Our latest blog post is aimed at people who ‘get it’ about online privacy, but who struggle to convince friends and family to take it seriously. We hope it helps!
I have some quotes to share, though about the government side of things
“The digital age has created the semblance of social connection, while empowering autocrats to better surveil, control, and disrupt perceived political opponents. China, Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have used digital tools to silence opponents, spread propaganda and disinformation, and sow polarization and division among their rivals. So, too, have regimes in smaller countries, like Togo and Bahrain, relied on digital surveillance to curtail civil society. Recent trends among mass movements also show some cause for concern.” (Erica Chenoweth - Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know)
And 3 from “No Place To Hide”:
“Initially, it is always the country’s dissidents and marginalized who bear the brunt of the surveillance, leading those who support the government or are merely apathetic to mistakenly believe they are immune. And history shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.”
“All of the evidence highlights the implicit bargain that is offered to citizens: pose no challenge and you have nothing to worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we do, and you’ll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the authority that wields surveillance powers if you wish to be deemed free of wrongdoing. This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience, and conformity. The safest course, the way to ensure being “left alone,” is to remain quiet, unthreatening, and compliant.”
“Mass surveillance is a universal temptation for any unscrupulous power. And in every instance, the motive is the same: suppressing dissent and mandating compliance. Surveillance thus unites governments of otherwise remarkably divergent political creeds. At the turn of the twentieth century, the British and French empires both created specialized monitoring departments to deal with the threat of anticolonialist movements. After World War II, the East German Ministry of State Security, popularly known as the Stasi, became synonymous with government intrusion into personal lives. And more recently, as popular protests during the Arab Spring challenged dictators’ grasp on power, the regimes in Syria, Egypt, and Libya all sought to spy on the Internet use of domestic dissenters. Investigations by Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal have shown that as these dictatorships were overwhelmed by protestors, they literally went shopping for surveillance tools from Western technology companies. Syria’s Assad regime flew in employees from the Italian surveillance company Area SpA, who were told that the Syrians “urgently needed to track people.” In Egypt, Mubarak’s secret police bought tools to penetrate Skype encryption and eavesdrop on activists’ calls. And in Libya, the Journal reported, journalists and rebels who entered a government monitoring center in 2011 found “a wall of black refrigerator-size devices” from the French surveillance company Amesys. The equipment “inspected the Internet traffic” of Libya’s main Internet service provider, “opening emails, divining passwords, snooping on online chats and mapping connections among various suspects.” The ability to eavesdrop on people’s communications vests immense power in those who do it. And unless such power is held in check by rigorous oversight and accountability, it is almost certain to be abused.” (Glenn Greenwald, “No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State”)
“They’ve already got my data”
From our site: https://www.rebeltechalliance.org/gotmydata.html
The main retort to this is
“No they don’t - they need to continually replenish their profile on you for it to be useful. If you cut off the supply now, then their power fades.” That’s why their data harvesting is so aggressive. It needs to be, otherwise their promise to advertisers of being able to predict what you’ll want, and when you’ll want it, cannot be fulfilled.
You just need to step off the playing field and their game comes grinding to a halt!
I already “get it” and I don’t find this argument too convincing.
If you’re 25 years old and cut them off, they still have :
- your data from the last 24 years
- the data of everyone in your demographic
- the data of your family, friends, and coworkers
(Yes, I get that it’s different if everyone cuts off data harvesting at the same time, but this is about convincing one person.)
The more data they have, the more accurate the picture. You may be underestimating how much we all change over the years. At 24 you know what your parents taught you and maybe have a degree. You probably aren’t married. You probably don’t have kids. You probably don’t have any diseases (that you know of).
At 30, maybe you’re married and they’re collecting information about that. At 35 you’ve changed careers and gained or lost a religion. Maybe you have children (now they’re adding info on your children). Maybe you’ve found out that you are diabetic or bipolar. Maybe you’ve had two car accidents. At 40 you’ve cast off a lot of the demands of your parents. Maybe you get divorced. Maybe you realize you’re gay or trans. Maybe you become invested in a different type of politics. Maybe you change careers again. Maybe the bipolar diagnosis gets removed as a misdiagnosis. Maybe now you’ve had cancer.
Imagine how much less they’d have on you (and your children) at 45 if you had cut them off at 24.
This is concrete, thanks. I can work with this.
The arguments the article gives are way to broad to fly around a Thanksgiving table.
They might as well have titled it:
“Ways to convince people to take online privacy seriously (who are already on the fence and leaning so hard in your direction that a stiff breeze would do the job for you)”
Even if its one person, you would have to start somewhere. Maybe they have your data from the last 24 years, as per your example. If you cut off now, five years later, they still have only 24 years of your data. They won’t have the last five year’s data, which would be crucial for them.
That doesn’t address the other two bullet points.
It’s like tracking an animal moving in tall grass. You don’t need to be able to see the animal directly to tell where it is.
If I can’t disappear completely, there’s enough data points around me that a useful silhouette can be reconstructed from all the surrounding data.
What’s the point?
The article addresses this. Data must be fresh to be valuable. Yes old data can be useful, but can it be sold? That’s the main vulnerability to surveillance capitalism that hiding exploits.
“But personalised ads are really convenient!”
Not seeing ads is really convenient, and I have trouble understanding why anyone wouldn’t block ads aggressively on every device they spend much time using in 2025.
To cover a couple common objections:
It’s a corporate/institutional device and I can’t
Then it’s the institution’s IT department I’m puzzled by. If I was running corporate IT, ad blocking would be part of the standard install. The FBI recommends it for security.
The device is too locked down for that
Why would you buy such a device, or continue using it now that you know better?
Why would you buy such a device, or continue using it now that you know better?
Money. The economy is tight right now, and many people don’t have the money to change devices because of what, sadly, amounts to a single flaw. If it does 99% of what you need/want, many people are willing to trade off what they see as the 1% they don’t like.
I’m not disagreeing with you, I’m just making sure you and others understand that this isn’t a question without a good answer. I would be happier with devices that are more under my control, but money is the main limiting factor.
Right, I do understand that’s a limitation. I think I’m more puzzled that many people find the presence of ads in a device they paid for to be a minor issue rather than intolerable.
I don’t know how old you are, so I’ll just have to state my experience here. I’ll liken it to television, because with the way Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, etc., have become some of the most visited sites on the Internet, it’s likely that people are using a lot of these devices like TVs.
Commercials have been part of TV since the beginning. First it was sponsorships (if you watch old shows, you’ll find sponsor segments not dissimilar to modern YouTube), then slowly we transitioned into commercial breaks. Then we started doing both - product placements being the biggest ones, but also some shows that still had sponsors. Game shows and news shows are notable for this. If you wanted to avoid commercials, you either timeshifted (VCR, DVR, etc), or you watched PBS - except that PBS has not only their begathons, but for the last 30 years has had what amount to sponsorships and commercials between programs.
And when you got the opportunity to pay for TV, cable first was educational and ad-free. Now, there’s just as many commercials, and you’re paying for it monthly.
Radio was the same way as TV. Dragnet was sponsored by a cigarette company, Sherlock Holmes by a winemaker. And then there were ad spots. If you listen to terrestrial radio still, you’ll find commercials. I don’t know if any of the satellite providers have started running ads, but I wouldn’t be shocked.
Newspapers before that were ad-filled too. You bought the newspaper knowing that fact. Comic books had (and have!) ads. Magazines are another ad vector.
We’ve been bombarded by ads for so long as a part of media that they blend into the background. And for my own self, yes, the commercials are annoying and I have always pirated or timeshifted to avoid them across all media, but I don’t really feel the same level of hate that I do for the tracking and privacy concerns. People don’t object to advertisements - look at QVC and HSN. What we need to do is shift the conversation away from “ad blocking” over to “privacy protection”.
Commercials have been part of TV since the beginning.
Traditional advertising whether on a billboard, magazine page, radio, TV are benign afaic, annoying, but benign. Advertising on the internet is an insidious evil because of what is happening behind all those pretty little pictures. Not only are they attempting to sell you product, they are stealing your data to bolster the profits of said company, without giving you due compensation. If my data is so valuable to corporate America, then it’s worth a mint to me and until they cough up the $value$ I determine for my data created with my labor, I’m going to keep as much of my data out of their hands.
I’m old enough to remember the web being primarily text, and turning off automatic image loading being a good way to see fewer ads. I’m old enough to remember popup windows and popup blocking.
I suppose the underlying issue is that if something I don’t like happens on my computer, my first thought is to look for a way to change it, and most people don’t think about computers that way. I’m sad that most people don’t think about computers that way.
It’s like living on a busy road. People adjust, while life degrades.
Good points.
Similar to the other reply - I haven’t moved to a privacy OS on Android yet because of money.
My fancy Samsung is not supported by those OSs (yet).
I haven’t moved to a privacy OS on Android yet because of money.
That’s entirely reasonable. You can still block most ads if you want to:
- You can use a web browser that supports extensions. That includes Firefox and its various forks, and perhaps surprisingly, Microsoft Edge. uBlock Origin is still available for both, despite Edge being Chromium-based and Google trying to cripple adblockers there.
- You can use web, rather than app versions of most services so that they’re covered by the browser’s adblocker.
- You can use DNS-based adblocking to reduce ads where you need/want to use apps that display ads.
Thanks, that was an interesting read
it felt regurgitate to me, but probably because i tried most of these arguments in the past and they all failed to convince anyone.
I cannot change the world, I am but one man. I can only try to influence and guide those around me. They influence and guide others around them. So you pick up a few new converts and that may seem pointless until you realize the global impact of your actions.
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