Let's be careful and not blame people for all of it because the Facebooks of the world go a very long way to make sure actually understanding what's going on with your data is extremely difficult.
- Most people have little clue about how reality works;
- Companies thriving on people's data do their best to perpetuate that state of things;
- I don't blame people from being ignorant about practical implications of complex topics at the intersection of mathematics and philosophy; I blame companies for exploiting that lack of understanding.
> I blame companies for exploiting that lack of understanding.
I blame governments for not protecting the weak.
Businesses always exploit their up front investments in knowledge (and equipment) to get money from customers. The problem is when they're allowed to conceal and actively mislead the public about that knowledge in order to maintain their monopoly on that knowledge. Even worse, since there's absolutely no competitive advantage in defecting, it becomes a natural cartel.
A functional government would carefully classify and explain all the elements of the problem, then determine how to regulate it through democratic processes.
The problem starts with the fact there's never been a clear right to privacy in the US. Instead it's just a phrase and a weird set of principles stitched together from ancient court decisions about celebrities. The US benefits from its freedom of speech baseline being enshrined in the constitution rather than being a patchwork (like in the UK for example.) The right to privacy should be that clear as well.
