Because knowledge is power and most people don’t like giving whomever power over them for no reason. Also, it shouldn’t matter why privacy is important to people, the fact that it is should suffice to protect it.
It's important because we say it's important?
Hmm. That seems a little sketchy. Reality becomes whatever's popular. Propaganda becomes the ruling force. Etc.
Actually, yes! What is “important” in a general sense is a similar question to that of the meaning of life. In the end there is no external, absolute rule of nature that decides this for us but we must create our own values. And privacy is such a value. In part you can derive it from others like personal freedom but that only moves the question. Different opinions on what our values should be and how to resolve conflicting ones in specific situations is the subject of ethics and has been debated since humans could debate.
Because it's not the first 99 people that know all about you that are the problem, it's the 1 in a 100 who are out to grief or scam or steal or coerce.
People love to share about themselves, and that's fine... unless there's a malicious actor prompting them to overshare.
People love to gossip about each other, and that's usually tolerable... until rumor is weaponized.
Privacy rights can be likened to a strong door keeping the wolves out.
Another option would be to do away with the wolves.
Which is cheaper for our society?
How would you do away with the wolves today, if the non-wolves could become wolves tomorrow?
I don't see that as a possible option at all.
I don't know.
The design of the door is a well-researched topic. The elimination of wolves, less so.
One approach would be to feed the wolves. A well fed wolf has little interest in breaking your door.
One approach to keeping the wolves fed might be UBI.
An old approach is religious indoctrination.
The door is cheaper.
History has shown, time and time again, that any wolf-eradication program will, almost immediately, be taken over by the wolves themselves and used for their own cruel ends.
Because people will abuse information about you that they find out.
I wonder if there's another way to keep information abuse from happening.
there are things you want to protect in order to protect yourself.
for example: would you give me, a stranger, your social security number (if youre american) and banking info?
I don't believe that privacy is necessarily important per se. Rather, I believe that it's a foundational violated right.
Rights are (not coincidentally IMO) almost always conceived and expressed backwards. That puts the onus on those who would defend a claimed right. I think the onus rather obviously should fall on those who would violate a right - they are the ones who are acting in a specific way, so they are the ones who need to justify their actions.
If an individual lives in complete isolation, they have a complete and total and unchallenged "right" to privacy - it's literally impossible for anyone else to breach their privacy. It's only with the addition of other people that the matter becomes relevant, and only with an attempt by another to breach their privacy that it becomes a point of contention.
So again, and really rather obviously, that other has to be able to justify their breach of privacy, since it's specifically them and their actions that have made the issue relevant.
And at that point, it's really a very simple question - who has a greater right to control over the details of an individual's life - that individual or some third party?
So it's not so much that I believe that people have a right to privacy as that I believe that people cannot possibly have a right to violate someone else's privacy.
Do you think that some knowledge is naturally forbidden?
"Privacy" in the modern sense is less about protecting you from personal embarrassment or financial loss, and more about protecting society from the dangers of mass data collection.
Historical examples of mass datasets that were misused:
In none of these examples were the data collected for the evil purposes it was eventually used for. In some cases, the evil purposes were completely forbidden by the rules governing the data, but they were used anyway.
Information is a form of knowledge. Knowledge is power. And power in the wrong hands is dangerous.
Privacy is a fundamental right that protects autonomy, personal dignity, and the freedom to engage with society without fear of judgment or control. It acts as a crucial safeguard against authoritarianism. Without it, every choice we make can be monitored, recorded, and scrutinized by those in power. History shows that surveillance is often used not to protect people, but to label harmless behaviors as suspicious or deviant, creating pretexts for further erosion of rights.
But beyond its role in protecting civil liberties, privacy is essential for personal growth and mental well-being. We all need space to be ourselves, to practice new skills without perfection, explore interests that might seem uncool or immature, enjoy “guilty pleasure” media, or simply act silly, without worrying about how it will be perceived or used against us. These moments aren’t trivial. They’re where creativity, healing, and self-discovery happen. Privacy gives us room to evolve, to make mistakes, and to be human
This! 1000x this! I’ve spent years educating myself on tech, privacy, psychology etc trying to answer this question. The root thoughts are berried so deep it’s hard to find the signal in the noise. I’ve seen more concise explanations similar to yours in the past year than I have in the previous decade. I think the collective consciousness may finally be getting to a place where they’re starting to ask the right questions, and thankfully concise answer like this are imo the right directions to point people.
Ok. A counterargument.
Information wants to be free. And to let it flow freely is the least-effort solution.
By letting information flow freely we approach a state where everybody knows everything about everything and everybody. This could be pretty great and seems the easy and natural way to go. A kind of superdemocracy. By inhibiting this evolution we create a state of deformity and disease.
I agree: knowledge should be free. But that doesn’t mean all information, especially private lives and deeply personal details, should be universally accessible.
People aren’t data packets. The idea that “everyone should know everything about everyone” assumes superhuman recall and universal comfort with exposure, neither of which exist. If we’re talking sci-fi (like the Borg), total transparency works for them because individuality and autonomy is erased. But that doesn't work for people as we currently exist.
Here’s the key: privacy doesn’t hinder open information, it enables it. Encryption, VPNs, private browsing, these tools protect your ability to seek and share freely, without fear of surveillance or retaliation. Without privacy, power chills dissent. People stop asking questions.
So yes, free knowledge matters. But personal lives aren’t public records.
Privacy isn’t the enemy of openness.
It’s its best defense.
Edit: Reworked this to streamline my point. Some of the phrasing no longer matches the quotes you used in your response, the the general points remain the same.
But I’m not sure that vision logically extends to all information...
I see it more as a physical fact. Keeping a secret takes more effort than open communication. Information propagates like a fart.
assumes both a superhuman capacity for processing information
Well that would be google. You don't need to carry the information around with you, you just need to know how to craft the right query.
and a uniform comfort with exposure,
It might just be the taboo of the hour too.
But that comes at the cost of individuality, autonomy, and the very idea of personal...
That's a stretch
Anyway, here’s my key point. Protecting personal privacy doesn’t hinder the free flow of information, it enables it.
That's a big stretch. Literally "inhibiting the flow increases the flow". I mean I see your argument. But the constraining force here isn't free information, it's judgement and persecution.
So I agree, knowledge should be free.
Mine wasn't an argument of moral imperative but physics. And fighting physics is exhausting.
Edit: I wrote a long rebuttal last night. Wasn’t sober. Woke up, read it, and thought: Ain’t nobody got time for that.
So instead, just the core point:
It’s not a stretch to say privacy protects both our legal rights and our willingness to access and share information.
It is a stretch to claim that not recording and uploading everything I do in private will cause a “state of deformity and disease.”
That’s not physics. That's selling data collection as snake oil. It's an attempt to justify a world view without examining it's ramifications.
Information doesn't "want" anything, you're personifying a concept.
It's a figure of speech.
It means that information propagates extremely easily.
It means that information propagates extremely easily.
Sounds like you've just answered your question about why privacy is important.
Look, you want specifics but didn't provide any. That's basically manipulative. It suggests you don't want a real answer, but you want to say you tried to find one.
You are clearly tripping.
Privacy is important because nobody likes or wants to be targeted.
Knowledge is power. Give all knowledge to a company, you also give them total power.
Personal reasons.
Because I don't trust you and shouldn't have to.
Basically anything you say or do can and will potentially be held against you in the court of public opinion if an AI bot finds it.
What’s your credit card number? I am curious.
Do you have children? What are their names and where do they go to school when you are not watching over them? again I am curious.
What do you care for deeply and value most? Is it your family, a friend? Who are they and what would you do to avoid them from any pain, again I am curious.
What is your daily routine? When can I expect to see you in a specific location and when will you be away from your possessions in your home? What kind of security do you have on your physical space and digital space? I am curious.
What kinds of things do you like and not like? What would you do if I could provide you the things that you favour? Or what of if I subtly introduced those things that you dislike purposefully? I am curious.
What do you get paid at your work? What if I was negotiating my salary and seeking a promotion above you, what if I made more than you and did less?
What do you make of generative AI? And what if I had your likeness passed on to a model to mimic your look, your sound, your appearance and mannerisms and opinions? What if I made you say or do or support something that you don’t stand for? What then?
What if you made a living off something and you only received payment once you had presented this thing to the client or intended audience, what if you showed me what this was before you did this and got paid? Would that bother you? Would that affect your income at all?
The human condition is not one of a utopia, mind your own business as best you can but don’t expect that everyone has been given an equal footing in this world. For your sake and the sake of others, privacy is a matter of respect at a micro, macro and global scale and beyond that it has implications to intellectual property, the ability for a single person or a nation to maintain resources and income, and allow at the most basic level a person to have a conversation with themselves or with god and be truely vulnerable without any judgement whatsoever.
First, because it protects otherwise vulnerable groups of people who fight for freedom and justice. Whistleblowers, journalists, independent intelligence groups need privacy to uncover the crime and abuse of the powerful without fearing repercussions.
Second, because being watched forcibly changes people's behavior. People are forced to be "normal", they do not allow themselves the same liberties they have when they're in private. When this becomes default, it negatively affects mental health, inducing severe stress and anxiety.
Third, because there are cultural conventions at the backbone of our society and the way it functions that are trampled by the invasion of privacy. You are taught to be uncomfortable when naked around others, to close off when you go to the toilet, to talk through your deeply personal or intimate matters exclusively with a select few etc. This isn't merely an isolated cultural quirk - it defines how we treat each other, how we communicate, how our sexuality and reproduction function (and who gets reproduced to begin with), how our relationships work, what kind of language we use, and more. Letting anyone or anything in just like that naturally makes many uncomfortable, and has the potential to be ultimately disastrous for the society we know - a kind of society built with expectation of privacy as one of its cornerstones.
Fourth, because the main groups that are interested in private information are governments (see the first point), those willing to manipulate you into buying something, denying your autonomy in the name of profit off your back, and those willing to manipulate your opinions, mainly political, to serve their interests.
Fifth, because private information is not always adequately safeguarded. Leaks can provide sensitive information used in fraud, blackmail, and by other malevolent actors.
None of your goddamn business.
The more information you give, the more they have to use against you.
How to manipulate you, how to trick you, etc.
Also if you’re exposed as a certain type of person (gay/trans/brown/black/etc) are being targeted in some countries.
If your exposed showing knowledge in some subjects then they could target you. Example is how they are targeting some news reporters for reporting the truth.
Why is privacy important? Be specific.
That's how I prompt AI, not how I would address [a community of] people. But that's just me, I guess.
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