
We Should Stop Fetishizing Privacy - homarp
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/opinion/privacy-tech-companies.html
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salawat
Did anyone else think using the term "fetishizing" was not just nonsensical in
selection, but actually demonstrated a level of social myopia?

Getting a little looser with language for a moment; privacy isn't something
that one would classify as a fetish, as socially speaking, it's been the
sensible default for centuries.

Seems to me that the real subject of fetishization in this piece is
_exhibitionism_. Specifically of everyone else. With the receiver of
gratification from said visibility being tech companies.

Maybe I'm about as straightforward as a series of hairpin turns, but this
article did far better at convincing me that tech investors are desperately
trying to convince everyone that it's totally okay, and everyone should walk
around with their "personal information" out in the open for them to reap the
benefits of, and there's absolutely no reason for anyone to second guess this
at all, because _< shiny economic buzzwords>_ without even a mention of second
or third order implications of their viewpoint, which to be frank, I see as
the most blatant form of intellectual and rhetorical dishonesty.

I'm now stuck with a mental image in which the industry I work in is little
more than a gaggle of peeping Toms, Voyeurs, and sexual predators all trying
to legitimize what their doing watching everyone else as normal or the "new
normal" because it's unthinkable that the future shouldn't allow the parasitic
commoditization of everyone's personal data.

I'm not even the most socially adept person out there, but this piece is a
shocking illustration of what I consider to be malicious perception
management.

A very disconcerting read.

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taneq
I wonder whether it was Facebook or Google that paid for this article?

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dredmorbius
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19999127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19999127)

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dredmorbius
This abysmally poor and fatuously argued opinion piece transcends self parody
and exemplifies fractal wrongness.

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perfunctory
By Heidi Messer. Ms. Messer is a technology investor and entrepreneur.

