I know data privacy is important and I know that big corporations like Meta became powerful enough to even manipulate elections using our data.
But, when I talk to people in general, most seem to not worry because they “have nothing to hide”, and most are only worried about their passwords, banking apps and not much else.
So, why should people worry about data privacy even if they have “nothing to hide”?
Additionally, and more deleterious, if a company knows you’re looking to take a vacation, or to buy new shoes, they can increase the price that is served to you across all of your internet searches. This is the counter to the privacy argument which separates automated/computer knowledge vs personal knowledge. It’s one thing for someone to be reading all of my Gmail, which is creepy and invasive, vs Alphabet scanning my email and building a consumer profile on me so that all of my searches are tagged and referenced to extract maximum value from my online purchases, which isn’t creepy or invasive (imho) but may materially affect my quality of live which is bad in a totally different way.