making them feel like they can “get back” their privacy. Second is dumbed down education with easy means. 1 year ago, uBlock did amazing stuff, and only 33% of internet users were using it. Exclude 25% of the remainder as enterprise setups not allowing extensions, and you still have 40+% of people online just rawdogging MSN and Yahoo and Drudge Report. Like, have you seen that internet lately? It’s fucking intolerable. But the same peoe that install searchbars won’t install uBlock. You have to be aggressive explaining value for 10 seconds of time.
It’s a genuine campaign that takes time and alluring promos.
