In the 1950s, if you bought a Coca-Cola, you’d pay a deposit on the bottle. When you finished your drink, you’d return it to the store, and Coca-Cola would collect, wash, and reuse these bottles up to 50 times. This system worked efficiently for decades, with return rates often exceeding 95%. [1]
Today, that bottle is your problem.
This shift didn't happen by accident. Through carefully orchestrated campaigns and lobbying efforts, corporations like Coca-Cola helped create the narrative that recycling was the consumer's responsibility, not theirs. The "Keep America Beautiful" campaign, funded by beverage and packaging companies, masterfully shifted the focus from corporate waste to individual littering.[2]
Sound familiar? It should.
A Pattern Emerges
Open your Microsoft Office app today, and you might find your documents are being used for AI training–a setting you never knowingly enabled (see PSA at the end of the post on how to disable). Check your LinkedIn settings, and you’ll discover similar data collection practices buried in obscure menus. Each time, the responsibility to protect your privacy falls on you.
But this isn’t just about privacy or recycling. It’s part of a larger story that's been unfolding for decades.
Remember when trusted news organizations were the gatekeepers of information? Now, we’re all expected to be fact-checkers. Remember when pensions were the norm? We’re supposed to be investment experts. Healthcare? We need to become our best health advocates. Legal documents? We must do our best to become amateur lawyers, too—read those NDAs carefully.
Every trip to the grocery store has become an exercise in data analysis. We scrutinize labels, cross-reference ingredients, and calculate sugar content because those sugar and corn syrup lobbyists work circles around us. Our medicine cabinets require the same vigilance—checking drug interactions, understanding side effects, and monitoring dosages.
The Impossible Job & GROWING Burden of personal literacy
The privacy burden is just the latest chapter in a decades-long story of shifting responsibilities from institutions to individuals. It would be a full-time job –if we didn't already have full-time jobs. Consider the evolution:
News Literacy: We've moved from professional editors curating our news to individuals needing to navigate a complex landscape of misinformation, bias, and digital manipulation. We must now be our own fact-checkers and editors.
Financial Literacy: Gone are the days when a simple savings account and pension would suffice. Today, individuals must understand complex financial products, manage their retirement portfolios, and navigate cryptocurrency markets.
Health Advocacy: The paternalistic doctor-patient relationship has given way to "informed consumers" who must research conditions, understand treatment options, and advocate for their care in complex healthcare systems.
Legal Understanding: Individuals are expected to understand and navigate increasingly complex legal documents without professional guidance, from terms of service to employment contracts.
Food and Medicine: We scrutinize nutrition labels, research ingredients, cross-reference drug interactions, and make daily decisions that once fell to professionals. Every trip to the grocery store becomes an exercise in data analysis.
There is a clear pattern: wherever data exists—whether it’s nutritional information, financial statements, medical records, or privacy settings—individuals are now expected to become fluent, literate, and responsible for making informed decisions. The privacy burden isn’t unique; it's part of a broader societal shift toward individual responsibility in an increasingly complex world.
The privacy challenge is particularly daunting because of its technical nature and rapid evolution. Just as we’ve learned to read nutrition labels and understand financial statements, we must now become fluent in the language of data privacy—a language that changes almost daily.
The parallels to the recycling shift are striking in terms of how the corporations are shifting to the burden to the citizen-consumer:
Default Responsibility: Just as consumers now must figure out which plastics are recyclable and where to recycle them, individuals must navigate complex privacy settings across dozens of services.
Obscured Options: Like how beverage companies downplayed deposit systems in favor of individual recycling, tech companies often bury privacy controls in labyrinthine settings menus.
Time and Effort Cost: Both recycling and privacy management require significant individual effort that was once handled at the corporate level.
The Broken Contract
This wasn't the deal. The social contract never included a clause requiring citizens to become experts in multiple technical domains just to participate in society. We agreed to follow laws, pay taxes, and participate in civic duties. In return, we were supposed to receive protection and services.
Instead, we got an impossible homework assignment.
The companies crafting these systems have teams of lawyers, technical experts, and dedicated resources. They have financial incentives to make things complex—but we only have our lunch breaks to figure it all out.
A Path Forward
Just as the bottle deposit system once worked, we can envision better systems for today's challenges. Imagine:
Privacy settings that protect by default, not exploit
Independent oversight bodies monitoring corporate practices
Universal, easily understood privacy indicators (think nutrition labels for data)
Funded support systems for navigating complex choices
The solution isn't abandoning individual responsibility entirely. Rather, it's creating systems where responsible behavior is the default, not an expertise-demanding exception.
The Choice
We stand at a crossroads. We can accept this endless accumulation of individual burdens, watching as each new technology and service adds to our growing list of responsibilities. Or we can recognize this pattern for what it is– a corporate abdication of responsibility–and demand change.
The Coca-Cola bottle story teaches us something important: Systems can change. They can become better or worse. The choice is ours, but we have to recognize the pattern to make that choice.
The next time you’re asked to manage yet another set of privacy settings or decipher another dense document, remember: This wasn’t inevitable. It was a choice – just not yours.
But the next choice can be.
The Way Forward
While individual vigilance is now necessary, we shouldn’t accept this shift as inevitable or right. The recycling movement has taught us valuable lessons:
Collective Action: Just as communities have demanded better recycling infrastructure, users can demand clearer privacy controls and opt-in (not opt-out) data collection.
Regulatory Pressure: The success of bottle deposit laws in some states shows that regulation can force corporate responsibility. The EU’s GDPR provides a similar model for data privacy.
Corporate Accountability: Some companies are starting to take responsibility again – just as some beverage companies are exploring reusable packaging systems. Privacy-focused tech companies could gain a competitive advantage.
Taking Action
The current situation creates a paradox: individuals must now take responsibility for their privacy, yet the burden of managing multiple services, each with their own obscure settings and policies, has become nearly impossible for any one person to handle effectively. Consider:
Opt-out options are frequently buried in different menus
Terms of service changes can happen at any time
This overwhelming complexity presents both a problem and an opportunity. While we work toward systemic change, here are steps individuals can take:
Regularly audit privacy settings across all services you are signed up for
Use privacy-focused alternatives when available
Support legislation that puts privacy responsibility back on corporations
Demand transparent data practices from the companies you use
The Business of Privacy Management
The sheer impossibility of managing privacy settings manually points to an emerging market opportunity. Just as the recycling burden created new businesses in waste management and recycling services, the privacy burden could spawn a new category of privacy management services. Imagine “privacy concierge” services that:
Continuously monitor privacy settings across all your accounts
Alerts you to concerning changes in terms of service
Automates the process of opting out of data collection
Provides regular privacy audits and recommendations
Helps users migrate to more privacy-respecting alternatives
This isn’t just theoretical - the market is crying out for solutions. The same way that password managers became essential tools for security, privacy managers could become the next essential digital utility.
References:
Elmore, B. (2014). Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism. Norton.
Rogers, H. (2006). Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage. New Press.
European Data Protection Board. (2023). Guidelines on Dark Patterns in Social Media Platforms.
PSA: oops, they did it again
Image Source: LinkedIn Post
It’s unclear what fraction of subscribers were affected. In my own case, I see that this setting was on – and not by my choosing! I switched it off (a restart is required after that).
If you have anything at all private or sensitive in Office documents, you might want to do the same.
The Big Nine companies competing for AI dominance are desperate for training data, and we can expect more companies following the same quiet opt-out playbook, hiding what is going on in obscure settings and Terms of Service nobody reads. Facebook just updated their Terms of Service recently. We need to pause before clicking so quickly through these agreements.
It's time to start asking more questions. It’s time to start valuing ourselves (and our data) more—they certainly do! —because it’s going to happen a lot more often.