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2 - Privacy Myths

Rationality and Apathy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2023

Ignacio Cofone
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
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Summary

Chapter 2 shows the falseness of two ideas that underlie the central elements of privacy law: that people make fully rational privacy choices and that they don’t care about their privacy. These notions create a dissonance between law and reality, which prevents laws from providing meaningful privacy protections. Contrary to rationality, context has an outsized impact on our privacy decisions and we can’t understand what risks are involved in our privacy “choices,” particularly with AI inferences. The notion that we’re apathetic is prevalent in popular discourse about how much people share online and the academic literature about “the privacy paradox.” Dismantling the myth of apathy shows there’s no privacy paradox. People simply face uncertainty and unknowable risks. People make privacy choices in a context of anti-privacy design, such as dark patterns. In this process, we’re manipulated by corporations, who are more aware of our biases than regulators are.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Privacy Fallacy
Harm and Power in the Information Economy
, pp. 28 - 45
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Privacy Myths
  • Ignacio Cofone, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book: The Privacy Fallacy
  • Online publication: 16 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108995825.003
Available formats
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  • Privacy Myths
  • Ignacio Cofone, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book: The Privacy Fallacy
  • Online publication: 16 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108995825.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Privacy Myths
  • Ignacio Cofone, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book: The Privacy Fallacy
  • Online publication: 16 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108995825.003
Available formats
×