Interesting you say viral pathology and immunology. Can you expand on what you mean on that a bit? I find it a useful analog for what’s going on.

I like this concept and I feel like that a step along the way as it is essentially what’s happening. The EULA’s, TOS’s, SLA’s, etc are all contracts, which should be negotiable by both parties and allow the individuals or groups to define value, be that monetary value (the $5) or something in trade. Some how we the masses skipped over the negotiation, and are left with an almost binary choice either accept and use it or not. (You could sue, or protest, or etc, but without standing or a large following this is not effective for an individual.)

So whilst’ I agree, I also think it might be more useful to focus on the reason the information is valuable.

And one last point here, is that these all stem from the way we as humans are built. Although we are capable of rational though, we often do not make rational decisions. Indeed those decisions are based on cognitive biases which we all have and are effected by context, environment, input, etc. It’s possible to overcome this lack of rational judgement, through processes and synthesis such as the scientific method. So we as citizens and humans can build institutions that help us account for the individual biases we have and overcome these biological challenges, while also enjoying the benefits and remaining human.

Great cause and one that reaches to the heart of what I see as impacting much of the governmental and societal disruption that’s happening. It’s a complex and nuanced issue that is likely to take multiple prongs and a long time to resolve.

Let me start by again generally agreeing with the point. Privacy is necessary for reasons beyond the obvious needs. Speaking to the choir here on a privacy community. I think it’s worth listing the reasons that I understand why Americans are generally dismissive of the need for privacy protections. I cheated here, and used an LLM to help, but I think these points are indicative of things to overcome.

• Convenience > confidentiality. Nearly half of U.S. adults (47 %) say it’s acceptable for retailers to track every purchase in exchange for loyalty-card discounts, illustrating a widespread “deal first, data later” mindset. Pew Research Center

• “Nothing to hide.” A popular refrain equates privacy with secrecy; if you’re law-abiding, the thinking goes, surveillance is harmless. The slogan is so common that rights groups still publish rebuttals to it. Amnesty International

• Resignation and powerlessness. About 73 % feel they have little or no control over what companies do with their data, and 79 % say the same about government use—attitudes that breed fatalism rather than action. Pew Research Center

• Policy-fatigue & click-through consent. Because privacy policies are dense and technical, 56 % of Americans routinely click “agree” without reading, while 69 % treat the notice as a hurdle to get past, not a safeguard. Pew Research Center

• The privacy paradox. Behavioral studies keep finding a gap between high stated concern and lax real-world practice, driven by cognitive biases and social desirability effects. SAGE Journals

• Market ideology & the “free-service” bargain. The U.S. tech economy normalizes “free” platforms funded by targeted ads; many users see data sharing as the implicit cost of innovation and participation. LinkedIn

• Security framing. Post-9/11 narratives cast surveillance as a safety tool; even today 42 % still approve of bulk data collection for anti-terrorism, muting opposition to broader privacy safeguards. Pew Research Center

• Harms feel abstract. People worry about privacy in the abstract, yet most haven’t suffered visible damage, so the risk seems remote compared with daily conveniences. IAPP

• Patchwork laws. With no single federal statute, Americans face a confusing mix of state and sector rules, making privacy protections feel inconsistent and easy to ignore. Practice Guides

• Generational normalization. Digital natives are more comfortable with surveillance; a 2023 survey found that 29 % of Gen Z would even accept in-home government cameras to curb crime. cato.org

Having listed elements to overcome, it’s easy to see why this feels sisyphean task in an American society. (It is similar, but different other Global North societies. The US desperately needs change as is evident with the current administration.) Getting to your question though, I feel like the real rational points to convey are not those above, but the reasons how a lack of privacy impacts individuals.

• Political micro-targeting & democratic drift
  Platforms mine psychographic data to serve bespoke campaign messages that exploit confirmation bias, social-proof heuristics, and loss-aversion—leaving voters receptive to turnout-suppression or “vote-against-self-interest” nudges. A 2025 study found personality-tailored ads stayed significantly more persuasive than generic ones even when users were warned they were being targeted. Nature

• Surveillance pricing & impulsive consumption
  Retailers and service-providers now run “surveillance pricing” engines that fine-tune what you see—and what it costs—based on location, device, credit profile, and browsing history. By pairing granular data with scarcity cues and anchoring, these systems push consumers toward higher-priced or unnecessary purchases while dulling price-comparison instincts. Federal Trade Commission

• Dark-pattern commerce & hidden fees
  Interface tricks (pre-ticked boxes, countdown timers, labyrinthine unsubscribe flows) leverage present-bias and choice overload, trapping users in subscriptions or coaxing them to reveal more data than intended. Federal Trade Commission

• Youth mental-health spiral
  Algorithmic feeds intensify social-comparison and negativity biases; among U.S. teen girls, 57 % felt “persistently sad or hopeless” and nearly 1 in 3 considered suicide in 2021—a decade-high that public-health experts link in part to round-the-clock, data-driven social media exposure. CDC

• Chilling effects on knowledge, speech, and creativity
  After the Snowden leaks, measurable drops in searches and Wikipedia visits for sensitive topics illustrated how surveillance primes availability and fear biases, nudging citizens away from inquiry or dissent. Common Dreams

• Algorithmic discrimination & structural inequity
  Predictive-policing models recycle historically biased crime data (representativeness bias), steering patrols back to the same neighborhoods; credit-scoring and lending algorithms charge Black and Latinx borrowers higher interest (statistical discrimination), entrenching wealth gaps. American Bar AssociationRobert F. Kennedy Human Rights

• Personal-safety threats from data brokerage
  Brokers sell address histories, phone numbers, and real-time location snapshots; abusers can buy dossiers on domestic-violence survivors within minutes, exploiting the “search costs” gap between seeker and subject. EPIC

• Identity theft & downstream financial harm
  With 1.35 billion breach notices issued in 2024 alone, stolen data fuels phishing, tax-refund fraud, bogus credit-card openings, and years of credit-score damage—costs that disproportionately hit low-information or low-income households. ITRC

• Public-health manipulation & misinformation loops
  Health conspiracies spread via engagement-optimized feeds that exploit negativity and emotional-salience biases; a 2023 analysis of Facebook found antivaccine content became more politically polarized and visible after the platform’s cleanup efforts, undercutting risk-perception and vaccination decisions. PMC

• Erosion of autonomy through behavioral “nudging”
  Recommendation engines continuously A/B-test content against your micro-profile, capitalizing on novelty-seeking and variable-reward loops (think endless scroll or autoplay). Over time, the platform—rather than the user—decides how hours and attention are spent, narrowing genuine choice. Nature

• National-security & geopolitical leverage
  Bulk personal and geolocation data flowing to data-hungry foreign adversaries opens doors to espionage, blackmail, and influence operations—risks so acute that the DOJ’s 2025 Data Security Program now restricts many cross-border “covered data transactions.” Department of Justice

• Social trust & civic cohesion
  When 77 % of Americans say they lack faith in social-media CEOs to handle data responsibly, the result is widespread mistrust—not just of tech firms but of institutions and one another—fueling polarization and disengagement. Pew Research Center

If Lemmy has a best of, this should be submitted. Or maybe we just need to create a new one called hardest life lesson.

Been a while, but in several US states where the free report was mandated, they also allowed a request to be mailed in, of even faxed. Old school, but I would be surprised if they don’t still have some of those methods, and probably don’t require web form consents to privacy invading terms.

Indeed! Find yourself. Only then can you really connect with others authentically.

Disagree. It’s a tool that in it’s current form changes our way of processing and way of perceiving. It literally changes the way your brain seeks pleasure as well as intakes facts. One that individuals have to have a the money, knowledge, and social/legal/cultural power to take control of otherwise it will modify your decision making in such a way that you don’t feel, see, or believe there is a change. It’s so ubiquitous, pervasive, and disruptive, that contact and at least minimal acceptance is required to function in the global society.

The isolation, cognitive disrupted, physiological change that the internet has wrought through the smartphone, social media, and the apps is huge and yet not well discussed in anything but academic studies and other rarified forums.

Fair point, well played.

Just because history is idealized doesn’t mean it was actually better. Hans Rosling said it really well describing his standard of living improvement.

With that said, the world has not adapted to technology in it’s current incarnation yet, along side the other challenges it’s a tough world for all but the very wealthy and even they are showing signs of increased anxiety, stress, and depression.

Being ruled by our evolved cognitive biases through our technology, requires external regulation before the vast majority of the humanity can cope with the change.

I’m over this technological improvement of our lives, and it’s manipulate existence. My hope is that we and I can put our fucking phones down and actually connect with each other again. We aren’t getting out of this economic takeover unless we actually talk to each other like the adults we are supposed to be. Be passionate, but listen. Act with compassion, but defy the fascist ideals. Realize that we are biased and make mistakes, but can learn from those mistakes… Even when as you get older.

You mean like

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362607055_Impact_of_social_media_use_on_critical_thinking_ability_of_university_students

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563216307841

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11528-010-0398-z

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131516302469

Look to history for some answers.

The Denver Post had a opinion piece that talked about how America has seen something like this before.

The Gilded Age, the tumultuous period between roughly 1870 and 1900, was also a time of rapid technological change, of mass immigration, of spectacular wealth and enormous inequality. The era got its name from a Mark Twain novel: gilded, rather than golden, to signify a thin, shiny surface layer. Below it lay the corruption and greed that engulfed the country after the Civil War.

The era survives in the public imagination through still resonant names, including J.P. Morgan, John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt; through their mansions, which now greet awestruck tourists; and through TV shows with extravagant interiors and lavish gowns. Less well remembered is the brutality that underlay that wealth — the tens of thousands of workers, by some calculations, who lost their lives to industrial accidents, or the bloody repercussions they met when they tried to organize for better working conditions.

Also less well remembered is the intensity of political violence that erupted. The vast inequities of the era fueled political movements that targeted corporate titans, politicians, judges and others for violence. In 1892, an anarchist tried to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick after a drawn-out conflict between Pinkerton security guards and workers. In 1901, an anarchist sympathizer assassinated President William McKinley. And so on.

As historian Jon Grinspan wrote about the years between 1865 and 1915, “the nation experienced one impeachment, two presidential elections ‘won’ by the loser of the popular vote and three presidential assassinations.” And neither political party, he added, seemed “capable of tackling the systemic issues disrupting Americans’ lives.” No, not an identical situation, but the description does resonate with how a great many people feel about the direction of the country today.

It’s not hard to see how, during the Gilded Age, armed political resistance could find many eager recruits and even more numerous sympathetic observers. And it’s not hard to imagine how the United States could enter another such cycle.

Not yet… Just waiting

Just as a note, the US average power generation also from the EIA is about 477 GW of power so this 20.7 is about 4% of that.

And yes the Units are ridiculous. kilowatts to megawatts to gigawatts in plus million billions and trillion. Blah. Stop switching.

Good fill-in on that. i think I’d add some context to each which is worth discussing.

• Political instability and weak governance are present.

  • No, there are some arguably elements, but when you compare to the issues you see in the countries who’ve had them “No” is good a simple distilled answer.

• There are deep ethnic, religious, or sectarian tensions.

  • Yes, with the caveat that we are seeing low level tensions as compared to the direct violent and organic engage issues you might see in Syria, Haiti, Yugoslavia, etc. There is racism with violence and tension, but not at the widespread near genocidal level which are the signs which is considered. I admit this is arguably, but worth discussing as it’s a framing issue about gun violence, police use of force, structural violence, etc.

• The economy is declining with high inequality.

  • Economy: not declining - Inequality: high, this in particular is going to be a hard sign to trip, given how widespread the middle class is in the US vs other examples. It’s just a much much larger base that needs to get squeezed so much more before you’ll likely see French like protests about the wage disparity, corruption, or other inequality challenges. It’s very relevant, but just unlikely to get a significant population to say it’s not fair enough to act on it… When they can still go out to eat, watch movies, have disposable income, and more.

• Persistent social unrest and widespread protests occur.

  • Might happen if Trump loses or steals the presidency, this I’m just going to avoid given the continuing discussion.

• External powers are interfering or supporting different factions.

  • Yes, big time, substantiated from a foreign power stand point. I’d point out that this should also describe multinational companies as much as foreign powers.

• There is significant resource scarcity and competition.

  • Not yet, but global warming might make this happen, agree. Starting to see some changes due to some globalization, pandemic, and your point of climate change.

• Militarization and proliferation of arms increase.

  • Well, it’s the USA, agreed… But we are not seeing this based on strictly ethic lines in a way.

• Systematic human rights violations and repression take place.

  • Might happen under Trump

• Society experiences strong ideological polarization.

  • Yes, I’d caveat this with the reality that although it’s perceived as half the country that is polling well for Trump, it’s closer to a third or less. Not that the ideology divide isn’t pertinent, but just that there are about 80 million people who don’t vote in the US, so voter participation in presidential election is about 60%. So perception is that we have huge divide, but it’s driven by less and more extreme voices then the masses.

• Demographic pressures such as rapid population growth or urbanization exist.

  • No, I would actually argue this might be yes. The housing crunch is driven by a rural to urban migration, which has exacerbated the housing shortage. This in addition to the US being an outlier that has kept it’s population growth rate higher than other developed countries has continued to increase the US population, which is only recently beginning to slow. This is not at the same level as other collapsed countries, but is what gives people the perception that the US is struggling.

• The rule of law and justice systems are breaking down.

  • No, agreed although the judge choices and decisions of late leave much to be desired.

• Historical grievances and unresolved conflicts resurface.

  • No, agreed with the caveat that racial tension are at play and perceptions focus this to include immigrants.

So I talked to a PhD who’s work covered civil wars across the world, and asked about this. Turns out there are several signs you need to see which makes a civil war more likely. Most of which we haven’t even gotten close to, because many of them are economic related and right now the US is still the single largest economy in the world where peoples standard of living is still very comfortable.

I asked ChatGPT to describe this and these are the highlights, in order of historical priority?

• Political instability and weak governance are present.
• There are deep ethnic, religious, or sectarian tensions.
• The economy is declining with high inequality.
• Persistent social unrest and widespread protests occur.
• External powers are interfering or supporting different factions.
• There is significant resource scarcity and competition.
• Militarization and proliferation of arms increase.
• Systematic human rights violations and repression take place.
• Society experiences strong ideological polarization.
• Demographic pressures such as rapid population growth or urbanization exist.
• The rule of law and justice systems are breaking down.
• Historical grievances and unresolved conflicts resurface.

Note that the US does have some of these, but not to the evident level that you saw in Rwanda, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Syria, Burundi, Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, Myanmar, Haiti, and others. In short, if you look at the indicators, although the US is indeed troubled, it’s not troubled enough for people to hot the streets with more than riotous intent.

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