I’m not cynical, overall I think everything will be fine and will continue advocate for privacy. But all the effort towards privacy seems like kind of Sisyphus myth. I don’t really gain anything by being privacy conscious, I just regain part of what people used to have before internet. Best case scenario is that I don’t exist in eyes of big corps. This just adds to today’s complexity which requires constant effort, just so that things wouldn’t be taken from me.
For me, privacy in digital world is pratical of self awareness. You do everything cautiously (means constant effort like you said), aware and take care about all technique and information gathering about us from big corps to not let them run free unconsciously in our mind, have self esteem to control what we can control so we’re not overboarded by information overload, regain ourselves as full human beings with reason “there’s a thing I need to hide” that keep us sanity hygiene, and deep thought about every platform we used + calculate the impact from that.
Everything what we carefully plan will not according to that in digital or real world forever, and that’s how this world works. But as an individual and human beings, we have a choice on what we stand for. The word “Privacy” for me is just a pop culture in digital world after whistleblowers become trend (Julian Assange and Edward Snowden case for example). But essentially, “Privacy” is our human rights and “self defense mechanism” as a total individual to stand for our rights when some group with scale of power using that position only for their own good rather than for the good of masses.
There’s a distinction between “for own good and for the good of masses” that basically return on how we perceives our own needs to not over-have something that only can controlled by self awareness and self control according from life experience and the knowledge we have. By means, regain our privacy is to regain our human rights.