Thread by @matthew_d_green

I used to feel that tech companies competing to market “privacy” could only result in a win for consumers. Now I’m starting to wonder if it serves the same purpose as carmakers adding an “eco” mode to your SUV.

You have these enterprises that are vastly incentivized to collect personal data from your activity. For years they’ve been collecting everything, just in case it was useful. Now they’re starting to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The major question here is: if Facebook and Google et al. decide their business works fine even if they don’t collect certain data, are we really getting more privacy? Or have they just learned how to squeeze the same knowledge from fewer sources?

Nobody has any scientific way of answering this question. The best heuristic, ironically, is to see if Facebook’s ad revenue keeps increasing after they make these changes.

And it sucks, because human psychology around privacy is tricky. Everyone is horrified at the idea Facebook might activate your phone’s microphone to eavesdrop and target ads, but are basically “meh” when FB gets that information through browsing and metadata.