Taking a stand in your circles

Off Topic
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Hello everyone, I’m starting this topic to discuss on how to start talking about privacy in your circles and how to fight back about all what’s happening around you.

I know in mine, all of my closest friends and family don’t care at all about taking actions to change their privacy. I generally don’t really talk about it anymore, because I told myself they won’t change their perspective. I’ll try to change that, without being perceived as insistent, but rather informative and opening up some lights. Hopefully, this will help everyone here bringing privacy topics IRL. The goal is to make people care about their own privacy through conversations.

This topic is meant to go in all sort of ways, like a drawing board. As the conversations go, I will compile the information and update the talking points below. The format will evolve over time.

So let’s start somewhere. How would you initiate a conversation with people that don’t care about their privacy? Let’s simulate IRL conversations. I will be playing devils advocate throughout the conversations.

Ethos:[1]

  1. ”People don’t change unless they themselves are interested in it.”

  2. Don’t be a vegan.

    [2] When discussing with your closed-ones, don’t make privacy your whole identity. Don’t judge other people’s choices even if you wouldn’t do the same choice yourself.

  3. A baby broccoli step at a time keeps digital life sublime

    If someone is opened to listen and make a change, only make one recommendation at a time. Don’t overwhelm them. Privacy is like a Broccoli.

  4. Active listening is the way to hear with kindness and listen with empathy.

    Listen First, Speak Last: don’t interrupt, showing respect and care for the speaker’s thoughts and opinions. Be present: look into the eyes of the person and nod, confirming you understand what they’re communicating. Mirroring: repeat or summarize what they said in your own words, making sure the person is feeling heard. Seek to understand, not to respond: ask questions, trying to avoid debate mode.

  5. ABC

    AAA

Steps:

4 major steps were identified so far to start lighting some bulbs in people’s mind. Always with the Ethos in mind:

  1. Start the conversation.
  2. Understand what the person values.
  3. Understand what the barriers to adopt privacy choices are.
  4. Recommend.

Start the conversation:

Conversation starters:

  1. Apparels like this
  2. Visual posters (link examples)
  3. Gears (link example)
  4. Casual tone (expand on this)
  5. Serious tone (expand on this)

Context:

You start the conversation with someone who is not interested at all by privacy:

  1. One on one - conversation starter:

    1. News - have you heard about (WIP)

  2. You are part of group conversation:
    1.

  3. You notice an old device being used:
    1.
    2.

Understand what the person values:

This is a lot about communication skills. Active listening is key.

Ask questions. Talk about what are the values of someone. Be willing to be vulnerable yourself.

(to develop further)

Understand what the barriers to adopt privacy choices are:

People usually will say they care about their privacy, but won’t make any changes. It could be the perception that it is too time consuming, that it is a lost cause anyway or that nothing can really be done about it. Let’s address some of these classics answers. It is easy to enter debate mode, but this will generally throw people off. Always do active listening when addressing the below.

You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.

  • This is not about me. It is about disinformation. It is about control of the masses from the powerful. It is about liberties and freedom that we are losing everyday. It is about not taking for granted the rights that have been fought for in the past.

  • Summarize Secracy vs Privacy Privacy is Power. And You're Giving Yours Away

  • Other counter arguments to be summarized

Disinformation doesn’t affect me

Develop on how anyone can be manipulated (propaganda).

By conserving your intellectual property as an individual and not being influenced by outside forces (like targeted ads on social medias or other platforms), democracy is strengthened by countering targeted disinformation. Disinformation would still exist, but at least it wouldn’t be targeted.

(to develop)

Classic #3

b

Recommend:

The goal of this section is to recommend spoon-fed change which are effortless in the beginning.

This is rough draft for now.

Switch From Switch To Convenience aspect
Browser Librewolf TBD
Browser Brave TBD
Internet Search DuckDuckGo? TBD
Messaging Signal TBD
Social Media
Office suite OnlyOffice Free and similar to MO
Online Office suite Cryptpad TBD
Email ProtonMail TBD
Cloud Storage Proton Drive

All the above steps, require a maximum of 15 minutes each.

The next logical step to me would be to recommend a VPN as this is also 15 minutes max.

Proton / IVPN / Mullvad : recommend the easiest and why.

Once the baby steps are done, password managers actually take a lot of time to setup, but then saves time in the long run. Kind of like an investment: The Best Password Managers to Protect Your Privacy and Security - Privacy Guides

At the same time, 2FA (link with passwords).

Then, if the person want to learn more → recommend privacy and feature-rich tools on Ad-Free Privacy Tool/Service Recommendations - Privacy Guides

STATUS: currently at post #35.

To do: simulate a real practice conversation where I’ll be the devil’s advocate.
Why is security important?

  1. Ethos is a Greek word meaning “character” that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. ↩︎

  2. We love vegans! The dominant internet archetype of vegans is the kind of person who always judges people for not valuing what they value, for not taking action like how they’re taking action, etc. They will also go above and beyond to make sure that everyone knows they’re vegan. So on and so forth. Ya’know the meme. ↩︎

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In my experience, people don’t change unless they themselves are even somewhat interested in it after they begin to believe privacy is necessary and change in their habits is warranted. So until then, all I think you can do is keep spreading awareness and trying to educate them for the need for better digital habits and improvement in their value systems from this angle atleast.

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This would be wonderful as a wiki! That way, anyone can edit and add their own ideas as well so you don’t have to do all the manual labor. Of course, however, consensus should be reached in the reply section.

Here are my thoughts:

Privacy advocates who are adamant in conversation remind of the meme-ified vegans. The dominant internet archetype of vegans is the kind of person who always judges people for not valuing what they value, for not taking action like how they’re taking action, etc. They will also go above and beyond to make sure that everyone knows they’re vegan. So on and so forth. Ya’know the meme.

From what I have gathered from my social circles, I have been told that I remind them of that (I am often an adamant privacy advocate). There’s always some form of moralizing that I do when I discuss these topics with others. The annoying thing about me that people have told me is that it feels as though I am forcing them to adopt the values that I value. I am essentially being paternalistic.

This is a highly moralized and paternalistic statement. Most people I’ve talked to do in fact care about their privacy, so when they hear me claim that they “actually don’t”, they get annoyed because it feels to them as though I am disqualifying their opinion and perspective, which means they will do the same to me.

It’s not about changing their minds. It’s about educating them and letting them do what they will with it. They are autonomous human beings with their own fully formed brains, their own value systems, their own beliefs, their own lifestyles.

However, I will add a caveat here. It’s one thing to try to change their lifestyle. I would be against that, as I’ve learned from the feedback that my friends have given me. But it’s another to try to change the prevailing political attitudes.

I think that’s where we’re all getting mixed up as privacy advocates. When us privacy advocates spread the awareness of digital privacy to our friends and loved ones, we will often go for lifestyle changes. We will for example complain about the fact that they are using social media, or how they don’t care/understand the value of digital privacy “like how we do”, or how they don’t do this or that or what have you. Instead, we should aim for changing their political attitudes, because that’s where our gripes actually lies.

It’s how the system we live in is set up. Their lifestyle choices are a secondary, emergent issue. Therefore, we should not moralize and be paternalistic about their lifestyle choices, but instead their political attitudes. If not, we lose them in virtue of egocentricism.

It’s one thing to say that someone ought to value XYZ. But it’s another thing to say that someone ought to live XYZ way.

For example, I can tell someone (let’s say Alice) that they ought to value health. This doesn’t mean I can tell Alice that they ought to run 5 times weekly, eat so-and-so for breakfast, lunch and dinner, go to the gym at 07:00 PM, etc. We can justify why Alice should value XYZ, but that doesn’t give us justification for getting rid of her autonomy and controlling her lifestyle.

On the condition that Alice does value health, we can certainly point out her discrepancies and inconsistencies. If they claim that they value health but eat chips all week, for example, we have the right to point it out. But this is only insofar as we have a right to criticize their beliefs/values.

Again, it’s one thing to say, “You should value privacy!” It’s another to say “You should download F-Droid and never use Google Play Store! install Linux and never use Windows! stop using Facebook!” etc.

And on the condition that they do say they value privacy, it’s still uncool to say that latter part. All you can do is say “Hey, since you care about privacy, here is an inconsistency that I see with it! You use Google Play Store, but F-Droid better aligns with your values. You use Windows, but Linux is better for what you want. And Facebook is extremely privacy-invasive!” These are purely descriptive statements, which allows you to say them. This is in contrast to the former sentences above which are prescriptive statements. In essence, I think that beliefs/values as a prescription is what we should aim for, not lifestyle choices. And when values do happen to align, that then allows us to descriptively bring up any misalignments with their lifestyle choices.

But maybe I am wrong. Maybe I am being paternalistic/moralizing here… Lol

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Depends on situation. In my circles I have many situations:

  1. Clearly hacked phones
  2. Prehistoric phones
  3. Prehistoric vulnerable routers
  4. Very very slow windows computers
  5. People addicted to social media
  6. Overuse of AI
  7. etc.

So I keep explaining in every situation how to improve the situations.

If we take social media, then I explain that:

On our facebook timeline, we consume what oligarchs decide we should see. Trump or other authoritarians wants to take control. Its dangerous.

And on fediverse I myself decide what I want to see.

Fediverse is quite interesting social network where people are directly in control…

Or if we take AI:

Have you noticed that AI begins every answer with “What a great question!” to the most stupid questions. AI companies try to make their bots very addictive. Be careful.

(Everyone nods along, P.S. more info: https://sycophancy.ai/)

Yes, informing about alternatives once in a while. I think there quite a few opportunities to do so.

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@Seven

Completely agree with your statement. I will add it somewhere.
”People don’t change unless they themselves are interested in it.”

The problem I have is with 2025 and privacy. I’m personally starting to feel a sense of "urgency” that I’ve never felt before. II think if we don’t do something soon, it will be too late. If we don’t spread awareness and wake some people up on what is going on, it will be too late. Of course, that doesn’t mean to force people on making any choices for them. If you try to force anything on someone, you will be faced with rejection.

My question to you then is how would you approach your friends and family to make them more interested? Not to manipulate or force anyone here, not even necessarily to convince, but what would be your conversation starters to make people care about their privacy and rights?

@anonymous420

What a well written answer! Thank you! I completely agree with you. Yes, I had in mind to make it a wiki when it evolves into something.

The parallel to vegans is exactly what I was referring to “without being perceived as insistent.”

I will make a new section called “Ethos.” I will add “Don’t be a Vegan.” Meaning, don’t make privacy your whole identity and don’t be paternalistic / judgmental. I have many vegans and I personally think they are right on many points, so please don’t take this personally if anyone here is a vegan :upside_down_face: . It’s only a quick way to communicate.

I had the same exact perspective a few months ago. Like I wrote to Seven, the problem I find that changed now is 2025 in privacy. What the hell is going on? Lol. I believe if a lot more people don’t start caring about their privacy, we’re all screwed. 1984 style.

I will disagree with you about mixing up political attitudes and lifestyle changes. To me people need to change their lifestyles. People need to value their privacy. That in itself is the political attitude. If everyone start using e.g.: Linux tomorrow morning, I’m pretty companies and governments would listen.

I don’t think any of this need to be paternalistic. It’s all about how it is communicated. Even if the content is exactly the same, the how is the most important aspect of it all.

Person A: “Hey have you seen this video on Facebook, it’s hilarious!”

Person B: “Huh, you’re still using Facebook…?” (Judgmental) “Did you know that [blablabla]” (Annoying).

or Person B: “You’re so stupid for using Facebook. Here’s what all they’ve done A-B-C-D-E and here are all the arguments 1-2-3-4-5 on why it’s so bad.” (Judgmental / Annoying and Paternalistic loll! :rofl: )

Person B has already lost the person on the first sentences. Of course, those are extreme examples, but my point is the answer doesn’t have to be paternalistic or judgmental at all.

From your last paragraph, I will also add something along the lines of don’t be overwhelming or idealize one small step at a time.

There are also many contexts that all of this could happen and where I could make different sections of:

  • If you are starting the conversation.
  • If you are only 1 on 1 with a close one.
  • If you are part of a group discussion and something comes up.
  • Etc.

This will not be a coherent topic, but I’ll do my best to make it coherent.

@rmd

Yes! There are so many situations! My partner is an example of someone who uses a unsecured old device. If at the end of this topic, I make her switch that device, I’ll call that a win :stuck_out_tongue:

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I think it comes down to the basics. Having earnest conversations to learn about others’ value systems first.

Sit down with people, have an actual informative productive conversation with them by asking simple but loaded questions.

  • What does privacy mean to you?
  • Do you believe privacy should be a fundamental (human) right?
  • Do you value privacy in your life and is so, what do you currently do to ensure that privacy?
  • Are you willing to make changes in your digital and online life to significantly enhance your privacy?

And continue asking germane follow up questions for the responses and answers the other provides. Stay on topic. If they ask you topic related follow up questions, answer them. If not, bring it back to the set of questions and the topic of conversation to not deviate what you’re trying to gather here - that is privacy even valuable to them enough to make changes to better their online and digital lives.

Once you have these answers, you should know where they stand and how much you can practically help them be better online and digitally. The need for being more private should come from them. If they don’t see the reason, then you can’t help folks who don’t want to be helped.

And that’s how I think you can begin and proceed with engaging with them speaking about such topics. Simple, earnest, non judgemental and loaded questions to gauge where they are and what their values are to then formulate a plan for yourself if possible to improve their lives.

The biggest hurdle is going to convince them to spend money of select things, it’s not even speaking about this. For the few good things VPNs are incredibly useful, unless people want to, they will always be against spending money for it. And of course, you have other tools and services that sometimes you should upgrade for but take the baby steps first.

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I don’t have enough of experience, but people spend so much money on other things (like privacy products cost basically nothing for comparison), I don’t get why this could be a problem, especially if someone care about it.

But so far I am reducing barrier to entry - I was paying myself, for example, giving phone, or initial subscriptions, or prepaid account, as gifts. Just to make it simple, removing payment step. So not for money reasons, but for simplicity reasons.

Edit. P.S. I regard VPN an advanced tool and did not recommend so far, for example, it use too much battery.

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Because people are so used to having all the tools and software they use for “free” is why they’d be reluctant to pay for much if anything going forward. It’s hard enough to get people to use Signal. Imagine how hard it will be to convince people to pay for better email, VPN, etc.

Of course, like you said, they should want to do it and they’ll only want to do it if they can afford it and value their privacy enough (which is only the case if they do see and believe there’s a significant difference with privacy forward tools than not using them).

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Suprisingly, I was quite succesful on convincing to install Signal.
Success rate 80% on first try so far. Don’t know how, people just install it, it takes only minutes to install and setup. Maybe key is simplicity, again.
Considering I was slow to adopt myself (only did it this year), so seems not that bad from my experience.

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Well, I am happy for you to not experience difficulty here with it. But everyone’s mileage with such things vary and sometimes greatly depending on where they live accounting for cultural, societal, and educational differences.

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I made a visual poster, listing all legacy services and their private/better/secure/european alternatives.

Starting from easiest to most difficult to adopt.

  1. Most easy is to switch search engine.
  2. Second easiest change the browser (or just install alternative for now)
  3. Third easiest is to install signal.
  4. And at the bottom, at 16th place is to move to fediverse (most difficult because of network effect and other reasons)

But I teach everyone about everything. Maybe visuals help, showing how easy it is to take the first steps.

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I think the issue OP is asking about and wanting to know is how do you even begin explaining the value of privacy and its necessity today more than ever and not what they need to do. Others will only do it if they want to, once they understand or begin believing that things are still in their control for how to be in the online world.

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Your tips in the long post are very good, I will try them as well, mainly it is interesting to learn how everyone perceive this topic.

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Why I was slow to adopt?

  1. Signal would reveal my phone number for no reason (for example, if somebody I don’t know asks to connect on Signal, or add me to groups), it felt like privacy loss, but since they implemented usernames, now its good.
  2. I was not trusting my samsung-spyware phone anyway, I installed Signal when I installed GrapheneOS secure base.

Adoption is connected with other things. If somebody is not adopting when it only takes a few minutes, it useful to figure out what the barriers are.

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First, you need to know their values. Then, try to link it to it. Be gentle, listen, ask why they dont care or not enough to act. Lead by example. Show them it’s easy.

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This is such an important topic to discuss collectively! Thank you for starting this :yellow_heart:

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I’ve actually had quite a lot of success in this. I start with connection. Who are they? What do they value? Why? Look for patterns and inconsistencies in what they say versus what they do. Kindly mention that you’ve noticed they value X but do Y, and ask if that has bothered them? Many people are so overwhelmed they can’t get started. So they give up. And in order to defend their sense of self, they say it doesn’t matter, it’s hopeless, they don’t want another app, or they aren’t doing anything wrong so they have nothing to hide. To that last, one could retort something like “What gives you the right to say what the powers-that-be think is right or wrong?”, but statements like this make people fearful and fear makes us defensive.
Always use empathy. Look into their eyes when you can, be willing to be vulnerable yourself. Tell them something you do, something simple they can do right now with you walking them through it (that aligns with their values) and then be done with that problem if they used it all the time. Signal is a great starting point because people are always surprised at how many people they know that are using it (or have tried at some point). Then that starts conversations between those people. Offer to be a liaison.

A lot of time while we’re trying to improve our privacy, we begin to isolate, but the healthiest and most effective option is to treat us (and those we care about) as part of a sub-community within the broader cultural ethos.

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Why do you want to do this?

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This is a very interesting point, actually. I personally feel like there are certainly parallels when talking to someone about veganism and privacy; in both ways, you are challenging someone’s behaviour. That’s why I do think it’s important to approach both discussions with empathy and kindness; for instance, a lot of people don’t realise their behaviour is harmful (using Chrome, Google search, etc.).

Telling someone what they’re doing is wrong isn’t very effective, but asking them questions about why they are doing something will prompt further introspection into those actions - and whether they are actually right.

I’ve had a lot better luck not even bringing up the topic unless it’s relevant, because otherwise I do feel you can come across as preachy. There are certainly ways to trigger these conversations naturally, though; for instance, having a funny privacy-related t-shirt or sticker can kick-start a deeper conversation.

Unfortunately, this does rely on someone being open-minded; at the end of the day, you aren’t going to convince everyone to care about their privacy, but hopefully, we will reach a point where it becomes the societal norm.

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Yes, some people are more open to new ideas, and others will join the crowd later following everyone else (looking up to what others are doing around).

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