It already is a bit but it isn't quite mainstream enough.
It's more like a nerds concern, but it should be everyone's.
Maybe because free speech is guaranteed by the Constitution but not privacy.
Would you agree to let your calls be recorded and posted on a website? How about when you call your bank and verify your identity? I truly doubt that "no one cared" but maybe less sensitive business was conducted over the phone in those days.
I wouldn't have cared much either. But the environment is profoundly different today.
That one phone exchange operator couldn't make hundreds of billions of dollars by selling access to the information for advertising for example.
When I think about the privacy I value, it's more like I don't want to be manipulated and have a soulless corporation benefiting from my private life.
Small town gossip and eavesdropping is human and harmless, but I'd be pissed off at phone lady too.
Maybe the townsfolk weren't because they knew her and she was harmless or not creepy or something.
...which people also seem to be caring about less: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-mille...