When I announced I would be closing my communities earlier this year, a curious thing happened: a surprising number of regulars replied with some variation of “I think this is my exit.” While some were specifically talking about Matrix, claiming that mine was the only room they were really active in and therefore they saw no point to having a Matrix account anymore, at least one specifically announced they would be quitting privacy entirely, save for a few basic techniques like using a password manager and being mindful of what to post online. While I didn’t expect the number of people responding that way, I was expecting that response from one or two people. If you check any given privacy forum – especially the ones with a heavy overlap of mainstream users such as Reddit – you’ll find no shortage of people asking “is all this work worth it?” and/or announcing that they’re giving up privacy because it’s too much work. So what gives? Is privacy worth the work?
I think the article was bad because it underestimates the risk in certain situations. Facebook logs everything. If you are a teenage girl who is 17 and use Facebook all the time, then turn 18 and get an unwanted pregnancy and live in Texas and then stop using Facebook while going to the abortion clinic out of state, or log in once while out of state with an out of state IP or using a VPN but with a much longer ping time or different data center that Facebook then logs (and to think they don’t log ping times is naive), that information could be requested by Texas authorities to try to prosecute the 18 year old female for getting an abortion. Although that’s not likely to happen just yet in 2024, we don’t know what political environment will exist in the future. The idea that this is all meaningless for many people ignores the fact that terrible situations don’t often warn you in advance that they are coming and sometimes happen fast.