Don't Stop at Individual Solutions, Consider The Collective Impact

When we think about our privacy, we often focus on the technical tools we can use to protect it. While this is an important component, it's crucial not to lose sight of how regulations and invasive practices impact us collectively.

Here's what to keep in mind to expand your perspective on data privacy beyond individual solutions:

The danger of focusing only on individual solutions

While it might feel easier to focus on our own needs, nobody lives in a vacuum. Even if you were able to somehow protect all the data you have custody of, there is a lot of data about you that isn't under your control, and a lot of data about others that impact you.

Moreover, it's important to consider others in different situations. For example, even if everyone who has access to a VPN service can stay protected from a particular issue, what about all the others? It's neither practical nor realistic to expect that everyone would be able to circumvent a problem by using a VPN.

While in some cases we might want to discuss immediate individual solutions in order to mitigate some harm, we must also attack the root cause of the problem.

If we only think of individual solutions when a corporation exploits our data, or a government adopts a privacy-invasive regulation, we risk letting our guard down by giving up the fight early. This makes the problem harder to fight later on, and results in more harm to our communities, and eventually to ourselves as well.

Things to keep in mind when a privacy issue arises

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself whenever a new privacy issue arises in the news, to help expand your perspective beyond individual solutions:

• What are potential mitigation solutions, and who will realistically be able to use them?

• What will happen to the people who don't have the resources (in time, in money, in knowledge) to protect themselves individually?

• Will this issue impact some communities more than others? Who will this affect the most negatively?

• What will be the impact for the people who cannot protect themselves individually?

• What will be the impact for the people who can protect themselves individually?

• Are there other solutions that could be adopted to fight this issue for everyone at once, without relying on individual harm mitigations.

• How can we fight against this issue in a way that will benefit everyone impacted, including the people who aren't even aware of the issue?

More resources

• Why you should also care about other people's privacy (Privacy Guides)

• Why privacy might be a safety matter for many (Privacy Guides)

• Encryption must not be outlawed for our privacy tools to work (Privacy Guides)

• Dangerous regulation proposals like Chat Control could impact everyone without many individual solutions (Privacy Guides)

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