This cartoon is about the “privacy paradox” — the phenomenon where people say that they value privacy highly, yet in their behavior relinquish their personal data for very little in exchange or fail to use measures to protect their privacy.
I recently wrote an article about the privacy paradox: The Myth of the Privacy Paradox, forthcoming 89 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. You can download it on SSRN for free.
Commentators typically make one of two types of arguments about the privacy paradox. On one side, privacy regulation skeptics contend behavior is the best metric to evaluate how people actually value privacy. Behavior reveals that people ascribe a low value to privacy or readily trade it away for goods or services. The argument often goes on to contend that privacy regulation should be reduced.