Privacy Is Dead And Most People Really Don’t Care

Have you read the terms and conditions to use Facebook? Your smart phone? Most people have not, and probably with good reason. They’re hundreds, if not, thousands of pages long. In fact, even contract lawyers with thirty years of experience have struggled in trying to understand these agreements. Deep down, though, each of us knows that we’re signing away our privacy rights to use these platforms and devices. So why do we do it? We don’t truly value privacy as much as we like to believe we do.

Humans are social animals, so we have a strong need to interact with other people and belong to something. Guess what social media does for us? It helps us stay connected. Think about how you often hear about important life events now friends and family. Someone got engaged? They post it on Facebook. Good friend wins an award? They post it on Instagram. Wondering what restaurant to eat at? We search on Yelp. Because of network externalities, we must be on these platforms to stay connected. Don’t like Facebook capturing your data? Well, good luck hearing the latest news on your friends and family. In fact, by not being on the Facebook family of social media, it actually triggers feelings isolation and disconnectedness. Are we willing to give up a little privacy to keep our social bonds in place? Absolutely.

It’s easy for us to turn a blind eye to what is happening as long as people remain blissfully ignorant. Find this shocking? Consider the Netflix docudrama the Social Dilemma. Former insiders of these companies explain and show how companies not only mine and sell your data but also how they have created their systems to make you addicted to their platforms. They need you to keep returning so they can collect more and more data from you and monetize it. Many people who have watched the Social Dilemma are astonished and mortified by what they learn. Yet how many of them really swear off the platforms and delete their accounts? We have rationalized away what is happening with essentially a mindset of: “I won’t’ ask, and you don’t tell…” so long as nothing bad happens.

The secret compact on data “privacy” is that we all know (at least subconsciously) that our data is being taken, mined, and sold. We’re often copacetic with that because we get enough value out of the systems that we don’t mind this cost. However, part of this implicit agreement is that nefarious people cannot hack their way to our data. (Buying is apparently perfectly acceptable though for most people.) Consider the data breaches that SnapChat or Instagram suffered. There was huge public outrage over the lack of data security (not so much privacy.) People didn’t seem so appalled at the level of data collected (even SnapChat taking contact information without requesting permission for it.) The indignation really centered on these companies not preventing cyber-crime.

This leads to perhaps the biggest challenge most people face: we don’t fully understand what data these companies know about us. Have you ever requested a copy of your data that Google or Facebook has? Most people are shell-shocked at what they know that they have never disclosed on those platforms. The power to aggregate data and connect hidden dots to reveal more about us is a testament to the advanced analytics these companies have. Remember when Target was able to piece together a teenage girl was pregnant before even her parents knew? We are giving so much more data away than we realize, and that’s probably the real crux of the situation. Privacy is not as important as how people are using the data.

We already live in a world where people are used to sharing everything online. You know those phone phishing scams like the fraudsters pretending to be the IRS? Young millennials and Generation Z fall victim to them the most of any generation because they’re used to giving information away. People get important value from these platforms and devices and accept the trade offs for it. Data security is still paramount, but the strong belief for data privacy is pretty much dead.