Privacy

I'm reminded of this:

Snowden added that people who use the "I have nothing to hide" line don't understand the basic foundation of human rights. "Nobody needs to justify why they 'need' a right," he said. "The burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right."

If one person chooses to disregard his right to privacy, that doesn't automatically mean everyone should follow suit, either. "You can't give away the rights of others because they're not useful to you," Snowden said. "More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority."

We also see the willingness of companies like ring to hand over footage to law enforcement without the consent of the camera's "owner".

We see Facebook making shadow profiles for people who never signed up based on data from people who know them.

We see state attorneys general in the US subpeana apps that track periods to enforce anti-abortion measures.

Having nothing to hide falsely supposes a just system of governance. Data collected from you could put others at risk, and could put you at risk whenever the law decides.

Also... These companies mishandle our data all the time. The 2024 at&t data breach comes to mind.

Data harvesting isn't about trying to find saucy details about you that can be used against you like blackmail. It's not about whether someone has "nothing to hide."

It's so corporations/advertisers/influencers know your routines, know your interests, know what kinds of content you respond to, know where you get information from, etc. in order to use those avenues to influence your behavior. And advertisers just using it to sell you a product only scratches the surface. What they really want is to know exactly what lies they can tell you and how to dress them up so that you'll believe them without question.

This is what was discovered when Cambridge Analytica blew up years ago. And then, by some "miracle," it was almost completely forgotten within a year of occurring, and no meaningful actions were taken to prevent similar threat actors from manipulating people again. And yet we are seeing dozens of examples in recent years of deliberate misinformation campaigns being used to influence global politics, all because people believe it's okay to freely give up their data because they have "nothing to hide."

I'd add that to the first point that (and sort of answers the question in the 2nd) that the goal is to use this data to make associations and inferences to better get a picture of who the user is and what their experiences are.

An emphasis on a lack of control as to what data is collected should be emphasized. Take the FB shadow accounts for users that don't even sign up. Much of your data is provided freely (mostly unwittingly) by people you associate with or simply are proximal too.