Privacy Has Gone to Hell
Privacy used to mean not collecting information you had no business collecting.
Now it means collecting everything, writing a privacy policy about it, and asking people to click Accept.
That is not privacy.
That is paperwork.
Consent became theatre
The law still says consent should be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous.
The web translated that into banners.
Accept all.
Manage options.
Legitimate interest.
Partners.
Purposes.
Vendors.
Then, somewhere behind three menus and 47 toggles, a button to say no.
The European Data Protection Board has an entire set of guidelines on deceptive design patterns in interfaces because this became such a problem.
That should tell us something.
We normalised surveillance
The strange bit is how quickly this became normal.
Websites track behaviour because everyone else does.
Apps ask for data because they might find a use for it later.
Platforms build enormous behavioural profiles because advertising systems reward them for doing it.
Then we call the result “personalisation”.
The privacy argument often starts too late.
It asks:
Did the user consent?
A better question is:
Why are you collecting this at all?
Privacy by paperwork is a failure
The ICO’s guidance on cookies is straightforward: tell people the cookies are there, explain what they do, and get consent where required.
Somehow we turned that principle into one of the worst user experiences on the modern web.
We have built an enormous legal and technical machinery around asking permission to do things users often never wanted in the first place.
Maybe the better system is simpler.
Collect less.
Keep less.
Share less.
Need less consent because you are doing less that requires it.
That would look a lot more like privacy.