I came through the term privacy nihilism some time ago, and I was confused how to make connection between these two words and also was amazed (again) that a philosophical word from 18th is being used along a (these days mostly) digital issue. So let’s see what does privacy nihilism mean and probably how to help escape it.
What is it?
Nihilism
If your not aware of nihilism, it’s something you carry it around all of your life. It appeases in different forms and feelings, caused by different reasons. Nihilism happens when people feel their values and natural needs are baseless, unreasonable or unreachable. There are many important subjects in one’s life which everyone cares about. We deeply want to know where are we coming from, must be certain about answer of critical questions, and we have an urge for justice. And what happens when we assure we are not going to get what we want? Our body fills with emptiness or rather, drains from hope. It’s something beyond simply feeling disappointed because now human should give up part of its nature. Because well, it’s impossible to have it anyway. Therefor nihilism happens.
Privacy
And privacy (at different levels) is one those core values of any sane human. Anyone has something to hide, not because it’s wrong but because some things must be private by nature; your passwords for example. Your child’s school location and what ours they’re alone in house is also private and no one should know about them.
Combined
However one can argue there’s no privacy in social medias era. When people regularly share pictures of themselves and their families, post on microblogging platforms every day and widely used trackers follow you everywhere in web and governments spending billions on mass surveillance and even using a terminal emulator requires logging into an online account; there is no space left for privacy. So now big companies already know everything what’s the point of caring about privacy anymore? Why would I keep using privacy-oriented search engines and free software? Why would I bother myself reading privacy policies, let’s just give them all cookies needed it won’t change anything.
The fact that you’re reading this post brings a high hope that also you care about privacy, or have cared for some time. That means you probably were using a privacy focused email service, self-hosted solutions, a free operating system and encrypted messengers. But you don’t care as much as before anymore. Because you feel we’re losing it; that you don’t have as much privacy as you had ten years ago. So you just give up.
They say hope is a dangerous thing, because it hurts when you lose it. It must be painful to see part of you is dying slowly, and you have to watch and feel the pain every second, right? Well that’s what huge corporations are doing to you.
That’s what Google is doing to you.
That’s what Apple is doing to you.
That’s what Microsoft is doing to you.
That’s what Meta is doing to you.
They make you feel privacy doesn’t make sense, and it’s meaningless, you are meaningless; they’re killing part of you, and make you watch until you give up, welcome to privacy nihilism.
There’s a part 2
Thanks for reading; please let me know what do you think.
Good luck.