I don't think people would be concerned about that explanation either... I think they need to hear real-world consequences, of which the only one I can remotely think of would be identity theft, and the chances of that happening I think are still slim among all the people whose info has even already been exposed publicly.
How does privacy enable one to "not know your deepest thoughts" if you're aren't giving that information out in the first place?
> I don't think people would be concerned about that explanation either... I think they need to hear real-world consequences
I think you're right. I'm not hopeful the general population will change and suddenly say "E2EE matters, dammit!". Because the small scale consequences are boiling the frog, and the major ones "could never happen to me".
I'm sure we've all seen the Google account that got nuked [0, 1], but pointing that out to people is likely to garner responses ranging from "But I need Google for $thing" to "I don't have kids, so I'm fine". We unfortunately don't have any medium-scale fallout - just ghost stories of one guy, one time, being bitten.
[0] Costing the guy his phone number, photos, emails, contacts, any paid apps, documents in Google Drive, and presumably associating his credit card, address, and name with a banned account. Given how Google relies on automation for flagging and harassing accounts, I'd expect his troubles aren't over just yet should he make a new Google account.
We really have _plenty_ of identity theft, personalised scams (hi Tess' mom!), accounts hacked, large scale photo leaks, etc. People just a) don't hear about it enough, or b) quickly move on to the next crisis with their hands up bexause what can you do.
Privacy-preserving options are also often not as easy/convenient/friendly to use.
People, perhaps, don't care. But that's a cynical assumption. They supposedly don't care about the environment and yet we're moving the needle on that.
> They supposedly don't care about the environment and yet we're moving the needle on that.
Actually, good call, and nice analogy, thank you. That's a nice reminder that when cause and effect are far apart, it's easy for people to not conenct the dots; it actually makes for a nice explanation, and helps me be less cynical about it.
We can point to how data brokerage/mining/analysis is being used to undermine democracies, sway elections, manipulate consumers into purchases they wouldn't make, change the pricing or even denial of coverage for insurance, and so on. These are all quite tangible, and all stem from people giving up their data too willingly. We all fuel the Shit Economy of ‘free with personalised ads’ which ultimately allows those with the data to hold power/influence over everyone else.
And to your last point, plenty of people were shocked Google Chrome incognito wasn't really a private experience, or don't know that what they type into an LLM prompt gets collected, etc. People do give these out in the first place.
I understand what you're saying, but IMO for ordinary users that only care about things that they can easily see tangibly affecting them directly, I don't think this is enough to convince them of anything.
How does privacy enable one to "not know your deepest thoughts" if you're aren't giving that information out in the first place?