To answer your question… Do you close the door when you take a shit ?

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

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.

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.

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.

None of your goddamn business.

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.

Because people will abuse information about you that they find out.

Because I don’t trust you and shouldn’t have to.

“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:

• The Nazis used demographic records (birth, death, marriage records, etc.) to identify Jews and other undesirables in conquered countries.
• Japanese Americans were identified for internment in part through illegal use of census information.
• The Rwanda genocide was facilitated by tribal information being printed on drivers licenses.

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.

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.

Because I’m happy when I have privacy and unhappy when I don’t.

Privacy is important because nobody likes or wants to be targeted.

Privacy affects a number of things, so it’s hard to give any broad answer, but here’s a few individual examples I guess.

• You close the door when you use the bathroom. We are simply uncomfortable with being perceived in a vulnerable situation like that by other people in most circumstances. To get rid of privacy would be to get rid of your bathroom door, and make yourself uncomfortable when you simply don’t have to be.
• You store your passwords and don’t share them with anyone. To give up privacy would be to give up all the access to your private accounts.
• You might not state exactly how much money you have when you’re in public. Without privacy, people with a lot to lose would suddenly be easily identifiable targets for bad actors that could kidnap them, extort them for ransom, etc.
• Online search habits can identify things about you. A lack of privacy means targeted advertisements can convince you to buy things you wouldn’t waste your money on otherwise, (cough cough instagram showing teen girls beauty ads specifically when it detected they were feeling insecure), or that governments and corporations can influence your decisions and opinions away from your best interests (cough cough Cambridge Analytica scandal)
• Being open isn’t always beneficial. You might lie to a child about where puppies go when they die, because making that currently private information public to the child would only make the situation harder for them.
• Harassment relies on identifiable information about you. If you had to publish your name, address, phone number, and email with every account you made because privacy didn’t exist, any statement someone dislikes could lead to major problems for you. This means self-censorship, and constantly living in fear if your ideas exist outside someone else’s acceptable worldview who happens to also be willing to cause you harm.

Obviously these are just a few examples, and there are ways in which a lack of privacy can also be beneficial. For example on my harassment point, you could also argue it’s bad that neo-nazis have anonymity, because it makes it hard to stop their dangerous rhetoric, but that could again be countered by saying neo-nazis are much more likely to harass and threaten people, who themselves then need privacy.

It’s a similar argument to free speech. It might not be good for everyone in all cases, but limiting free speech (or in this case, not having or limiting privacy) would lead to oppressive ideologies gaining power faster than non-oppressive ones, would dull human expression and make things more monolithic, and generally make any form of democratic or outside-the-norm expression extremely difficult if not impossible, so we accept the potential downsides in favor of the much larger upsides.

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?