A Critical Take on Privacy in a Datafied Society
Marco Cremonini

TL;DR
This paper critically examines the complex factors affecting online privacy, analyzing industry practices, societal impacts, and regulatory approaches, with a focus on the EU's GDPR and emerging AI policies.
Contribution
It offers a nuanced critique of the simplistic narratives around privacy, exploring industry motives, behavioral effects, and the limitations of current regulations like GDPR.
Findings
Industry practices contribute to privacy erosion
GDPR has both strengths and critical flaws
Emerging AI policies pose new privacy challenges
Abstract
Privacy is an increasingly feeble constituent of the present datafied world and apparently the reason for that is clear: powerful actors worked to invade everyone's privacy for commercial and surveillance purposes. The existence of those actors and their agendas is undeniable, but the explanation is overly simplistic and contributed to create a narrative that tends to preserve the status quo. In this essay, I analyze several facets of the lack of online privacy and idiosyncrasies exhibited by privacy advocates, together with characteristics of the industry mostly responsible for the datafication process and why its asserted high effectiveness should be openly inquired. Then I discuss of possible effects of datafication on human behavior, the prevalent market-oriented assumption at the base of online privacy, and some emerging adaptation strategies. In the last part, the regulatory…
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Taxonomy
TopicsPrivacy, Security, and Data Protection · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
