Ask Paul: October 6 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s another incredible set of reader questions to kick off the weekend a bit early. So settle in, this is a long one.
Belief isn’t enough
JustMe asks:

These days between smartphones and computers, consumers give up a TON of information - willingly or not. Tech in general is everywhere and constantly wanting access to your data. This looks to be getting even worse with the current AI push. My question: will we ever get to a point where the consumer (at least in the US) will say enough is enough when it comes to data protection along the same lines as Europe's GDPR? Even California's laws dont have the teeth Europe's do.

This topic disturbs me greatly because I agree that the U.S., in particular, is not just behind on this issue but is dangerously stupid, and that the broader problem is that you can’t convince the general public of the issue.

I will use a simple example: I advocate the use of Brave for all the right privacy and security reasons (and I understand that most will not go that route, even in the technical circles we’re in here, and so I then I advise that if you’re going to stick with a browser that’s designed to track you, like Chrome or Edge, then at least install the right extensions to protect yourself.) But the pushback I get, even from technical people, is sometimes astonishing. After I railed against Edge one time on Twitter recently, a guy who also writes in the technology space, retorted that he sticks with Edge because it offers a History button in its toolbar and Brave does not. So that was his choice: The convenience of a stupid feature (just type CTRL + H for f’s sake) outweighs his personal privacy and security. And that’s a smart/educated person.

We have a lot of problems in the U.S. but if I can overgeneralize, they mostly come down to people behaving against their best interests, and I think it’s tied to the whole American individualism thing, that no one can tell us what to do, we can’t stand people who think they’re smarter than us and know better, and we’re so confident in our non-existent knowledge or skills that we just blunder through life. And there is no end to this. You can explain calmly and with great evidence why a conspiracy theory is complete nonsense, but you will only be met with, “I just know it’s true” or “I just believe it” or similar, and there is no getting past that. That’s the conversation stopper because the other side is not listening.

And that’s for important things like vaccines or justifying domestic terrorism. When you get to something like Google and all of the wonderful functionality they give us for free---the answer to any question, instantly, the ability to get to where you’re driving as quickly and efficiently as possible, etc.---no one is even paying attention anymore. They are happy to give up some personal information to have those features. Happy to not pay for it (directly). And view any step back (by...