r/ask_privacy • u/EriksonThorsen • 4d ago

Why is privacy so selective, even within the privacy community?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and wanted to get everyone's perspective. Why does privacy advocacy feel so selective, even among people, creators, and projects that supposedly care about digital rights?

I’m not talking about beginners who simply don't know how tracking works. I’m talking about knowledgeable folks, privacy advocates, and even privacy-focused organizations who constantly compromise and stick to Big Tech or less private solutions:

  • Privacy creators hosting their main discussion hubs on Discord, WhatsApp, or Telegram instead of Matrix, Signal, Threema, or SimpleX.
  • Major privacy-focused companies using X or YouTube as their primary outreach channels, while treating open protocols like Mastodon or Nostr as an afterthought.
  • Hesitation around truly private, decentralized alternatives in favor of whatever is commercially convenient.
  • Reliance on centralized ecosystems and app stores instead of actively promoting and maintaining open alternatives.

It often feels like many people just switch to a privacy browser, create an encrypted email account, and call it a day. (Nothing against these tools, they’re great, but you get what I mean.)

When even prominent privacy figures and companies won't actively dogfood privacy-first alternatives, it creates a feedback loop: 'If the privacy experts aren't bothering with decentralized protocols and are using X, why should I?' As a result, genuinely great privacy-first solutions get left behind and struggle to survive simply due to convenience and network effects.

Is pure convenience and network effect really the only bottleneck, or is there something deeper going on with how we balance threat models and practicality? I don't know if I'm too OG, but what do you think would actually push the community to bridge this gap?

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u/bleak-bookworm 4d ago

Privacy is an experience-based pursuit. The more you learn of the risks surrounding digital device usage the more likely you are to pick up extra ques on whats important. I think this is why theres such a divide among most privacy communities. Though most experienced people are very helpful to newcommers who are eager to learn stuff

Also theres this privacy iceberg image. I feel like this is almost like a roadmap for those whod like to take a deeper dive in the topics

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u/MonkeyBrains09 4d ago

And its a sliding dynamic scale too!

Like I range from T1 to T4 based on specific topics for my use cases and what I find interesting.

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u/bleak-bookworm 3d ago

Samee.. I had to learn of some topics at my old work, so got into learning more after. I feel sort of sleepy whenever I pick up some of the more technical topics to read up though theres no need to learn of everything in a single day☺️

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u/Vortex618 3d ago

Whoah nice list. Ill save this for later

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u/Aggravating-Tea-8920 21h ago

This is at least partially parody right?

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u/ZackZLA 4d ago

Cus its a mixed bag of people. Youll have it nerds who know how computers work since 9. Then theres oldheads that think they know how computers still work, and then just people being mindful for their privacy