People voluntarily share information on social media every day. If they chose to make it public, what's the privacy problem?

"Voluntary" disclosure is deeply problematic because of changing platform rules, power imbalances, and a phenomenon called Kontextkollaps, meaning context collapse.

Why "voluntary" sharing isn't truly voluntary:

• Platform terms of service change after you post, retroactively altering how your data is used and who can access it.
• Users typically understand far less about data collection than the platforms collecting their information.
• Real, informed consent is often missing entirely. Clicking "I agree" on a 50-page terms document is not meaningful consent.
• Power imbalances between individuals and massive tech corporations make genuine choice impossible.

Context collapse is the key concept here. The German term is Kontextkollaps. It describes what happens when information shared for one specific purpose gets reinterpreted in a completely different context.

You post a vacation photo for friends... and an insurance company uses it to assess your risk profile. You share your job title on LinkedIn for professional networking... and a stalker uses it to find your workplace. You write a political comment in a closed Facebook group... and a future employer screens you based on it.

The original context is destroyed. The data takes on entirely new meaning. And the person who shared it had no way to anticipate or control these secondary uses.