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Comment by DoingIsLearning | Hacker News Reader

> started the whole movement or whatever you'd call it for this push towards privacy

I don't really like this framing because it makes it sound like if you care for privacy you are some form of fringe advocate.

We should always try to reframe:

Would you be ok with government employees or law enforcement indiscriminately opening your letters? Ask any senior and the answer is a clear no.

So why are we discussing this as if privacy is entirely optional as soon as you change medium from written letters to emails, sms, instant message?

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You can make this work in the other direction:

"Would you be ok with government employees or law enforcement indiscriminately opening the letters of illegal immigrants?"

You'd immediately get the answer yes. Of course, in order to find the illegal immigrant letters they have to open _all_ of the letters.

People will give law enforcement huge amounts of power because they think it will be used against groups they don't like.

I wonder what percent of Americans would trade their privacy to bring their monthly cell phone bill from $100/mo to $0/mo in exchange for sharing texts and emails with a telecom company.

I suspect the percentage would be surprisingly high.

Unfortunately normal people don’t really care that much about privacy (even if we all think everyone should).

you mean, exactly like most the public on this site did when moving from Gmail and abandoning their isp provided email?

Why would ISP provided email be any more private than Gmail? If anything, I expect ISP provided email to be more compromised.

Because it’s a lot easier to compromise one email provider instead of a million. I’m surprised I have to explain the benefits of federated over centralized systems here.

at&t main revenue channel wasn't selling you to advertisers before google showed them how profitable, and willingly everyone was.

It's also interesting to float the thought experiment of what Gen Z would say about this question because the online norms are so different.

"Hey, sometimes people try to send bombs through the mail. Would you be okay with the government opening 1% of packages, inspecting them, and re-sealing them to make sure they're safe?

... what if they threw in a coupon so the next package mailed is free?"

(... and suddenly I've discovered of my own psyche that if those "The TSA inspected this bag" slips included a coupon for a free coffee, the visceral response to their presence would do a 180. "Oh, sweet! Free coffee!").

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