Choosing between the right to privacy and freedom of speech is obviously not an easy one because as much as many of us don’t like to talk, we’d hate to be silenced when we finally decide to do so. And it can be quite painful to want to say something but fear of being persecuted will force you to keep quiet.
As a result, you’ll live an extremely unhappy life because you have so much you want to say and then be unable to say it because you have to endure whatever injustice is being meted out to you. This is a scary notion, but I think it’s just the lesser of two evils. That’s why if I had to choose, I’d rather lose my freedom of speech than my right to privacy.
The truth is, the right to privacy is not just about people invading your personal space, it’s so much more. They say the only people who can betray you are those you trust, this is because they’re the ones you gave your secrets and they ended up using it against you! If someone is privy to every little detail of your life, they can control it as they see fit.
This is why one of the most expensive markets in the world is the data market! All these apps we use on a daily basis, apps that claim to be “free” to use but are never really free because we pay for them with our personal data. And the funny thing is that we agree to all this and give the companies the right to do whatever they want with it every time we click on thatI Agree button.
So, what do they do? They sell it, use it to give us targeted ads, and also to decide what kind of content we see on our timeline. That’s why on social media, the kind of content you consume on a daily basis is usually the same. If you’re into gospel, most of the content will be gospel-based. If you’re into comedy skits, that’s mostly what you’ll find. And the list goes on.
Data is so valuable and companies are making huge bucks off it! There are some apps that shouldn’t even exist, they do next to nothing special. And that’s because it wasn’t created to be special, it was just to be a data farm. This is a gross breach of privacy, sadly it was done with our permission!
So, my dear friends, I’ll cling to my rights to freedom because when the government or some big corporation decides to take my privacy from me, there’ll be ridiculously little I can do to stop them. Except fight for it. Freedom of speech, however, can never be taken away. No matter the oppression.
There was a time when freedom of the press was like a myth, but that’s all in the past. During the military era, no one could dare say a word against the dictators, yet people spoke out all the time even at risk of getting imprisoned and killed. Even Wole Soyinka had to run to reside in the south-east after exercising his freedom. That’s the power of speech, even in persecution, you can still talk and pass your message! You can never be put down unless you give up.
However, with the breach of privacy, it’ll be as if everyone in the world is watching you and following your every movement. You won’t be safe at home, you won’t be safe online. Anywhere at all that you go, you’ll feel those eyes on your back and it can be so unsettling. Breach of privacy can easily lead to blackmail, extortion, and the like which can make you do things you’d never have thought you would do.
But if freedom of speech should be rescinded today, people will always talk. Although not as freely as before, they’ll still talk and there’s no law on earth that can shut the mouth of every single individual.
All in all, I sincerely hope we never get to this point where we have to choose. Or where we even lose our rights. However even these days, we don’t know if the rights still matter. We have freedom of speech but no one listens when we speak, and if we speak out of turn we could be persecuted. Freedom of the press but we can never be certain if they tell the truth or if they just feed us whatever the government and huge corporations tell them to.
There’s not much freedom in the world, and that’s a fact. I guess we just have to come to terms with it and get rid of the idea that it’s a free world. Because whether we like it or not, there’ll always be people in the background plotting and mapping out the course of the world.
Yeah… it’s a really scary notion.
