I’ve been reflecting on something that, in theory, we all share: the value of privacy and its connection to ethics.
I’ve always seen privacy as a fundamental right. Something that shouldn’t depend on context, platforms, or rules, but on trust between people.
Privacy isn’t just technical, it’s ethical. Every time someone has a private conversation, they extend a moral pact toward the other person. It’s an act of trust: “I’m sharing this with you because I trust you to respect the implicit boundaries of what’s private.”
When that pact is broken, it’s not just a message that gets exposed, it’s the ethical foundation of any community that claims to value privacy.
Some people justify these breaches by appealing to “gray areas,” or by saying that if someone wanted to keep something private, they shouldn’t have written it.
But that reasoning sounds a lot like what big tech companies use to justify surveillance: “if you don’t want your data leaked, don’t share it.”
And I think most of us are here precisely because we believe the opposite.
I’m not trying to point fingers or restart debates, but I’d like to leave a thought:
if a community built around privacy starts to relativize the very principles that sustain it, how different is it from what it claims to protect us from?
Privacy without ethics only makes sense in an isolated world where you’re the only one who exists.
In a society, in a community, ethics is what allows us to preserve both privacy and trust between people.
And today, I think it’s worth remembering that and reflecting on it.