how can we (re)teach the importance of privacy?
A few days ago, a Twitch livestreamer streamed herself giving birth. As others sat on a sofa on the left filming and making content about it, you got to see her on the right in a tub, pushing, the more intimate parts turned away from the camera. In the background was a TV displaying the Twitch chat. I'm not here to comment on this decision directly, as she and the people involved have to make that decision and be comfortable with this moving forward, but it did make me think - we must be living through the least privacy-conscious time right now, huh? Maybe it is not even about being conscious of privacy, it's the growing devaluation of it. It goes a little deeper than just misguided retorts like " But I have nothing to hide! ". Ideas around privacy and data protection tend to overlap. Historically, if you wanted to keep something private, you just didn't talk about it, didn't write it down, didn't have it published - but that approach stopped working in the late 1900s. That's when the first data protection laws were created, as more data was recorded via new tech and states were interested in surveying or obtaining said data more or less forcefully. First, there was the Datenschutzgesetz (data protection law) of the state of Hesse in Germany in 1970 , which focused a lot on actual data safety. Then closely after, we have Sweden's Datalagen (data act), mistakenly often said to be the first worldwide (which is wrong!) that came into effect in 1974 . This law was established to regulate the handling of personal data and address Swedish citizens' concerns about privacy in the context of growing data processing technologies. A very important court decision was the Volkszählungsurteil (Census verdict) of 1983 by the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany. It laid the groundwork for informational self-determination, which means: Your right to decide who gets your data, how much, what kind of data, and when. The court held that those who don't know or can't control what information is being stored about their behavior tend to adjust their actions out of caution (also called ' Panopticism ' ) and that this not only restricts individual freedom, but also harms the common good, because a free and democratic society depends on the self-determined participation of its citizens. Offense about a census is something we can can hardly relate to nowadays, seeing how freely we share all kinds of information online; but back then, the idea of a census was a big deal . We cannot forget that just 40 years prior , that very same country gathered data on Jewish people, Sinti and Roma, disabled people, queer people and others to systematically oppress, torture and kill them. The hesitancy to gather data about specific groups after this ran so deep that it actually had a negative effect: In Germany, it was hard to detect or track the negative effects of thalidomide (' Contergan ') , a widely prescribed medication that ended up causing miscarriages and severe disfiguration in babies, because the state did not want to monitor congenital disorders so strictly after the Nazi regime had mandatory statistical monitoring under its Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring to commit various crimes against disabled people. That delayed making the connection between mothers taking thalidomide and the birth defects, harming more people in the meantime. As you can see, there used to be a lot of awareness around the risks of data you share and who collects it for what purposes - something that we are increasingly missing nowadays. It's not just that the internet and especially social media has normalized it, but that it also gets rewarded . Back then, what was the expected, foreseeable reward for sharing data with your state for the average person? Absolutely nothing, except for maybe getting punished for it in the future. There was also a culture of stigma and shame around sharing too much of your life. Nowadays though, sharing data freely with all kinds of actors, mostly companies, promises you fame and money - even information around debt, mental health, or a very messy house that people historically would rather die than share. For over two decades now, we have seen countless people have their lives changed by just one viral moment : Paid thousands for videos; book deals, podcast deals, album deals; roles in movies, collaborating with other stars, invited to red carpets and fashion shows; moving into mansions. The viral moment didn't have to be good, it just had to shock. Not sharing your life this intimately, or not sharing data at all, bars you from this completely, but participating is playing the lottery that this might happen to you, too. As living gets more precarious for many, gaming the attention economy is a chance they're willing to take, especially because it doesn't immediately seem like it has any sort of downside. If you win, you win, and if you don't, you don't and just make friends and share things with family and have an archive of your life, right? Obviously, it is not just that. People have had their lives ruined by doxxing , by hacks, by scammers using their own shared information against them. Companies leak data that puts the users at risk of identity fraud , stalkers misuse the trust the users give to them and the platform. People use the media others posted of themselves against their consent to create compromising deepfakes . Employers scour the net for your personal information before hiring you, and people might find out where you work and message your workplace to get you fired. States descend into authoritarian regimes and fascism , using what you have said online to persecute you. Unfortunately, users think all of this only ever happens to other people and is therefore not something they should keep in mind and consider while making accounts and posting. In their eyes, the victims have brought this on themselves, live in 'bad' countries, or had bad luck, and any measure taken to be more privacy-conscious is seen as completely wasted because of the surveillance device we keep in our pockets. To be clear, I am not saying that we should just shut up online; this very blog is the antithesis to that, and it would be hypocritical. But it has to be said: It is simply important to be aware, make a conscious decision and draw your own boundaries , while considering the worst case scenario. It is also about recognizing when we have been pressured and manipulated into oversharing by companies whose business model depends on it. Charlie White, while talking about the birth livestream, fittingly said the following: "I hate that there has been a complete deterioration of the value of privacy . It seems like people don't want privacy anymore. Like, there is no such thing as a special moment anymore if you can't monetize it and publicly display it . Something like the birth of your child, to me, would be [...] something so personal that you wouldn't want just a bunch of strangers peeking in on. [...] To me, this seems like a sign of the times where everything needs to be content-brained, content-oriented. There's really no other reason to be livestreaming the delivery of your child other than the obvious attention it's going to bring with it. To me, that just feels so odd, so [...] dystopian. [...] It turns something as sacred as life entering this world into a monetizable spectacle . An event that tons of people were watch-party-ing like it was a fucking football game. [...] I just think that is so fucking sad, that everything has to be content now. Before that baby can even have its first thought or open its eyes, it's already a piece of content, it's already in the social media chaos, it's already on camera. And to me, that's just crazy, but to many people, it's not. Which to me, that's kind of concerning, because we've deteriorated so much that everything is expected to be content now. " This is perfectly capturing the problem and the general attitude. We are in a culture that has lost the ability to properly assess the risks and draw boundaries in regards to privacy, where everything is content and new extremes need to be reached as viewers become desensitized or tired of the usual content strategy. People increasingly feel the need to go harder, show more, do more , be even more vulnerable to capture their audience or even get noticed, and it shows. We are reaching new levels of self-surveillance by the minute. We surveil not only our selves though, but also expose others , whether it is the people in our lives or simply strangers on the street. Our conflicts with others, or others' helpless, humiliating, embarrassing, weird or dangerous moments are now our content as we lift our phones to film the catastrophes, wars, fights and meltdowns we see. It's hard to draw the line between activism and monetizing crimes against humanity with some of them - is it just posted to create awareness, or also because it is content that will do numbers? There's also another aspect: We are living in more anxious times . The news cycle is constant and global and doomscrolling is common, so we have never been more aware of everything bad that is going on everywhere at the same time. It shows in our actions and mental health, always seeking to reassure and pacify ourselves. Our increasing feeling of being unsafe or our property being in danger is weaponized by companies looking to profit off of it. Don't you wanna see who's outside of your door? How about your driveway and your garden? How about the inside of your house so you can always check what your partner, your children and the pets are doing, or catch a burglar or fire early? Don't you wanna know where your loved ones are at all times? 1 It's giving way to constant control and checking. This has made so many people very comfortable to essentially deliver an almost completely unprotected livestream of their location, themselves, their neighbors, strangers just walking by, delivery personnel, friends and family, and any other guest (like repairmen) in or around their homes. Surveillance has made the switch from being seen as oppressive and overbearing to being basically synonymous with safety, which you can see ripples of in law as we are dealing with the UK's Age Verification Law and the EU's ChatControl . One has passed, one has a surprisingly likely chance to pass compared to the attitude and voting from the prior attempt. It's clear something has changed. Recently, I had to argue for or against a law for collection of IP addresses to fight cybercrime (' data retention ' or ' Vorratsdatenspeicherung ') for a class in my law degree. We were supplied with, but also had to research, arguments for both sides. Surprisingly, despite good arguments that the whole thing would not even be constitutional, I had a good amount of peers that valued a faux sense of safety over the constitution. One literally said " I would rather sacrifice my freedom than my safety " . So, in this culture, how do we teach people the importance and value of privacy, where becoming a glass citizen 2 is potentially a golden ticket and giving us a sense of safety, while being easier and way more fun in the short-term than the alternative is? To be honest, I just don't know. I feel like none of the arguments are reaching people anymore. They just don't care. It pales to other, more immediate concerns in their life, feels futile and touches too much on the few ways they seek relief in life. Being privacy-conscious is seen as if it is taking something away from them instead of giving them something. For some, it seems to be reduced this one-sided, technical challenge of choosing the right device or OS or browser, which complicates it further. Privacy isn't just turning some trackers off in the settings, it's also you figuratively pulling the blinds shut on your online presence for some moments. I'll leave you with a screenshot that my wife fittingly sent me this while writing this post: Sidenote: Should I start taking the difference between hyphens and em dashes seriously? Is it a good time to switch while AI is overusing the em dash? Let me know. I just never cared to select the em dash, as the hyphen was faster. Reply via email Published 12 Oct, 2025 Even I share my location with my wife and have GPS on some of my belongings. Sure, it is convenient for when I lose it, and it gives me a sense of safety that my wife knows where I am, but I am not naive about the downsides and normalization of more extreme forms. ↩ English version of the idea of a 'Gläserner Mensch' , a data protection/privacy concept about becoming fully transparent/see-through due to all kinds of surveillance. ↩ Even I share my location with my wife and have GPS on some of my belongings. Sure, it is convenient for when I lose it, and it gives me a sense of safety that my wife knows where I am, but I am not naive about the downsides and normalization of more extreme forms. ↩ English version of the idea of a 'Gläserner Mensch' , a data protection/privacy concept about becoming fully transparent/see-through due to all kinds of surveillance. ↩
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