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this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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Ultimately, it's because the concerns of privacy are simply too far removed from people, or they trust certain entities more than others.
For example, if your next door neighbour knows all your browsing history, people would be bothered, but people are not bothered if Google knows as it feels they would have no direct effect on their life, whereas your next door neighbour might.
This can be easily seen in the whole discussion regarding privacy on Mastodon.
A lot of people refuse to use Mastodon over Twitter, because "Mastodon admins can see my DMs", even though Twitter absolutely could as well (Twitter apparently has encrypted DMs since May 2023 though). The reason for this is they see a Mastodon admin as someone who could potentially have an effect on their digital life, whereas they trust Twitter not to do anything with the data since they're a big corporation who has nothing to do with their personal life.
Unless it is an effect they can directly observe (or imagine to occur), people simply don't care. This applies to almost all discussions around the big picture, such as things like climate change or unions, or whatever.
Whether we like it or not, people absolutely trust corporations.
I would not say, people absolutely trust corporations.
You can probably ask any stranger o the street if Facebook is trustworthy and they all would say something about FB doing weird stuff with their data.
They all know!
But people have a limit on how many issues they can care about.
We decided that privacy is an issue, others might decide that the issues their sister is facing in life are an issue, or just how to pay the next month's rent.
So, they just use Facebook, google and co. because that is what works, what is there and done. No time to think any further about it!
So, if you wanna get wide adoption for privacy-friendly alternatives, stop solely selling the privacy aspect. The fediverse is great, but all the people who care about the benefits of it are already here. Now try to reach those who don't care that Twitter is a mess, they are just there because all the others are too.
They use it to communicate and not because it is great. The same applies to most other platforms too.
I liked Reddit because it's one platform where you find literally anything! You wanna talk about energy drinks? There is a subreddit.
You wanna know what this thing is you just found on the street? Just post a picture someone definitely knows!
True, the claim that people "absolutely trust corporations" is definitely hyperbole, but I would say they most certainly have some implicit trust for them in a way that people might not trust a volunteer.