Privacy Is Not a Price You Pay for Growth
Privacy Salon Debate in Denver
Today I participated in a Privacy Salon in Denver where we debated a proposition that cuts to the core of the modern privacy movement:
“Limits on privacy are a price worth paying for mainstream adoption of cryptographic privacy.”
I was on the “no” side alongside Matt Green, with Evin McMullen and Wei Dai arguing “yes.”
It was a lively, thoughtful exchange that forced us to confront a deeper question: is weakening privacy simply the cost of scale?
Below is my opening statement from the debate.
Opening Statement
The proposition assumes something dangerous: that privacy is negotiable. That it is a dial we can turn down in exchange for popularity.
But privacy is not a marketing feature. It is the condition that makes freedom possible.
Here are 4 big reasons why limits on privacy are absolutely not a price worth paying for mainstream adoption.
1. Privacy Is Foundational to Freedom
First, privacy is the condition that makes free thought, dissent, experimentation, and innovation possible.
Without it, we lose the ability to protest, express ourselves, have whistleblowers and dissidents and all kinds of self-correcting mechanisms in society, without fear of persecution.
Privacy is something that shouldn’t be compromised because it’s the foundation of a free society.
2. Lowering Privacy Lowers the Baseline
Second, when we weaken privacy in the name of mainstream adoption, we lower the baseline of what we’re willing to accept.
“Temporary” trade-offs become norms. Surveillance that creeps in rarely gets rolled back.
Every time we accept a small expansion of surveillance in the name of convenience or scale, that weakened baseline becomes the new normal. Privacy has been decimated over the past decades due to continual compromises in the name of things like mass adoption.
3. Misdiagnosing the Problem
Third, when companies claim that privacy limits are necessary for adoption, what they often mean is that their revenue model depends on collecting more data, or that redesigning their platform would be inconvenient.
The barrier to adoption is not privacy. It is lazy product design and surveillance-based monetization.
Usability vs. Privacy is a false dichotomy.
We don’t say: “Seatbelts are complicated, so we removed them for mass adoption.”
or “Fraud protection slows down transactions, so we eliminated it.”
Safety and usability are engineering problems.
Privacy is also an engineering problem.
4. Security Risks
Finally, there are security risks of compromising on privacy. Systems that collect, profile, share, and embed personal data into their core architecture expand the attack surface for the users of these systems.
These data troves are high-value targets for hackers, foreign adversaries, criminal networks, and insider abuse. History is filled with massive breaches where millions of people had their information exposed because the system was designed to hoard data.
In cybersecurity, one of the most basic and powerful principles is data minimization.
The proposition frames this debate as privacy versus adoption.
The real trade-off is privacy versus concentrated systemic risk.
Weak privacy increases breach risk, insider abuse, state leverage, geopolitical vulnerability. And in an AI-driven world, it increases the scale and automation of exploitation.
In Closing
Privacy isn’t negotiable. It’s the boundary that prevents mainstream adoption from becoming mainstream control.
Mass adoption without privacy produces centralized power, behavioral manipulation, and democratic fragility.
This debate is not about whether limiting privacy can accelerate growth. It is about whether trading long-term freedom for short-term scale is a price we should be willing to pay. And the answer is no.
Because what’s at stake is security, freedom, and human dignity, and the cost of losing that in society for future generations is too high.
Yours In Privacy,
Naomi
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NBTV. Because Privacy Matters.