Two of the most important and underrecognized aspects of promoting privacy are:
Conveying to people why privacy (or lack thereof) impacts them, and is important in their lives, personally.
Showing the connection between privacy as a right and as a value, with other values and rights that they hold dearly and have a better intuitive understanding of.
Showing people that they do have some control, choice, and agency in the matter.
I know none of this is a unique thought–its a bit of a recurring ‘showerthought’ really–but I feel that it is something that we don’t focus on enough in the privacy community. Because the privacy community grew out of the broader tech community, I think people tend to focus on the hard technical problems and hard technical solutions, and less focus is given towards learning how to communicate effectively, raise awareness, and educate without preaching, by meeting people where they are and connecting with what they care about.
You’re right, except that most mainstream “tools” are poorly written in general. I’m not even really sure what got me into privacy, but I’d use privacy tools even if I didn’t care about my privacy simply because they’re minimal, easy to use, and almost never come with ads. Most privacy tools showcased are alternatives to big tech shitware that’s mediocre at best (because you’re the product not the customer so they don’t care about what’s good for you).
gmail: slow and filled with ads and spam
most OEM android roms: bloated as fuck, spammy, overcomplicated, and has poor battery
windows: same as above
chrome: can’t even block ads reliably
all social networks: filled with shit content, ads, and just runs slowly in general
Forget anything else, there’s just no going back after I’ve experienced software that isn’t absolute garbage.
I wish I had a special kind of like I could give right now, because this is a home run observation.
Not only are you right, but thinking along these terms helps to flesh out our advocacy. I’m no longer a nerd telling you how to run your technology based on my preferences. In the minds of the folks I’m talking to, I can be a sympathetic voice who understands the struggles of making changes in technology. I can nudge someone toward improving while contextualizing their struggle and make sure they don’t feel judged.
The Big Tech companies lobby around the clock to maintain surveillance infrastructure. In a passive sense we’re all complicit, but in an active sense it is those companies who contribute to a world where regaining privacy is hard, cumbersome, out of reach, and in some cases even taboo. From that perspective, it’s hardly the fault of the average person we talk to that we’re in this pickle. When we extend sympathy to them, they may reciprocate and either start changing or at least not propagate anti-privacy rhetoric.
Well I think the reason for this is that the “privacy community” as it currently exists is largely focused on self-education rather than privacy evangelism. These are two completely different objectives, and I think both are valid, but there are definitely far more people working on the former compared to the latter.
…so basically I agree that promoting privacy tools is not the way to promote privacy, but IMHO I think that most people aren’t actually trying to promote privacy in the first place, and promoting privacy tools is an effective way to accomplish their actual goal of assisting people who are already interested in the concept.
My own goal is for Techlore and myself personally to focus on doing both of those things. Perhaps we’re not fully achieving that yet.
Obviously what we really need is a privacy advocacy community which is separate from the privacy community
I broadly agree. We tend to get caught up in Signal vs Session vs whatever, but at the end of the day they’re just means to an end. The important thing is:
People being aware of various privacy-invasive practices we’re exposed to every day to at least some level of accuracy and detail; and
People being aware that things do not have to be this way, and they can change things. This can be through using certain tools, or lobbying for better laws, or whatever, but this second part is really important.
The privacy “community” has a tendency to get a bit ‘in the weeds’ with 2 I think - we can argue all day long about how WhatsApp is worse than Signal, and it’s important to keep up to date to changes which make X tool trustworthy or not - but at the end of the day we need to be careful not to make things look impossible, or gloss over marginal improvements. If I could get every one of my friends to use Signal rather than SMS or Discord, I’d be absolutely thrilled! Yes, Signal has downsides, but nobody is seriously arguing it’s not better than SMS or Facebook Messenger or whatever dodgy Discord is or is not up to this week.
I talk to people about this stuff quite a lot, and one response I get all the time is basically “oh, it’s too late for me, I got caught up in X data breach/I have a Facebook account/my friends have no ability to keep things quiet” so they don’t see any point in marginal changes. I generally try to gently encourage them towards security practices like using a password manager (either Bitwarden or Keepass), emphasising the security and convenience benefits, rather than talking about informational privacy concepts. I don’t know how much I’ve actually changed people’s minds, but it’s better than wallowing in the weeds of helplessness or getting caught up in frankly irrelevant arguments about X kinds of metadata etc.
I can’t say if you are fully achieving it, but I absolutely think Techlore is one of the best projects in the privacy space for the somewhat less-technical side of privacy & security topic and for conveying many of the things I alluded to in the OP. And is hands down the best privacy focused channels with respect to making privacy approachable and not overly daunting to a mainstream audience, showing people that they do have some control, choice, and agency in the matter, and demonstrating that privacy is for everyone. I see Techlore and Privacy Guides as extremely complementary, catering to different audiences, and different levels of technical knowledge, and with overlapping but distinct missions/goals and cultures. I am truly grateful for both projects, and both communities.
