With Big Tech's PR machine busy at work, the narrative has become quite popular that people don't care about privacy and the supporting "evidence" is readily at hand that individuals share readily all sorts of personal information on social media outlets.
Elon Musk, on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in September 2018, pushed back when asked about the future of security and privacy, responding by asking the question, "Do people want privacy, because they seem to put everything on the internet?"
Of course, Musk's shortcoming here is that he is extrapolating a little too generously. In other words, sure, some people post personal information in public forums; but that does not allow one to conclude that all people disregard the value of their personal information.
The rubber seems to have (finally) met the road, with compelling data coming out that, sure, some people do care about the data.
Recent changes made by Apple to its iOS operating system have enabled users to opt whether or not they want to be tracked. The majority, and perhaps vast majority, of users are saying "No!" (According to Flurry Analytics, it may be that north of 90% of users are saying "track me not, thank you.")
Last week, when Meta (formerly Facebook) released its earnings, it explained the "headwinds" to its marketing engine that come with the changes Apple introduced. In its earnings call, Meta (transcript here) explained:
"we believe the impact of iOS overall as a headwind on our business in 2022 is on the order of $10 billion, so it's a pretty significant headwind for our business."
Time for a change in narrative?
