Championing privacy and tech freedom with friends and family has often been a thankless or worse experience for me. Being the bearer of bad news and inconvenient facts puts misplaced ire on me. Ignorance is bliss. I feel a responsibility to my friends and family and do not want to be alone in understanding. At the same time, I do not want to be hated. I really try to restrain and tone down the topic, but the ideas consume me. I guess many people here have a similar experience?
@krock Hard to get normies to understand the full extent of the problem when they realise right away that "this conversation is going in the direction of pushing me away from something that's fun or convenient". Just like meat eaters w/a shred of empathy don't want to hear about what animals go through.. the knowledge comes w/responsibility they don't want, so they refuse the knowledge.
@krock When privacy & tech freedom fail as selling points, I try to appeal to other aspects. E.g. if the audience is progressive, then tell them that Trump was in power because of Facebook (catalyzed by #CambridgeAnalytica). I'm sorry to say that the tactic isn't working. They still won't give up #Facebook even knowing it empowered the most notorious scumbag in modern times.
@resist1984 I have found that if I can make the topic fun in some way, they will open ears a little. That is a hard thing to do with such a serious topic. I try not to play on people's pre-existing biases to sway them, but I understand why it is a reality of persuasive techniques. Thank you for your commiseration with me.
@krock one thing that goes a long way is to make no concessions yourself. I don't have any #GAFAM accts (exceptionally amazon acct is stale), so anyone who wants to reach me must do so outside of #Facebook, Google, etc. I tell normies they can only reach me on protonmail if they have a PM acct also, or Wire. I'm the one person in the group that ruins the convenience of everyone using FB.
@resist1984 Same here for the most part. I poisoned or closed my surveilled accounts and offer to help others setup better protocols to communicate with me. It creates some isolation, but I can bear it.
@krock It's a case of intentional self-inflicted ignorance to avoid the inconvenience of ethical duty & activism.