My privacy is important as a matter of consent.
But I should not have to hide my sexuality or identity, nor my politics and if my support of a marginalized group exists then what is the point of hiding it while they are oppressed? What benefit does that bring?
Encouraging people to be private in their views and anymore and anonymous in their "support" is exactly how fascists crush their opposition.
You shouldn't but you can't and will never be able to know what the future looks like. You could be in libertine Berlin of the 1920s and be hunted down by fascists a decade later because of your ancestry or sexuality.
And don't think that can't happen quickly again, it's not much of a hyperbole given the way the world is going. And nowadays, once you put something on the internet, good luck getting rid of it. So I'd be very careful with what I disclose, it's not paranoia any more. I'm European and flew to the US earlier this year and got asked to disclose my social media profiles. I have none, deleted them a decade ago. Is that sane or moral? No but if that's how the US rolls these days imagine where else your data can end up.
You might find something I wrote interesting. Then whatever public info there is on me helps you to get to know me a bit better. You may stop there and forget about me, or you may try to reach out.
There is nothing wrong about that.
There could be a number of reasons. Am I not trying hard enough?
Me googling your shit might lead to your real name, your family photos etc
Just because it's all public doesn't mean you want the cashier from the supermarket following you around to your family picnic
or just because you like to let the sunlight in doesn't mean you want random pedestrians peering in through your windows..
I can't believe this needs to be spelled out here: "Public" life is compartmentalized.
This has never happened to me. Out of the space of “bad things that can happen to me” I don’t have time to worry about things with such a small probability of occurring.
An estimated 2.7 million Australian adults have experienced stalking since the age of 15, according to new results from the 2021-22 Personal Safety Survey (PSS) released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
William Milne, ABS head of crime and justice statistics, said “We found one in five women and one in 15 men have been stalked.
“Women were almost eight times more likely to be stalked by a male than by a female, while men were stalked by a male and by a female at a similar rate.”
It's about someone "connecting the dots" between ALL your public activities.
Someone following you OUTSIDE their "space" that you visited and then invading your other spaces.
People don't usually want to mix their social circles. e.g. nobody likes a snoopy overprotective parent following their [teen] kids around wherever the children go with their friends.
Nobody likes their spouse coming uninvited on a night out with the guys/gals.
Or, when you reply to someone on HN or Reddit, and they don't like what you say about 1 specific topic, then they go and downvote ALL your comments about everything else you said!
That's perfectly legal. It's allowed. Nothing's stopping it. And hey, you commented publicly so you were "asking for it", right?
BUT IT'S A FUCKING DICK MOVE
I do understand what you are getting at. I just don’t find people repulsive by being curious of me; even if they find materials I myself did not make public.
As an aside, I sometimes stumble upon websites of people who write and show pictures of themselves and their family. I find them beautiful[0] to visit and hope more people would do that, as was more common 20 years ago.
If they do it just to reach out to you with good intentions then it's fine. But if they do it to dox you or harm you in any other way, then it's not fine.
Disturbed people with access to this data can use it to harm people, like the Ebay exec who stalked a critic or the occasional police officer who stalks a romantic interest.
Customers of such datasets: banks, insurance companies, HR companies, marketing firms, governments, etc.
Corporations aren't people. They do not and cannot present a personal threat to you.
Even your trailing example falls flat on this: for the activity to be distressing you had to recontextualize it back to the individual level.
...is this for real
Holy fucking hell. Someone please, I can't