I've noticed many people tend to look for alternatives when their mainstream apps are either temporarily down or become greedy.

I remember a few years ago Meta servers were down which resulted in my whole family and some friends at least partially moving over to Signal. Now it's important that the alternative has at least the basic features people want. Most people are not ubernerds like us willing to sacrafice GIFs, emoji's or whatever and would switch back once they realize it's missing features.

For instance, I've noticed people becoming increasingly frustrated with Windows but won't switch to Linux due to missing program or game support.

So ultimately I think the focus should be for privacy-respecting apps to be feature-complete. It's much easier to convince someone to switch if there's a reason to stay.

This probably means sacrificing on security features but I don't think the goal should be for everyone to be on Qubes OS and SimpleX. Rather having at least basic online privacy and the ability to remove data on demand.

I think making it as easy and feature packed as the big commercial apps and services would go a long way.

Right now asking someone to switch to a more private service/app is not only the work of switching over, but also learning an often much more complex system.

@[email protected]

Another wall of text no one will ever read does nothing. Here's what works:

https://lemmy.world/post/21620691 https://lemmy.world/post/20950542

you should stop calling people "normies", if you want them to care about what you have to say

Starting by not calling people that don't know/care about privacy "normies", and educating them I guess.

Also I'd say start with the "easier" ones, for instance anti-capitalist people are more open to find ways to avoid surveillance capitalism. If enough of these people care and educate their respective circles, eventually all people will care.

I think certain arguments work, and certain don't.

I live in a very high trust society, Norway. This has a lot of advantages, but also some downsides.

We trust eachother, our neighbours, our government and our media. Which is fantastic, and well deserved. The government deserves the trust.

This makes it hard for me to make people realize how important privacy is, because they trust organizations with their data.

During COVID, Norway made their own app for tracking who met to prevent the spread. Of all the apps in the world, Norway wanted to push about the least privacy friendly app in the world. This from a country with the highest press freedom and rankings for democracy. Most people though it was fine, because why not? We trust our government.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/06/norway-covid19-contact-tracing-app-privacy-win/

Luckily someone protested enough, and it got scrapped for something better.

When I try to convince someone I have a couple of angles:

1. You trust the government and organizations with your data today. But do you trust the government in 30 years? Because data is forever. The US has changed a lot in a very short time, this can happen here as well

2. You have a responsibility for other peoples privacy as well. When you use an app that gets access to all your SMSes and contacts you spy on behalf of companies on people that might need protection. Asylum seekers from other countries for instance.

I have a feeling a whole bunch of people are about to start caring, when they see normal things being used as excuses to arrest friends, family, colleagues.

I have learned that the best game is simply not to play. You risk annoying the hell out of people. Let them get curious, maybe mention it but they have to come to you. Pushing it onto people who do not care is simply not worth it. You are wasting your time, this is real life. Some people will simply not want to care. It is their choice and sometimes that choice will not match yours.

The people I have so-called converted where people who actually were interest to know more. If you push it on people who are not interested then you risk being that annoying person who comes off as an activist or ideologue.

People want convinience. You'll never get people to do it, unless it personally affects them. Realisticly, you can convert a few.

But most importantly. It shouldnt be that hard to have privacy. THATS the problem. People shouldnt need to do alot of things to get it.

Do something about the problem (political, legally change privacy laws) instead of every single person.

But I know that can be near impossible depending of where you live.

Maybe start by not calling them "normies".

There's several overlapping problems:

First, that the problem is complex. It's not just "Microsoft bad." There's a turducken lasagna of layered problems that make it hard for the average person to wrap their heads around the issue.

Next, there's no direct monetary incentive. You can't say "you lose $500 a year because data brokers know your address." Most people also have relied their whole lives on free email, so the average person in already in "debt" in terms of trade offs already.

You're also starting from a point of blaming the victim in a way. It's the same problem companies have with cybersecurity, blaming everyone except the executive that didn't know the risks of skimping on cyber budgets. Hiding the problem to avoid public shame is the natural human response.

Finally, that resolving the problem is fucking hard. I know, we all know, it's a constantly moving target that requires at the very least moderate technical skill. My partner wants to have more privacy online, but would rather have conveniences in many cases. And has zero patience for keeping up with changes, so I have to be a CISO for a household. So the average person, and the average household, does not have the skillset to care "effectively" if they wanted to.

Steal their identity and doxx them. They'll play along after that experience

It has to be easy, low effort, and something there friends are doing too.

In my experience all the good arguments in governments that change, big companies making money etc are still too abstract to people.

But i have found one argument that at least made women and older men with daughters think about it. Stalking. With reverse image search and stupid people finder apps and ai that can estimate how you look now based on an old picture and vice versa, stalking got soooo easy. Anyone can just secretely take a picture of a girl they find interesting in public and find her social media profile and see where she usually hangs out etc. (Of course also all other genders get stalked - this is just the most known example).

Education.

What moves people is stories of why you should care. Getting these stories highlighted and then providing the solution (or multiple solutions) is a sure way to call people to action.

Devs and marketing then need to have an easy onboarding experience. But if people have a will they will find a way. Just don't be an AH when they ask stupid questions.

One method is to put a $ on privacy. Consider this: if you were offered $5 for every piece of information you shared about yourself, would you still share it? Probably not. But the true cost is far less obvious, spread out over time, and often masked by the convenience of "free" services.

Tell them how governments, employees and scammers buy from data brokers the data collected from apps in their phones to surveil, blackmail or scam them. Do a research and send them a good summary with the links. When a told my brother in law about this, he was stunned. He's still using his phone as always lol, so don't have too much expectations.

As a thought experiment: what would have happened if instead of a public health regulation approach, we dealt with restaurant safety by providing a few safe places and advocating everyone go there if they don’t want salmonella or e-coli poisoning. We’d have people ignorant going to the dangerous places, others misinformed or in denial, and a flood of misinformation that food poisoning is either “fine” or there’s no avoiding it anyway so best not to worry.

I sometimes wonder if NordVPN has done more for the privacy cause than anything else, purely for the sheer amount of advertising.

You're basically studying viral pathology and immunology at that point. Remember how restaurant little can be for making and for vaccinations in American culture?

On top of it taking the slightest effort ... We basically have to settle the solutions and then invite or incentivize them into it, which is hard when you're against disinformation networks with better fundling.

Not to say it's hopeless. Just that the incentives in a highly individualized society captured under surveillance capitalism are misaligned.