My brother seems to not care about his online privacy. He registers to services too easily without pondering, he’s not outraged we need a fucking account to use a vacuum cleaner, it seems he doesn’t care about all the potential risks of having videos of our indoors saved in a cloud. I don’t have strong arguments to convince him that privacy matters other than “if someone gets that, you could be in trouble” and “it’s like having someone watching you h24” and so on. How can i persuade him?

  • utopiah
    16·
    3 months ago

    I remember a discussion with a friend of mine while I was probably droning about privacy, surveillance capitalism, etc.

    She politely listened then said she didn’t really mind or care.

    I feel quite strongly about this and as I know she is pretty smart was somehow surprised by her reaction so I tried to illustrate my point more directly. We were in a bar so it went a bit like this :

    • A: so, can I ask you how much you earn?
    • B: yes, sure
    • A: can I tell others here in the bar
    • B: I guess
    • A: can I instead sell others that information so that they can try to sell you goods and services?
    • B: no

    So my point was that she associated a problem with privacy with a friend who might be a bit curious. When she started to see it as a systematic commercial endeavor that was unfair to her, she did change her mind.

    Maybe a short thought experiment like this could help your brother see what’s troubling to you?