What is privacy?

What is privacy, really? I’ve been trying to answer that question for years. As someone who’s worked in communications for 15 years, and now leads the Web3Privacy Now Academy, my job has been to explain complex ideas—often deeply technical ones—to people in a way that makes sense. And yet, even after years inside the privacy space, I still struggle to explain what privacy is in a way that lands. Not just factually, but emotionally.

When I talk to people outside the space, I often find myself in half-hour conversations—layering metaphors, examples, real-world consequences—just to help someone understand why privacy matters. Unlike security, which can be summed up in a sentence (“No one steals your money”), privacy resists simplicity. It's not about one clear threat. It's about something deeper and harder to name.

That tension led me to a thought that I now want to explore:

**                                             What if privacy is the freedom of online behavior?**

What is freedom?

We often talk about freedom of speech—this sacred right to say what we believe without punishment. But online, even when no one silences your words, everything else is being tracked: every click, scroll, hesitation, misstep. Everything has consequences. And that raises the question—can we truly say we are free?

In political philosophy, Isaiah Berlin distinguished between “negative freedom” (freedom from interference) and “positive freedom” (freedom to act, to realize one's potential). When we apply that lens to digital life, it becomes clear that privacy is not just a negative freedom—it's not just about stopping surveillance. It’s also a positive freedom: the precondition for agency, exploration, and creativity online. It’s a freedom of behavior.

Without privacy, we don’t just lose control over our data—we lose the invisible space in which we think, move, and evolve without being watched. Just as surveillance chills speech in authoritarian regimes, invisible digital tracking shapes behavior in subtle and powerful ways. The platforms don’t tell you how to act—but you learn, quickly, what content gets rewarded, what tone gets amplified, and what kind of person the system favors. It’s the absence of the freedom of behavior.

This isn’t dystopian fiction. It’s now.

Take job applications. Some hiring platforms track how quickly you fill out forms, whether you apply late at night, or if you copy-paste too much text. These small behavioral signals are fed into scoring systems that quietly rank you before a human even looks at your name. No one told you the rules—but you’re being judged all the same. It’s the absence of the freedom of behavior.

Or pricing. You might shop online and see a product for fifty euros, while someone else sees it for forty, just because they live in a different neighborhood or use a different device. The system has decided, based on your behavior and profile, how much you’re willing to pay. You never had a chance to negotiate. It’s the absence of the freedom of behavior.

“You’re not choosing who to love”

Dating apps? Same thing. Behind the scenes, they score your profile based on photos, grammar, how others engage with you—and then show you a filtered version of the world. You’re not choosing who to love. You’re choosing from those whom the algorithm decided you should see. It’s the absence of the freedom of behavior.

These examples reflect a shift in power that’s been deeply explored by Shoshana Zuboff, who coined the term surveillance capitalism. She describes a world where human experience is turned into behavioral data, which is then sold to predict—and increasingly shape—our future actions. According to Zuboff, we are not just users of digital platforms; we are raw material for behavioral prediction markets.

This is also where my work with the Web3Privacy Now Academy comes in. The Academy emerged out of a simple realization: there’s no single, trusted educational space focused on Web3 privacy. So we built one. A space to gather scattered resources, produce accessible content, create courses, define terms, and build a foundation of understanding—not just for developers or privacy advocates, but for anyone who wants to explore the topic.

Can we finally get rid of anxiety?

And yet—even within the Academy, and even with years of communications experience—it’s still hard to explain privacy in a way that sticks. That’s why this metaphor of freedom of behavior has become meaningful to me. It’s not just a way to simplify a concept—it’s a way to frame digital life in terms of autonomy, not anxiety.

This mirrors the political urgency described by Timothy Snyder, who reminds us that freedom isn’t something we automatically inherit—it’s something we practice. He writes about positive freedom as a form of resistance: not just the right to be left alone, but the right to act, to choose, to shape our lives consciously. In a digital world increasingly driven by profiling and prediction, privacy becomes the architecture of that freedom.

We often frame privacy as protection—something defensive, something we need to shield ourselves. But I think it’s also something creative. Privacy gives us the space to think without shaping ourselves for an audience. It gives us the freedom to ask dumb questions, make strange choices, and grow in unpredictable directions. It’s not just about hiding—it’s about becoming. And that’s the freedom of behavior

And if freedom of speech was one of the great pillars of the twentieth century, maybe freedom of behavior is what the twenty-first will demand. Not just the right to speak—but the right to move, explore, and exist in digital space without being reduced to a prediction.

Maybe privacy isn’t the opposite of openness? Maybe it’s what makes openness possible in the first place?