Comment by digging

But do you think they're taking a measured inventory of the possible consequences, both personal and societal, and saying, "No, I don't value that" ?

Extremely few decisions that people make are deeply calculated with cold logic. Most decisions are primarily unconscious, automatic, and emotional.

Example: A persons hears it's good to have a webcam cover, so they get one. Nobody mentions doing it for their phone, so they never even think about it. Then someday a friend does mention it, but that would be an inconvenient change, so the person's gut puts up resistance against considering it too strongly. They give in to their emotional response, instead of doing the hard work of changing their emotions based on the knowledge they have.

At no point in the above scenario would the person state "I don't think mass surveillance is a bad thing." For me, that's why I mean when I say people "aren't ok with it."

If one's definition of people being "ok with mass surveillance" just means they tolerate it, that they don't sufficiently resist it (and what level of resistance is sufficient? For a person with a webcam cover but no phone cam cover? Does adding a phone cam cover mean they've declared their opposition to mass surveillance?), then how can you say people aren't okay with literally everything evil or wrong? Most people just won't summon enough activation energy to fight any given injustice around them, no matter how egregious it is. That's not a reflection of their morals and values, it's a reflection of how fucking tired we all are.

I would challenge you to offer up in detail how strongly you have worked to resist mass surveillance in your life. You're logged in and posting on HN, so my guess is, you haven't worked hard enough at it according to someone's metric. Do you have a cover on your phone camera? Just the front one or both? Do you have a cover on the microphones? Do you let others add your number in their contacts or do you refuse to ever give out your real phone number?