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Comment by clashmeifyoucan | Hacker News Reader

> -People become more privacy aware after an image search engine with facial recognition is popularized and they realize that any picture ever posted of them by anyone is in the search result for their name. People become less willing to let others take compromising pictures as if they become posted, the link back to them will be made.

Not an image search engine as much as whole governments but this rings eerily true.

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The sad part is that I don't think this has caused people, on average, to become all that much more privacy-aware. Or, if they are, they still don't really care.

I think it's more like learned helplessness.

People don't have alternatives to using the internet, to their smartphones, and to electronic money, that let them still participate in interesting modern society.

I think deep down, anyone who thinks about it knows everything they do with their devices may be tracked, is probably being tracked and analysed, but the tools are too essential to life, so they can't afford to worry.

That said, I mentioned to someone recently that web servers keep a log of every request and the person was shocked! (Imagine if they could see the details kept by modern analytics and observability tracing!)

Privacy awareness is certainly not mainstream, if you see someone not using any Google service or so they'll probably be assumed paranoid and labelled a cypherpunk.

Funnily enough, my Dad asked me about what happens with data in the cloud the other day so that was interesting.

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