Comment by bunderbunder

Tangentially, there was an internet kerfuffle about someone getting in trouble for having flower planters hanging out the window of their Manhattan high rise apartment a while back, and people's responses really struck me.

People from less dense areas generally saw this as draconian nanny state absurdity. People who had spent time living in dense urban areas with high rise residential buildings, on the other hand, were more likely to think, "Yeah, duh, this rule makes perfect sense."

Similarly, I've noticed that my fellow data scientists are MUCH less likely to have social media accounts. I'd like to think it's because we are more likely to understand the kinds of harm that are possible with this kind of data collection, and just how irreparable that harm can be.

Perhaps Americans are less likely to support Europe-style privacy rules than Europeans are because Americans are less likely than Europeans to know people who saw first-hand some of what was happening in Europe in the 20th century.