What is Consumer Privacy?

Abstract

Consumer privacy is a societal consensus about unfair interferences with autonomy.

Consumers seeking privacy pursue a rational strategy from a deterrence theory lens. This is because giving companies data and attention transfers power to companies, putting us all at risk. Companies have mixed, changing, and even unknowable motives. Consumers no options to punish, to impose costs, or to deny benefits to companies that cheat. That is, unless consumers have privacy laws.

While often framed as ``worry,'' privacy methods have matured and offer a principled way to analyze information practices. Consumer privacy is executed through commonly-accepted information norms. These norms are powerful in unexpected ways.

If one cares about the future, one ought to care about privacy, because the future of innovation won't necessarily be led by the best. The new mediocracy will be led by the platforms most secure in collecting data and attention.

This essay concludes with three interventions: First, we need a strong firebreak against government access to consumer data; second, we have to make substantive choices about disallowed information practices; finally, advocates and the business community need to find compromises. We might find compromise through collective bargaining and an enforcement posture that creates general deterrence.

This essay was delivered as a lecture, prepared for a Stanford University's Free Speech, Democracy, and the Internet course in Fall 2022.

Keywords: deterrence theory, shaping, prediction, game theory of privacy, hiding strategy

JEL Classification: K2