Privacy is a team sport - how do we get more people to play?

Anyone want to join my privacy team? I'm trying out for the 2026 Olympics.

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.
- Interesting!
  And then Fuckerberg would gaslight us by declaring that "public health is dead"

Great cause and one that reaches to the heart of what I see as impacting much of the governmental and societal disruption that's happening. It's a complex and nuanced issue that is likely to take multiple prongs and a long time to resolve.
Let me start by again generally agreeing with the point. Privacy is necessary for reasons beyond the obvious needs. Speaking to the choir here on a privacy community. I think it's worth listing the reasons that I understand why Americans are generally dismissive of the need for privacy protections. I cheated here, and used an LLM to help, but I think these points are indicative of things to overcome.
Convenience > confidentiality. Nearly half of U.S. adults (47 %) say it’s acceptable for retailers to track every purchase in exchange for loyalty-card discounts, illustrating a widespread “deal first, data later” mindset. Pew Research Center
“Nothing to hide.” A popular refrain equates privacy with secrecy; if you’re law-abiding, the thinking goes, surveillance is harmless. The slogan is so common that rights groups still publish rebuttals to it. Amnesty International
Resignation and powerlessness. About 73 % feel they have little or no control over what companies do with their data, and 79 % say the same about government use—attitudes that breed fatalism rather than action. Pew Research Center
Policy-fatigue & click-through consent. Because privacy policies are dense and technical, 56 % of Americans routinely click “agree” without reading, while 69 % treat the notice as a hurdle to get past, not a safeguard. Pew Research Center
The privacy paradox. Behavioral studies keep finding a gap between high stated concern and lax real-world practice, driven by cognitive biases and social desirability effects. SAGE Journals
Market ideology & the “free-service” bargain. The U.S. tech economy normalizes “free” platforms funded by targeted ads; many users see data sharing as the implicit cost of innovation and participation. LinkedIn
Security framing. Post-9/11 narratives cast surveillance as a safety tool; even today 42 % still approve of bulk data collection for anti-terrorism, muting opposition to broader privacy safeguards. Pew Research Center
Harms feel abstract. People worry about privacy in the abstract, yet most haven’t suffered visible damage, so the risk seems remote compared with daily conveniences. IAPP
Patchwork laws. With no single federal statute, Americans face a confusing mix of state and sector rules, making privacy protections feel inconsistent and easy to ignore. Practice Guides
Generational normalization. Digital natives are more comfortable with surveillance; a 2023 survey found that 29 % of Gen Z would even accept in-home government cameras to curb crime. cato.org
Having listed elements to overcome, it's easy to see why this feels sisyphean task in an American society. (It is similar, but different other Global North societies. The US desperately needs change as is evident with the current administration.) Getting to your question though, I feel like the real rational points to convey are not those above, but the reasons how a lack of privacy impacts individuals.
Political micro-targeting & democratic drift
Platforms mine psychographic data to serve bespoke campaign messages that exploit confirmation bias, social-proof heuristics, and loss-aversion—leaving voters receptive to turnout-suppression or “vote-against-self-interest” nudges. A 2025 study found personality-tailored ads stayed significantly more persuasive than generic ones even when users were warned they were being targeted. Nature
Surveillance pricing & impulsive consumption
Retailers and service-providers now run “surveillance pricing” engines that fine-tune what you see—and what it costs—based on location, device, credit profile, and browsing history. By pairing granular data with scarcity cues and anchoring, these systems push consumers toward higher-priced or unnecessary purchases while dulling price-comparison instincts. Federal Trade Commission
Dark-pattern commerce & hidden fees
Interface tricks (pre-ticked boxes, countdown timers, labyrinthine unsubscribe flows) leverage present-bias and choice overload, trapping users in subscriptions or coaxing them to reveal more data than intended. Federal Trade Commission
Youth mental-health spiral
Algorithmic feeds intensify social-comparison and negativity biases; among U.S. teen girls, 57 % felt “persistently sad or hopeless” and nearly 1 in 3 considered suicide in 2021—a decade-high that public-health experts link in part to round-the-clock, data-driven social media exposure. CDC
Chilling effects on knowledge, speech, and creativity
After the Snowden leaks, measurable drops in searches and Wikipedia visits for sensitive topics illustrated how surveillance primes availability and fear biases, nudging citizens away from inquiry or dissent. Common Dreams
Algorithmic discrimination & structural inequity
Predictive-policing models recycle historically biased crime data (representativeness bias), steering patrols back to the same neighborhoods; credit-scoring and lending algorithms charge Black and Latinx borrowers higher interest (statistical discrimination), entrenching wealth gaps. American Bar Association Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
Personal-safety threats from data brokerage
Brokers sell address histories, phone numbers, and real-time location snapshots; abusers can buy dossiers on domestic-violence survivors within minutes, exploiting the “search costs” gap between seeker and subject. EPIC
Identity theft & downstream financial harm
With 1.35 billion breach notices issued in 2024 alone, stolen data fuels phishing, tax-refund fraud, bogus credit-card openings, and years of credit-score damage—costs that disproportionately hit low-information or low-income households. ITRC
Public-health manipulation & misinformation loops
Health conspiracies spread via engagement-optimized feeds that exploit negativity and emotional-salience biases; a 2023 analysis of Facebook found antivaccine content became more politically polarized and visible after the platform’s cleanup efforts, undercutting risk-perception and vaccination decisions. PMC
Erosion of autonomy through behavioral “nudging”
Recommendation engines continuously A/B-test content against your micro-profile, capitalizing on novelty-seeking and variable-reward loops (think endless scroll or autoplay). Over time, the platform—rather than the user—decides how hours and attention are spent, narrowing genuine choice. Nature
National-security & geopolitical leverage
Bulk personal and geolocation data flowing to data-hungry foreign adversaries opens doors to espionage, blackmail, and influence operations—risks so acute that the DOJ’s 2025 Data Security Program now restricts many cross-border “covered data transactions.” Department of Justice
Social trust & civic cohesion
When 77 % of Americans say they lack faith in social-media CEOs to handle data responsibly, the result is widespread mistrust—not just of tech firms but of institutions and one another—fueling polarization and disengagement. Pew Research Center
- And one last point here, is that these all stem from the way we as humans are built. Although we are capable of rational though, we often do not make rational decisions. Indeed those decisions are based on cognitive biases which we all have and are effected by context, environment, input, etc. It's possible to overcome this lack of rational judgement, through processes and synthesis such as the scientific method. So we as citizens and humans can build institutions that help us account for the individual biases we have and overcome these biological challenges, while also enjoying the benefits and remaining human.

for the site see if you can reissue the cert or try certbot if u already used certbot try manyally downloading the cert an pointibng to it
- The site is hosting by a hosting company - and they assure me that the cert is fine.
  If I was self hosting I'd expect these problems, but not with a hosting company.
  The only difference with this company is that they do not use any big tech infrastructure - they have their own servers. I wonder if big tech has something they don't.....?

Steal their identity and doxx them. They'll play along after that experience
- harsh! but might work lol

you should stop calling people "normies", if you want them to care about what you have to say
- noted, and you're right.
  I actually mis-applied that term in my post. I've been trying to learn about tech, and self hosting in particular, along this journey. I found that 'normies' is the term that tech-savvy people apply to people who don't know about tech - i.e. me! - and I started using it. In the sense of "these install instructions will never work with normies".
  In this context I shouldn't have used it to refer to people who do not care about data privacy. I'll edit my post.
  Thank you for pointing that out!
  
  Privacy is a team sport - how do we get more more people to play?
  now you're calling them "more"s 🙂
- I call them normies not because I look down upon them or I hate them I do that because whenever I educate them to use privacy oriented services they mock me saying "you are crazy" "you aren't president" "nobody cares about your data" yada yada yada...
  It makes me frustrated :(
  
  The problem is their arguments are not wrong. Nobody does care about your data. Which makes it so hard to convince people about the dangerous.
  
  Framing "them" as fundamentally different reinforces the mental barrier that your requirements and their requirements are different. Avoid it.
  
  Adult people talking like that lol
  🤡
  I generally tell them to put a ring camera in their bathroom and then see them get bent out of shape about they wouldn't do that because....
- Sounds like something normies would say. 🤣
- yeah that is definitely the core of the problem

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.

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:
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
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.
- This is a VERY interesting perspective - thank you for sharing!
  You are lucky in Norway to have that level of trust, but I'd never considered the flip side: that it would create a dangerous apathy about privacy.
  Your two angles are great:
  This is so true but for some it is so nebulous, and it countries like the UK (and especially if you are white and not struggling financially) then there is an exceptionalism that creeps into the thinking. Probably because we've never been invaded and occupied. I was in Norway last year, and Denmark this year, and no one wants that to happen again. It seems to have shaped thinking a lot - correct me if i'm wrong 😊
  This is a big one - privacy is a collective problem. It's a team sport. I have had some success with this argument.
  What's very hard is to convey to people just how amazingly powerful and efficient big tech's profiling models really are. Trillions of computations a minute to keep your creepy digital twin up to date. Most people cannot get their head round the scale of it, and I'm struggling to visualise it for them!
- Something similar happened in Denmark with the new Sundhedsloven, which had provisions allowing the government to forcefully isolate people in concentration camps, along with forcefully vaccinating them.
  This was of course alarming for those who were in the know, but very few people protested (and the law was subsequently amended), but the general attitude from the public was "it's not a problem because something like THAT would ever happen in Denmark." 🤡
  
  We had some emergency law that was almost passed recently. As in it passed the first of two rounds. The second voting round is just a formality, all laws are just passed after the first in practice. Luckily some law professor raised the alarms and it did not pass the second time. So within a couple of hours margin it was stopped.
  The law gave the government the ability to force people to do a lot of stuff, work any job at any place in Norway. If you do not comply you could get up to three years in prison. It would not be a problem with the current or any government in the near future, but it is a law. And we can't have laws that rely on trusting politicians. Because we might have politicians with anti democratic tendencies in the future
  
  The Swedish authorities have been known to mess with the reproductive rights of minorities, didn't Denmark also meddle in extremely unethical bullshit? Is your comment an obvious reference I'm missing?
- Convince them to trust open source
  
  The only source that can be trusted ✊
  
  While I agree in theory, in practice open source has a similar amount of expected trust as closed source can have in many cases. I use all sorts of open source software without reading the code. I ain't got time for that.
  I can trust that software from a lot of organizations are trustworthy even if it is closed source, but I can't trust any open source repo without reading the code. I habe to use other ways to evaluate it, is it probable that someone has audited it? Is it popular? Is it recognized as safe and trustworthy? Is the published and finished build the same as the one I would get if I built it myself?
  But yes, you can never be 100% certain without open source and auditing it yourself.
  I do trust that my travel pass app from a government organization doesn't install malware / spyware on my phone. I can't trust a random github repo even if it is open source.

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.
- 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.
  And pro-capitalism people should simply avoid being under surveillance of someone who can potentially help their competition with targetted info about them.
  
  I have friends and family who occupy both sides of the political spectrum, so it's impossible to have just one message that suits both. That's why I've largely avoided politics my whole life...
  But tech has become political, so it's not that easy to avoid anymore 😬
  On my website homepage Rebel Tech Alliance.org I try and make it clear that we're trying to undermine a business model, not a political ideology. But the presence of the word 'capitalism' in surveillance capitalism does trigger some people to start talking politics.

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).
- That can work, but it could go the other way too. We've already seen scaremongering claims like "right to repair will allow creepy car mechanics to stalk your location", "encryption is used by criminals", "local image scanning prevents child abuse", etc.

My first recommendation would be don’t call people normies. Not using a pejorative to refer to your subject even in private goes a long way towards being able to think about them more clearly. I’m not scolding you, I don’t care how you think about people but if you really want to get people to care about privacy the same way you do then it’s important to avoid stigmatizing them straight out of the gate so you can understand what is important to them.
I’d abandon the adbusters model of “here’s how you can stick it to the man and all you’ve got to do is change your entire life!” It reads as performative and relies on the false assumption that disorganized, individual opposition can lead to change. Instead, revise your message to focus on first recognizing the hostility of the information space around us and taking an appropriate posture.
I would also abandon any mention of self hosting. If you’re trying to get people to clear their cache and turn on adp and lockdown mode throwing self hosting in the mix is absurd. Oh yeah, and as a long time user and contributor to open source software, treating it as a privacy and security panacea raises a lot of red flags.
From the perspective of an old man with a lot of experience, the website has high school/college student energy. That’s not bad per se, but it may be working against your stated goals.
- I'll change the normie thing in the post - that was a mistake to use that term regarding privacy knowledge.
  How could I reshape the message to be more about the hostility of the information space? Where would you start? I do talk about elections being swung, but since I've dumpted all billionaire-owned social media (and newspapers/tv news) then I'm actually not in a good position to write specific stories about hostile info. Your guidance is welcomed!
  You're mostly right about self-hosting, but in my 'normie' journey (I'm using it correctly there) into self hosting I've found that there are actually a few wins that non-techie people can achieve: Jellyfin, Syncthing and Calibre. They all give back some data sovereignty. but I suppose until I can explain that, it's probably best not to even mention it.
  As for the student energy vibe? lol fair. I'm rubbish at design, and probably so immature that my mental age stopped then 😂 In time, and if I can get any funding, I will pay someone to help with marketing and design. Someone quoted my £1200 to get some better visuals on there, but I just cannot afford that atm.
  One thing I would like to do is gamify the process of changing away from big tech, but I'm not sure how to do that. Perhaps some web games baked into the site?
  
  I’m not suggesting you treat the word normie as a slur against some group, but that it betrays a type of thought process that will ultimately work against you. If you want to understand why, compare it to my generation’s equivalent: sheeple. The word is intended to express how people are concerned with what everyone else is doing, not on the consolidation of power after the fall of the Berlin Wall or the reliance of Nordic social democracies on the immiseration of the global south or the removal of tassels from flags or the reemergence of lemuria. The language creates an out group and invites the reader (or listener) to join the in group. It’s not useful for understanding what people outside your circle think about data or privacy because it assumes what they think broadly and its context provides the specifics of what they think.
  That’s all just to clarify that it’s not a no-no word, but a word that asserts a premise that probably needs to be examined and rejected if you want to have success in your stated aim.
  As far as shifting the message, I’d actually avoid talking about election conspiracy or any other conspiratorial use of data. Most people recognize the surveillance state. You can just talk directly about the way people’s information flows into the hands of data brokers and from there into the state surveillance system. People are already under the impression that they’re being tracked, just give them a way to impede it.
  “You can stop yourself from being tracked, here’s how:” is gonna be a lot more effective than trying to convince people that they’re being tracked for the purposes of election manipulation.
  You have a section about that but it’s way too far down and you need to lead with it. Of course that also means putting together straightforward steps for accomplishing that task that cover all current versions of android (yes including the bobo vendor specific versions), windows, macos and ios.
  I feel the need to be clear that I wasn’t trying to be rude when describing the overall vibe as student. There’s nothing wrong with being a student and I don’t think it indicates immaturity at all. A few specific elements that contribute to me calling it that are the white on black text, anti corporate imagery with overtones of incitement and use of hot colors like red instead of cool colors like blue.
  Those things make me think student because they’re the elements of a flyer or band tee instead of an informational pamphlet. The reason that comes across as student is that together they say “I’m freaked out/excited and you should be too!” Which is not something that helps your stated goal of helping everyday people become more aware of the importance of data privacy.
  I chose the word student to describe it because i had hoped it would convey all that and some measure of how “crank” a lot of that messaging strategy comes across.
  You don’t want to be ranting in the street, handing out flyers or selling newspapers if you’re worried about actually reaching people.
  I’d avoid gamifying privacy. It’s kind of a masters tools situation.

Maybe start by not calling them "normies".
- You're right. I replied to someone else about this - I'll change the post.
  
  I think it's a good idea. People are more likely to cooperate and take advice from people who don't call them names. Although i understand that "normie" was not meant as an insult. But it might be perceived that way.
- What else? "Ignorant and inexperienced consoomers" doesn't sound very nice...
- Hard disagree.

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.
- I like this concept and I feel like that a step along the way as it is essentially what's happening. The EULA's, TOS's, SLA's, etc are all contracts, which should be negotiable by both parties and allow the individuals or groups to define value, be that monetary value (the $5) or something in trade. Some how we the masses skipped over the negotiation, and are left with an almost binary choice either accept and use it or not. (You could sue, or protest, or etc, but without standing or a large following this is not effective for an individual.)
  So whilst' I agree, I also think it might be more useful to focus on the reason the information is valuable.
- I mean we already know people would go for this no questions asked.

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'm in the UK and there's a feeling amongst some that "we're next" if we don't curb the rise of the far right.
  The Reform party's victories here this week are another alarm bell.
  
  I'd say those some are spot on. Governments love the "look what that country is doing!” while doing the same or worse, surreptitiously. Prestidigitation, really.
- This depends on your country though. America sure.
  
  Acknowledge.
- By the time we hit this spot, historically, it is too late and fuckening will proceed as scheduled.
  
  I can't get on board with doomerism anymore. It's giving up our power and either we have it, reclaim if or don't. I'm seeing a lot of denial, "oh look a squirrel!” and hopelessness. None of these serve us.

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.
- oh yes, convenience.... a big problem when moving from the alternatives.
  And I have to acknowlege that I'm an unusual case - I would rather use a less-good service than give my data to a better one. I know most people don't think like that.
  That's why the alternatives we recommend are usually the zero knowledge encrypted ones, and they need to have a good experience. But privacy by design is sadly not that widely adopted in products. It has been increasing though, but just very slowly.
  And about your point to hit the problem when mass change can happen e.g. political, legal - that is more the domain of our friends at other orgs like EFF, noyb, The Citizens etc. But you're right, that is where change needs to happen. Not easy when the big tech firms lobby so hard and throw money at the problem.
  
  Yeah, they really do throw money around to keep control..
  And I know it doesnt help to always say "we need political change" because it's also an easy escape to just say that.
  Im also trying my best moving me and my friends to other platforms, and we shouldnt stop. Be the change.
- Do something about the problem (political, legally change privacy laws) instead of every single person.
  Anyone expecting the daddy state to help them here is out right delulu.
  Privacy is just one battle ground of the class war. Once we lose here, it is a wrap. We will exist in a fish bowl under ruling class with limited if any accountability.
  It seems most people are fine with it as of now. The longer critical mass keeps these cavalier attitudes about their personal freedom, the more likely we are all gonna get cooked.
  At some point, we will hit a point of no return.
  I guess some people are fine to be enslaved into a cycle of wage "labor" and consumption without any agency and autonomy.
  
  Shoshana Zuboff says that privacy is already, effectively, dead. Or at least on life support. And there is no way we can reform the tech giants and surveillance capitalism. She says the only way out is around - to boycott them and use alternatives. That's what inspired my site.
  
  Then it's a wrap already we have lost.
  
  This is where it depends on country.
  EU is making better privacy laws, others are making worse. (yes, I know about the encryption bill in the EU, that has never been voted through. I also know about all the privacy laws that actually work here)

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.
- First of all, it's May 4th so happy Star Wars day Han Solo!
  Your points land... hard. Yes it is so messed up that privacy has been pushed on the end user as 'their problem to fix with consent choice'. As you all know here it's not a real choice.
  Yes this should all be solved at the regulatory / gov level, but whilst the EU has been doing some great things recently, and the US has just kicked Apple and Google and Meta in the balls for antitrust, it's never enough - there's just too much lobbying and money washing around.
  So, sadly, it does come down to the individual. My position is "if huge numbers of people starve the system of their behavioural data, then the surveillance economy is less effective, and perhaps other business models will have a chance". Do you think that holds water?
  
  And may The Force also be with you.
  And don't take it personally, it's a fair question with an answer that it's exactly why people get degrees in things like public policy.
  The way to "solve" this for the average person is two steps: services like DeleteMe making them feel like they can "get back" their privacy. Second is dumbed down education with easy means. 1 year ago, uBlock did amazing stuff, and only 33% of internet users were using it. Exclude 25% of the remainder as enterprise setups not allowing extensions, and you still have 40+% of people online just rawdogging MSN and Yahoo and Drudge Report. Like, have you seen that internet lately? It's fucking intolerable. But the same peoe that install searchbars won't install uBlock. You have to be aggressive explaining value for 10 seconds of time.
  It's a genuine campaign that takes time and alluring promos.
- The data broker one is kind of week though addresses have never been private. I mean we used to give everyone a book with everyone's address and phone number. Also anyone could look up who owns what land you would have to do some serious stuff to hide owning some land and most people are not going to do that.

People want to use the sites and apps that the people they talk to are using. I'm on hexbear because the chapo reddit was banned, not because privacy or whatever. 99% of people will always choose "app that lets me talk to the people I want to and also spies on me" over "app that doesn't do either of those."
- Totally - if the same functionality isn't there, most people won't switch.
  What about having both running in parallel for a while?

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.
- Interesting you say viral pathology and immunology. Can you expand on what you mean on that a bit? I find it a useful analog for what's going on.
  
  I'm sorry, first of all, for the egregious typos in my last remark. I won't be fixing them or future typos, lol.
  Second, vaccines work by every person in a network being a less-weak node with less attack surface than if the whole network is without. Every person that armors up is protecting the whole system, just a little bit, until the network is complete with less attack surface.
  Privacy restrictions, antivirus, healthy infosec, follow similar principals as masks and shots in arms, and you have to start studying how the threats respond to shifting attack surface.
  At the point the effort to execute on the securing behavior is lowered, adoption improves, but at the point it conflicts with competing values you have to start marketing to people to do the right thing. Selling them on collective interest and on self interest. It's ironic.
  How you do ANY of this, well, I can only speculate. I come from a backwards country where 1/3 of our population successfully installed a national health director that admits to not believing in germ theory, and I half expect civilian encryption to be outlawed in the next 18 months.

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.
- I've had a bit of success with this - a cousin for example was shocked by a report I sent him about the RTB system - but I worry that if I send too many of those kinds of info then people will think I'm some kind of conspiracy theorist. 😱

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

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.
- This. You're so right. It's stories that move people not facts - I constantly forget this!
  I've made a note to use the blog to put the messages in story form - case studies.
  Thank you for writing that!
- So can you provide some stories?
- Just don't be an AH when they ask stupid questions.
  I got nothing to hide!
  
  lol I've tried to answer that one on this page: https://www.rebeltechalliance.org/nothingtohide.html How did I do?

I emailed you, but wanted to reply here that I love this! I don't have much to add as I'm having the same problem with my own project trying to make privacy easier for people like, say, my friends and family. They have to really WANT it to go through all those inconvenient steps of changing to alternative products. Even getting people invested in changing their app settings is hard enough!
I think the below commenter is right that people will start to care more when they see what's going to happen with their data under the new administration (in the U.S., at least). We all thought it was a good trade-off for free and cheap products, and soon we may be faced with our data being used to target us personally.
The only thing I can think of is, have you tried sending info about your sites to relevant news outlets, newsletters, etc.? I got a little traction from being mentioned in two newsletters: Cory Doctorow's newsletter and the DeleteMe newsletter Incognito. I'm planning on mailing out print press copies of my free book later in May...I have a PR friend who will be helping me with that.
- OMG your book is amazing! You actually sent me a summary version before, and I've just downloaded the full one. I'll add it to my Calibre library and share with others!
  I love that foreword about the town square - "Are we in paradise yet?"
  We should work together - you're right your book covers a lot of the same ground as my website, but just better written and better researched lol
  
  Thank you! I got your email, will reply soon.

Education.
- This is my attempt at that: Rebel Tech Alliance - Learn Section
  I'd like to crowdsource this learning section but not sure how. I linked to the Codeberg site on the homepage but that probably won't work as too techy.

I sometimes wonder if NordVPN has done more for the privacy cause than anything else, purely for the sheer amount of advertising.
- But most of their claims are false. And how does it do anything for privacy. And if you say obscures your ip address.
  
  Just the fact that NordVPN claims to protect your privacy means that the average person hears about privacy a lot
  
  It certainly make me feel safer against big tech snooping. Is obscuring your IP address not useful? I genuinely want to hear the arguments for and against VPNs. And if they're not effective what are better ways we can protect ourselves?

I can use an sdr to read your water meter and determine how often you go to the bathroom, shower, wash your clothes, and when you're home and it's not illegal. I'm allowed to follow you around and take your picture as much as I want to. I can print off as many pictures of you as I want in public and wallpaper my whole house with your face and body, there's nothing you can do about it. I can do an 8 hour video essay about you and share this with everyone. As long as the info is publicly available (or not in most U.S. states), it's legal.
- Damn. that is creepy. Similar to the comment someone else left about stalking....
  Maybe I'll so a series of case studies via the blog - thank you for sharing this!
- You could get charged with stalking.
  
  In my state it's not stalking if you don't make any threats. You don't have an expectation of privacy in public. That's the argument they use with license plate cameras and other warrantless survelance, tracking, facial recognition, etc.

Threats & intimidation?
Just spitballing here....
- lol you're right up there with the person suggesting doxxing just to show them it can be done...!
  Having said that I did read about someone who tried to locate themselves using publically findable information, and they managed it. It freaked them out a bit, so to do it to someone else would be wild.