Do you go around showing your grandma photos of your asshole? Like, during church and everything? Because if yes I wanna hang with your granny she sounds cool but that’s beside the point.

I usually take the angle of asking them if they act differently when they know they’re being watched and to imagine a life where they’re always watched.

If they’ve nothing to hide, then why are they so dodgy when things like lolicon are discussed? Their actions speak louder than their words ever could.

There is an age old practice from olden days of the internet. If you don’t want your nudes out there, if you don’t want your name out there, if you don’t want anything of you out there - you don’t put it out there. Because once it’s out there, you won’t ever know who’ll see it much less, have it. I always assume, that as soon as I upload a picture of myself somewhere on social media, someone would’ve had to have right clicked and saved it already. For what purpose? Who knows, could be a matter of some sick personal collector of people they particularly are fascinated with to potential murderers who’re only lacking my location but should they find me out in the open, they’ll know what I look like and probably kill me. And anything in between.

But so many people on Facebook, complain about how it is that they make new accounts and suddenly are presented with familiar faces to re-add as friends. Whether or not it’s a new e-mail to even a new location, Facebook knows you so well by now, that they’ll pitch you all of whom you’ve had, even if you don’t want them. That defeats the point of wanting a refreshing restart on your life when all you’ve got is reminders.

Black markets also exist that circulate your data. Why would one think that one day, they’re seeing a bunch of transactions that they didn’t authorize all of a sudden? Well, somewhere at somepoint, someone did seize your credit card or bank info and now is running hogwild on it.

They’re not worried yet because it hasn’t happened to them, but boy do the tables turn once people are affected by these experiences.

As the Cypherpunk Manifesto says:

Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn’t want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn’t want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.

… An anonymous transaction system is not a secret transaction system. An anonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity when desired and only when desired; this is the essence of privacy.

People can desire privacy for privacy’s sake. Wanting privacy doesn’t necessarily mean they’re criminals who need anonymity or secrecy to cover up illegal/immoral acts; it just means they’re human.

For an offline example, consider that you’re a cis girl in a women’s locker room. You know everyone knows you have certain body parts, and you have nothing to “hide” due to this, but you still don’t want to be stared at as you peel off your swimsuit.

“How often do you and your wife fuck?”

Some things are private but not illegal, like taking a shit. There are zero good reasons to intrude on that scene and anyone who tries is suspect. Who cares if you have something to hide? Why are we ok with letting a megacorporation give us a digital colonoscopy when we’re only trying to live our lives?

You should just fucking drop it. That’s what you should do.

I don’t care that ADs are targeted vs blasted. I don’t care that meta sells advertising data. Meta provides a service I like and I have no fear that it will be used against me in any meaningful way that will reduce my quality of life.

Just stop. At this point you are quickly approaching Jehova witness level of cringe.

Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor and government whistleblower, has been credited with the quote “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say”. Snowden has argued that privacy is a fundamental right and that without it, individuals cannot have anything for themselves. The “nothing to hide” argument has been used to defend the collection and use of government data beyond surveillance and disclosure, but critics argue that it is inherently paradoxical and that what is hidden is not necessarily relevant. Snowden has also stated that the burden of justification falls on those seeking to infringe upon human rights, and that nobody needs to justify why they “need” a right.

Using a smartphone today is like buying a house and discovering that is full of cameras and microphones spying you. Would you accept thtat?

One thing I often see is people not understanding the difference between secrecy and privacy. They ask why it matters if you’re not doing anything wrong. A UK government minister actually said “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”, and then backpedaled when someone pointed out they were quoting Joseph Goebbels. The analogy I’ve seen is simple: I’m sure you don’t do anything illegal in the shower, but I’m also pretty sure most people would be uncomfortable with a law that required you to have a police officer standing in you bathroom with a video camera to record you showering, just in case.

The other thing is the assumption that any information about you that the government actually has about you will only be used against you if you commit a crime, in which case you’ll deserve it - if you’re not a bad person then it’s fine. This is a double fallacy.

First, we’ve seen that information can be used to do all sorts of things regardless of wrongdoing - if someone knows enough about you, they can use it to manipulate you. I don’t mean blackmail or whatever, although that’s an option. I mean that with a clear enough picture of your preferences and biases and habits, someone can tailor their actions and information to your psychology and make you think whatever they want you to agree with.

Second, it assumes that you won’t ever commit a crime because crimes are bad things and you’re not a bad person. This overlooks the possibility of you being mistakenly accused while innocent, but more importantly it overlooks the possibility that the government will change into something that holds different moral values to yours. Even in the modern world we’ve seen places outlaw abortions, or criminalise homosexuality, or pass laws on what religions you’re allowed to follow. If that happens in your country and you find yourself on the wrong side of whatever arbitrary line they’ve now drawn, you may regret giving them so much information about you - information that lets them identify you, prove that you broke their new rules, and ruin your life in so many ways.

The default principal of any exchange with governments, businesses, or any entity taking your information should be to give as much information as is required for them to perform the operation you’re requesting of them, and no more - and wherever possible to only engage with those entities that you trust to have that information; a trust that they earn by a verified and unbroken track record of ethical and trustworthy behaviour.

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“Having nothing to hide” sounds like worrying about getting in trouble from data. But you can also get yourself and others into trouble being tracked or manipulated without consent.

A big problem is that data does not usually go away (even of you erase or delete it or forgot you shared it).

Any data you reveal can build up over time. The more data available on you, the easier it is to triangulate, to find you specifically.

And patterns happen over time. More data on your habits makes it easier to predict what you do, easier to manipulate you. Not just with advertisements or insurance rates, I mean outright scams. For example, my grandfather got conned out of $5k by a scammer who could impersonate my cousin based on the cousin’s facebook, linkedin, and public records.

We also have very little insight into how much data we generate. Especially online, we can’t imagine the amount of logged activity and data generated. This makes it hard to meaningfully say “I don’t have a problem with how somebody uses my data” because we can’t even grasp the scale of the data and how it can be used.

I also second another poster who mentioned you don’t have anything to hide now, but times change. You can’t go back and protect data once it’s used against you! I have firsthand experience with that in Texas, USA. I worked with a company that realized in July 2022 that they should NOT record if people were pregnant in a huge database. We didn’t want to have data on a pregnancies that may not work out for whatever reason in Texas because it could be used against people.

The awful story from that mother and daughter that had their private conversations send to court for abortion by Meta: https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/11/teen-and-mom-plead-guilty-to-abortion-charges-based-on-facebook-data/?guccounter=1

Even if you have nothing to hide yourself (which, as other commenters said, is very unlikely), and can be certain you’ll never have anything to hide ever (even less probable), there will be other people who do have something to hide. That does not mean they are evil (though some are) - maybe they are fighting for a cause, or maybe they are persecuted minorities, or maybe governments and/or powerful organizations will want to bring them harm.

These people, being mere humans, have some minor secrets in their past or present that can be signal-boosted by a malevolent agent to seriously hurt them, their reputation, and/or their social standing. And even if they did mange to obtain the level of sainthood that the have-noving-to-hide folks seem to possess - their perfectly normative personal information can still be used to dox them or retaliate against them in some other way.

If you care about these people and/or any cause they may be fighting for, then you don’t want them to be the only ones who demand privacy. Because:

1. They will effectively be holding a big “I have something to hide” signs, being the only ones that opt to protect their privacy.
2. Governments and companies will have an easy job giving them very small privacy protection, if at all, since there will be no pressure from the general public for privacy protection.

This will make it much easier to persecute minorities and to retaliate against activists, making society as a whole much worse for everyone.

“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief bragged that he could prove criminal conduct on anyone, even the innocent.

Before Hitler, why wouldn’t you put down you were Jewish.

You may have nothing to hide now. But who knows how it’ll be used against you in the future. The less people know about you, the better.