Chances are you are the kind of person who readily uses the most popular and accessible programs and services. Sometimes as soon as they come out for the sake of novelty.
I don't blame people for taking this position. It's fun, if nothing else, and I used to be all about it myself. But often times I wonder in the back of my head, if they understand - or even acknowledge the implications of being so liberal with exposing themselves.
The internet is effectively a second whole world. So utterly vast that as we explore all these places, we often forget we leave a trail behind us. A digital footprint.
Creating accounts, only to forget they exist. Uploading family photos to the cloud someone else's computer. Mindlessly accepting the terms and conditions of cookies found on every single fucking webpage. Creating a trail of search queries, asking questions we wouldn't dare ask to those closest around us.
All of these things end up linked to your digital footprint, whether you like it or not.
As an internet privacy enthusiast, I sometimes have conversations with people about this, and why they should take interest in it. My passion is usually met with one of two statements. The first being something that follows the line of: "I don't care enough. I'm fine with the way things are."
And you know what? That's fine. More power to you. I can respect this decision, as long as you understand the position your taking.
That being said, I have no interest with people who expect me to make a case on why they should care about internet privacy. Granted, you may be oblivious to the extent your privacy can be utterly violated, but from what I've seen, most people are at some level conscious of this fact anyway. Like walking into a shop, thinking there is just CCTV running, but unaware of other technologies used to keep tabs on people. Because believe it or not, cameras are just one of many methods used.
You shouldn't be asking me "why should I care more?", and then expect me to justify what is effectively a personal preference. You need to ask yourself if you truly care about having no privacy. I'm not here to make a case. I can certainly provide evidence of companies violating this basic human right, but I'm not going to walk up to people and tell them how to live.
The second statement I hear is something along the lines of: "I want to improve my privacy, but I don't know where to start."
It's easy to get lost on a topic like this, because opinions are so utterly decentralised that you don't really know what to believe. God forbid you meet the extreme minority groups that basically vilify people for interacting with big tech. I briefly cover this in my Little Improvements article, but I'll again include what I believe is an excellent entry point for newcomers:
By far the biggest misconception people have with these kinds of topics is assuming an all-or-nothing stance. That somehow accepting a certain service that actively tracks your digital life nullifies any attempt at reclaiming a bit of privacy.
This is a misleading line of thought.
Honestly, I suspect this is partly a rationale to justify doing nothing about it. It's true. Gaining back your privacy will involve change, and few people enjoy change. How much you need to change will vary depending on your technological understanding, as well as your dependency on big tech.
As a side note, I want to make it clear that I don't believe everything that comes out of big tech is inherently malicious. The difficulty lies in distinguishing the reasonable ethics and practicalness of products/services from those of evidently malicious intent. Open-source makes this process a lot easier, as it allows for a potentially trustless relationship. But in most cases, it feels that the most straightforward path is to avoid most - if not all of a company's products altogether; if nothing else, just to keep things simple. One person cannot keep up with everything, after all.
But still, such a binary way of thinking is just silly. Enforcing one small privacy improvement is good. You are absolutely regaining your privacy by doing that. You don't even need to aim for an "advanced" level of privacy. Just a level where you can say you feel comfortable working at. This is known as threat modelling, and it's pretty easy to forget this and go on an endless goose-chase until you burn out and cave. I've done this before, myself, but I've since learned my lesson. As I'm writing this, I can say I feel pretty comfortable with the state of my digital privacy. Can you say the same?