I left gmail for self-hosted email. I host a matrix server. I left reddit for Lemmy. I left Android for iPhone. These and many other decisions have been about increasing data privacy.

In a sense, I stopped working for a corporation and pursued my own life for similar reasons. If others are telling me what to do, I am being limited, because I have found my own ideas to be better. Instead of being bitter about that, it is better to execute on them.

In the pursuit of privacy, many other things snap into place. A questioning of authority. A questioning of how society is run. A tracing of the root causes. It becomes very clear the situation we are in on a planetary scale. That clarity spreads to a realization of the extremely limited and self serving ambitions held by those driving the collective human vehicle, whether corporate or government.

Long story short, yes, privacy affects my decisions, and it is one of many starting points to reach some obvious and inevitable conclusions.

More than privacy, I want safety. So, I don’t mind that much that Apple or Google got my home address details or bank cards: I know it’s very unlikely that those details will land in the wrong hands (i.e., illegal stuff). I know the data will be used for selling me stuff. I can live with that.

On the other hand, I don’t like to give my home address and or passport details to a random website (like airlines or shops) because I fear they will be sold (or stolen) and I may be in trouble.

I think it's important for a small minority of people. Most of the population does not give a second thought, as long as it doesn't affect their lives in an obvious way. Most people are fine sharing their data, if it leads to better more personalized ads, most people gladly share their personal information on social media.

Data privacy is of course very important, but not something the general public is super interested in.

I used to be very into privacy, and in my case it became a sort of purist extremism where I felt a sort of superiority for using tools that were open-source, private or disconnected from the internet. I deleted all my social accounts etc.

when I saw that despite my efforts, companies were still able to track, target and advertise to me, and in more ingenious ways than I could combat, I lost interest. not to say that privacy isn't important or that I don't take steps to maintain mine, but along the way I accepted a certain level of giving up privacy in order to have a sane life.

Most people, when talking abstractly about data privacy, are all for it, I think. But then see how many of us participate in bonus programs when shopping, carry smartphones that track our locations at all times, give all kinds of permissions to apps, or accepting away annoying pop up banners.

So, is it all just talk, and in practice, we don't really worry about data privacy?

If so, what are the reasons? Is it because we don't really experience an immidiate negative impact? Or perhaps the alleged negative implications have been overemphasized?

What are your thoughts...?

I'm twenty years behind my peers with adopting quite a few things, so I don't think I'm all talk.

Not really sure how to prove it, though

I refuse to use any site that is not compatible with the “I don’t care about cookies” extension. If I see the popup or the site breaks, I’m out.

Professionally, we decided to defer some app updates on several occasions when pushing an update required extra work to check some checkboxes in the extremely useless data & privacy mandatory sections in both app stores.

Of course it affects decisions both personal and in business? What makes you think it doesn't?

I still refuse to use a smartphone or social media.

data privacy is all good and well on phones and computers...but shop online and use creditcard/paypal...then what? My decisions to use Graphene, and switch to Fastmail seem in vain when I consider i dont know how to shop online "privately"...

I actually don't care about it anymore. But I want a cut of the profit when they sell my data.

I quit Google Search (for DDG), Chrome (for Iridium on OSX and Safari on iOS), Android (for iPhone), Dropbox (for Internxt). I am still using Gmail but only for dumb emails. For the important ones, I moved to Tuta.

I also quit Facebook, but firstly because it’s a shithole, it’s the place where you ‘reconnect’ with ‘friends’ from Junior High… Good Lord!

I don’t have accounts on Instagram, Snap and, God forbid, TikTok. I only access Twitter via XDeck, and for no more than 5 minutes a day.

I am doing my best.