Your Privacy as a Business Model
Privacy is fundamental to a full, free and meaningful life. Without privacy there are no real relationships, no dissent, no room to grow or make mistakes. Yet we keep hearing the argument "I have nothing to hide."
In the VPRO Tegenlicht episode "Your privacy as a business model", Signal president Meredith Whittaker presents a confronting thought experiment: what if all your messages, doubts, jokes and intimate conversations were public and searchable by family, colleagues and bosses?
Privacy is not about guilt or innocence — it's about the complexity of being human.
Harvesting Data for Profit
The complexity of our humanity doesn't generate much direct revenue. Less privacy means, for big tech companies, more data to harvest for profit. Too few people realize that technology is built by people with very concrete interests.
Marketing speak, myths about superintelligence and vague privacy promises are, according to Whittaker, far too rarely questioned. The dominant model is simple: your data is their product.
Signal: Proof That Another Way Is Possible
With Signal, Whittaker is building an alternative ecosystem. Signal flips the dominant model: no data collection, no ads, no profit pressure — just minimal data, open-source code and verifiable privacy.
Trust is not based on charisma or promises, but on verifiable technology. That's exactly why Signal is non-profit: because a data-driven profit logic is incompatible with real privacy.
About Meredith Whittaker
Meredith Whittaker is president of messaging app Signal. She pushes back against the idea that privacy is only for people who have something to hide. Whittaker deliberately refuses to share personal details about herself — not out of secrecy, but on principle.
The idea that everyone should display their private life to be taken seriously as an expert, she calls bizarre and dangerous. This normalization of exposure feeds exactly the system in which personal data is used for control, manipulation and profit.
Privacy Is a Human Right
Privacy, Whittaker emphasizes, is not a luxury or individual hobby, but a human right. The system that broke down privacy was built by people, and can therefore also be changed by people.
Signal is not an endpoint, but proof that a different technological path is possible. And on OurSoftware.eu you'll find many more European alternatives that respect your privacy.
📺 Watch the full episode
VPRO Tegenlicht — "Your privacy as a business model" with Meredith Whittaker
Watch on VPRO Tegenlicht →