All the others here in the comments have put up some pretty good answers for why privacy is important. All pretty good but there’s one point I heard couple of years ago that really stuck with me.

You see, my threat model isn’t really extreme. In my current position I don’t really need to worry much about the lack of privacy. What made me care about privacy though is the following:

Imagine a town where nobody cares about privacy as they “have nothing to worry about” so they all have their window blinds open and allow pretty much everyone to see into their daily lives. It’s the norm. Now imagine that in this town, it is considered evil and worthy of public shaming to have blond hair. In this town is one person with blond hair that has had to hide her hair color with a wig for all her life. But when she gets home she closes the blinds, takes off her wig and finally has a chance to be herself.

The rest of the town folks don’t see her blond hair, but they notice that she is the only one that occasionally covers her windows. She must be hiding something.

This is why privacy norms matter. Not necesserily to protect ourselves. But to protect others.

To keep yourself safe from any potential threat actor at any point in the future, and to prevent yourself from being manipulated psychologically via advertisements.

Imagine a carefree Instagram user, whose personal photos have been leaked. Can they instantly become free of stalking, impersonation attacks and cyberbullying? No. They will suffer a lot of mental harassment due to it, alongside other devastating effects.

Let us imagine, now, a privacy conscious person. They know what they post, where they post and how they post (their online persona). Can information be leaked on them, or them being impersonated, and all this linked to their real life identity beyond what they decided to show the world? No.

Therefore, privacy levels allow you to bind and limit the scope of what the world sees about you. Being uncaring of privacy means you become an open book vulnerable to all kinds of things at any point in future.

I have been a victim of impersonation and cyberbullying attacks as a privacy advocate in the past couple years. And yet, nothing fazes me because nobody can doxx me as long as I control the scope of data the world sees about me. That way, I can defend myself, and if they leave themself vulnerable, I can go on the offensive however I like.

As for advertisements, you can be data tracked and manipulated into buying useless and unneeded stuff on Amazon, eBay, your supermarket store nearby and so on. This is psychological stuff, for which ad makers and these shopping portals have hired neuroscience experts to play with human minds on a mass scale, using simple elements like vibrant colours, bold big text, neon signboards and such tricks.

To prove this psychological manipulation to yourself, just try changing display colour on your smartphone to grayscale, and watch the phone become too boring instantly. You will be surprised.

My threat model guide: https://lemmy.ml/post/34223

I would put it into three categories:

1. Safety

Bad privacy opens you up to several crimes, e.g.:

• Identity Theft
• Spear Phishing
• Doxxing
• https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity/issues/99

Yes, in an ideal world, the criminals wouldn’t do these crimes and telling people to heed their privacy for this is borderline victim-blaming, but our legal systems still seem completely overwhelmed with the reality that is the internet.

2. Psychological Warfare

Advertisements have long gone past their initial purpose of informing customers, so that they can make better decisions.
They actively try to get customers to make worse decisions, i.e. buying overpriced articles and buying articles that they wouldn’t otherwise buy.
Really, an advertisement that informs you of the most cost-effective product for something that you would have bought anyways, is a horrible advertisement.

And one way to make ads less effective, is to not give them personal data.

This is also particularly important with political ads, where you may be communicated a wholly different message than your neighbor.

And speaking of politics,

3. Right to Democracy

Democracy doesn’t come for free. Every so often, it needs to be defended with protests.

And as such comes the question: Would you feel comfortable organizing or participating in a protest?
Would you also still, if an extremist party in your country came to power?

Ultimately, it’s a deed of every citizen in a democracy to be able to defend it. And for that, you need privacy.

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another analogy to add would be: why would one close their toilet door if they have nothing to hide? it’s because it is your damn right to have privacy. it is simply your own business and of no-one else’s concern

There’s a lot of answers for that question below and above my comment, each one pointing to multiple factors but for me concerning about privacy it is for saving yourself from the sickness and madness that internet has turned into, it is about seeing things from another perspective. Ads and propaganda are used for spreading influence “Eat it, Watch it, Subscribe to it”, so you’re being influenced any time on web, so that you are having your mind weakened.

Basically concerning about privacy is for freeing yourself, build your mindset, mood, personality and finding stuff that suits your needs. When concerning about privacy you are no longer a marionette. YOU can do things all by yourself.

I am very worried about kids born on this era, if they keep the mindset “I can’t use a PC without Windows, without Youtube, without Android” and all the major platforms, they’ll be lost.