I think I may have been unclear in earlier tweets. https://twitter.com/fborgesius/status/1354711044942417931

I never doubted that some firms are *trying* to compete on privacy. However, the lemons theory says (roughly) the following.

All sellers of 2nd hand cars say ‘this car is good, and hardly used’, even if their car is of bad quality: a ‘lemon’.

We assume that consumer cannot assess whether a 2nd hand car is really in a good condition: there is information asymmetry. The consumer knows less than the seller.

Therefore: smart consumers will just buy the cheapest car.

Therefore: somebody who actually has a great, and hardly used, 2nd hand car, will not offer it for sale. For that owner, the low price in the market is too low.

Hence: a market with information asymmetry can lead to no competition on quality, because even well-meaning companies cannot distinguish themselves from other companies.

Pretty tragic.

All companies say that they take their customers’ privacy seriously. Most people did not study computer science and have limited time. So for most, it’s hard to assess how privacy-friendly a company or service really is. There's information asymmetry.

We observe that there is hardly any competition on privacy, while prices for online websites and other services (in money) are low: often free. So it looks like a lemons market for privacy.