This is an open question on how to get the masses to care…
Unfortunately, if other people don’t protect their privacy it affects those who do, because we’re all connected (e.g. other family members, friends). So it presents a problem of how do you get people who don’t care, to care?
I started the Rebel Tech Alliance nonprofit to try to help with this, but we’re still really struggling to convert people who have never thought about this.
(BTW you might need to refresh our website a few times to get it to load - no idea why… It does have an SSL cert!)
So I hope we can have a useful discussion here - privacy is a team sport, how do we get more people to play?
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.
good points, well written.
On the conspiracy point: Would it help to distinguish between standard use of micro-targeting (flooding the zone with shit and targeting swing voters) and foreign gov interference?
I find both to be shocking, but perhaps the latter is more conspiracy like. And the latter requires the misuse of the RTB system (e.g. the Russian military paying to pose as advertisers to get access to the RTB data), whereas the former is just an ugly byproduct of using the RTB system legally.