Surely you can't be linking to a post on HackerNews, or a response, when trying to say "the average person" cares about privacy, are you?

The fact that the person is even posting on Hacker News invalidates "average person". So you must therefore be talking about the Times article?

The title of this gatewayed article is:

"You Care More About Your Privacy Than You Think"

It's literally saying that "you don't care", then trying to tell people why they should. This actually supports the premise that the average person doesn't care about privacy.

Yet beyond that, my "Only geeks care" clearly was about FOSS. Trying to invalidate my privacy statement, which everyone knows is an issue, doesn't invalidate my "Only geeks care -> FOSS" statement.

Do you really believe that if you stop 100 random people on the street, they'll even know what FOSS is? If they don't know, they do not care.

I wonder how many people know what FOSS is? What if I stopped 1000 random people in 5 rural towns, and 5 urban cities. Out of those 10k people, would even 100 know?

You might say "Oh, well if I explain it to them!". Nope.

Caring implies knowing about the issue, considering it, and worrying about it. This isn't even on the public's radar. They don't know what FOSS is. They don't even know what software is, nor do they know what files are.

Even if you sit them down, get them to listen to all sides of the issue for hours, some still won't care. At all.

And of the ones that do, what does "care" mean?

After all, upthread is discussing how the mildest inconvenience means nope, don't care. In the contexts of this thread, "caring" means "willing to use FOSS even if there are inconveniences".

FOSS software is everywhere. People could be using it. They aren't. Why? They don't care.