Post #6: RIP Privacy

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Privacy is dead, and the internet killed it.

Specifically, major online companies and over-funded government agencies killed privacy. I've been aware of the decline of private browsing for a few years now. It's been a major topic of study for me, even going as far as writing a final research paper on Deep Fakes and Privacy a while back (yes, I'm aware of the irony of writing a paper on privacy with Google Docs). So, none of the information talked about in these videos is particularly surprising to me.

In psychology, there's a theory called the "Kübler-Ross model" that proposes the experience of grief follows a basic pattern: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. While it's a bit of a stretch to equate the metaphysical concept of  'privacy' to death and grief, I do think that the model has merit here. I have reached the second-to-last stage of the model: depression. I don't yet accept that the mode of privacy has fundamentally changed, and that individual protections are permanently gone, but I'm not particularly upset or angered when things trend that way.

I think a lot of people feel this way. The assault on online privacy has been so persistent and ongoing that people are just... tired. They'd rather give in and accept the slight conveniences that trading your freedoms affords.

Anyway. If the world hasn't melted, the nukes haven't launched, or we're not all dead by a super-plague by the time I'm an old geezer, I'll rest comfortably knowing that I have accepted the obsolescence of privacy as my private personal Amazon drone feeds me synthetic grapes as I lounge on my Google Nest algorithmically personalized armchair while a team of Facebook sniper-bots enforce conformity on the streets below.

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