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Comment by jtms | Hacker News Reader

I am pretty surprised the price continues to rise with the never ending torrent of bad news regarding how nefarious FB is when it comes to privacy and exploiting their users. I guess this goes to show just how few people care at all about their privacy... really makes me worry for the future.

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I was surprised too, but then I remembered that we live in a bubble. Privacy is only a highly-emphasized topic in niche places like HN. Most people couldn't care less about this, despite knowing the high level rhetoric.

> Most people couldn't care less about this,

Please stop saying things like this. Ironically, this is a "HN-ism". It is first a misunderstanding of people, and secondly a misunderstanding of privacy.

People care about their privacy when it comes up. Until people start being personally impacted, not much movement will happen. Saying "your facebook data was leaked to some analytics firm" is not going to trigger much panic. Saying "your credit card was stolen by hackers" would, which is why people reacted much more voraciously to the Target breach, than Facebook.

That example causes panic because there’s an immediate major financial threat (yes, those charges can be reversed, but it’s still scary)

A better comparison would be something like “that hotel you spent a week in has a hidden shower camera and an employee has been found secretly spying on guests”

I think your better comparison has reinforced my point that maybe I didn't convey clearly: If that secret spying doesn't cause any material harm to the individual, they are less likely to respond. Maybe some minor outrage of course, and some expressed displeasure for it to discontinue. Besides, going off of your hotel example, I imagine that if you explained to a Facebook group of parents that hey those videos you are all sharing of your little ones are being exposed to peeping Toms, you'd have a nice little outpouring of outrage.

Part of this is also the complete and utter failure of good journalism on tech issues. This is HN, we are all technologists here right? How many times have you read a NYT, WaPo, or some of the newer "media" like HuffPo reporting on some tech only to facepalm at the number of woeful inaccuracies and misrepresentation of the facts or situation, yet we are to trust them to report on complex privacy and security issues effectively? It's Gell-Mann amnesia over and over again.

This is not hn-ism, multiple studies such as Viber study, Stanford study by Athey et al have proven than less than 1 in 4 people care about privacy. Even within those who care, vary few can resist small reward in exchange for divulging valuable personal data. In Stanford study, for example, vast majority of students were willing to give out their friend's email addresses for a pizza. I recently visited car dealer where they asked for SSN and my annual income before finalizing purchase and I asked them why they need that information. The person looked at me as if I was the first person to question that.

Hang out with teenagers, or even 20 somethings, for just a little while, and you'll see that privacy means nothing to them. The youngest kids are a little better, sticking to Snapchat over Facebook and Instagram (because the messages are "temporary"). But for example, when a friend of mine got into college, she posted on Facebook, "just got checked in!" along with a picture of her school ID, her room key, and the form with the room number. I told her that someone could easily get into her room with that one photo, but she didn't care.

I cared a lot about privacy from my younger teen years 20 years ago while non of my friends did. If you dont understand anything about the data its all noise to you.

> privacy means nothing to them

This is a blanket statement. I’m not convinced the rate of people who don’t care about their privacy varies significantly with age.

Youngest kids are sticking to instagram rather than facebook because facebook is where their parents are. Has nothing to do with privacy. If you want to make something "uncool" to young people, get the parents involved.

Makes you realize how disconnected the media is from reality (but anyone who's lived though the 2016 US elections could tell you that).

or how overblown those concerns often are, since they are in fact being spouted by the business model that facebook effectively killed: media ads.

i dont think that is the case. people care about their privacy, and facebook provides adequate controls to make them feel safe. they have not had leaks of private messages for example, which would be very embarassing. and compared to the wide web at large, they are have pretty good security. HN users live in a bubble where money grows in VC trees and nobody needs advertising.

Like you say, no one cares. It’s not a problem that’s in your face that you’re always seeing. It’s an abstract thing that people chose to ignore or are entirely ignorant of — to FBs benefit.

I think those are the last breaths before a long and epic fall that is in the making.

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