Trust

We like to believe we’re in control. That privacy is something we can protect if we just check the right boxes, read the fine print, toggle the right settings. But that belief is crumbling. In 2025, privacy isn’t something we manage — it’s something we quietly surrender, one tap, click, and scroll at a time.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much I rely on Google. Not in an abstract way, but in a daily, tangible, everything-I-do-is-somehow-Google-enabled kind of way. Google Photos, for instance, is frictionless. It uploads every picture, recognises every face, remembers the places I’ve been, and lets me search through a decade of memories in milliseconds. It’s borderline magical. But magic, in the digital world, usually means surveillance. It means giving up control. It means letting a machine learn the people in your life, the patterns of your past, the corners of your history — all in exchange for convenience.

This isn’t just about Google, though. It’s not even about Big Tech specifically. It’s about the fundamental reality that the modern internet has made privacy optional — and expensive. If you want discounted groceries, you need a loyalty card. If you want smart recommendations, you have to share your behaviour. If you want to board a plane, get a mortgage, download an app, or buy anything online, you’re handing over data whether you like it or not. And if you say no? That’s fine — but you’ll be paying in time, money, or friction.

This phenomenon has a name: privacy poverty. The idea that privacy is no longer a right, but a luxury. That those with disposable income can buy out of tracking — pay for encrypted services, private browsers, premium accounts — while everyone else gets a discount in exchange for giving up their digital lives. And that gap is growing. Privacy, like healthcare or education, is becoming another line item on the inequality ledger.

Even those of us who consider ourselves privacy-conscious eventually give in. I’ve been off Facebook for years. I block trackers. I read privacy policies (well, some of them). But my phone still knows everything I do. My bank app still notifies me of every transaction. My travel data still flows through biometric gates. My online purchases still generate behavioural profiles. Surveillance is so deeply embedded in our infrastructure that avoiding it requires opting out of society altogether.

And then there’s AI. AI doesn’t just amplify the problem — it warps it. This new generation of systems doesn’t just store or index your data, it interprets it. It sees patterns, infers emotions, anticipates behaviour. It turns data into insight, insight into prediction, prediction into influence. The more we feed it, the smarter it gets — and the harder it becomes to remember where convenience ends and control begins. AI accelerates everything: our productivity, our communication, our decision-making — and yes, our exposure.

What worries me isn’t that people are willingly trading privacy for convenience. It’s that, more and more, there is no real trade to make. The so-called “threshold” between trust and convenience isn’t a line we cross — it’s a condition we live in. Privacy isn’t lost in a single moment. It’s eroded through a thousand little gestures, most of which don’t feel like choices at all.

So what now? Can we reclaim privacy in an ecosystem that treats it as a premium feature? Can regulation catch up fast enough to offer meaningful protection? Or have we already accepted a future in which data collection is the price of participation? These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re the stakes of the world we’re building — and living in.

We often say privacy is a basic right. But we rarely act like it. In practice, it’s more like a silent agreement: give us everything, and we’ll make life easier. Reject that deal, and you’re on your own. The truth is, convenience won. Quietly, efficiently, and thoroughly. And if we don’t start rethinking the terms, we won’t be asking where the line is — we’ll be asking if there was ever one at all.