It can be a grand number of things, but lack of the highschool curriculum is unlikely to be one of them, in my opinion. Rest assured, you're far from the only one struggling, I'd say most people I've encountered in academic philosophy tend to struggle a tad more with it than (their) other fields of studies. It is what it is, really, it sort of comes with the territory.
Of course there are just some that are less accessible than others, due to writing style or size of their philosophical project (Hegel is an example of both of those qualities). A lot of French philosophy since the second world war, Baudrillard being no exception, is generally characterized as such as well amongst the anglo audience, although I don't think that this is entirely fair.
I'd say the best thing you can do is never attempt to understand it through Wikipedia, but pick up a full book instead and read it a second time if the argument doesn't make sense the first time. Of course there are some authors I would avoid as a beginner, but someone like Kant is fine for even your first philosopher, and is amongst the biggest names in modern philosophy. Prolegomena and Critique of Pure Reason are two books of his about the same thing written in two opposite ways, the former from easy to difficult, the latter vice versa, I always recommend those.
Sartre and Wittgenstein are both somewhat odd for a contemporary philosophy course. I'm curious why they chose that arrangement. Nevertheless, being able to hold a conversation about either of them is already quite solid, plus you get three philosophers for the price of two! :)
It's incredible how technosolutionism keeps coming back in Law Enforcement in either a reliance on the Chilling Effect or as a 'new' way of Predictive Policing, while they never work
Might sound weird but does the look of the operator matter? Say × vs x vs • vs *, I would assume it doesn't but I'm curious if there's a visual change, for lack of a better term.
Surveillance being directly unpleasant would be detrimental to the task at hand and is not beneficial to the surveillant, I'm not sure why we should use the absolute worst case scenarios (dystopian future, social credit systems, massive data breaches, blackmail, etc.) as a measuring stick.
I think I know what you're getting at with the objection against the abstract conception of surveillance technologies or 'privacy' matters, but I don't think it is entirely fair; I reckon that if you were to give this hypothetical group some concrete examples as opposed to abstract ones, they would object just the same. For example, do you reckon most Nissan drivers would be okay with their car collecting data on that owner's sex life?
Probably not. On the other hand, it is more likely they would be "okay" with this data collection if it's presented to them hidden within a tome of general, mundane sounding tech speak abstracted under a surface layer of Legalese.
But making this exclusively an issue of privacy I think misses the point for most Westerners, leading us to be swayed by arguments such as the one you reiterated about the aspect of self-surveillance/voluntary data donation.
It hardly requires an argument, in my opinion, to state that it is true that people now frequently hand over their data to companies, and that in recent years it is indeed true that companies have given something in exchange for this data. But that in itself does not say much, nor does it help us decide on whether or not this exchange or aspects of it are in any way problematic. Donation that either is voluntary or seems voluntary but is rewarded socially is nothing new; blood donation is a pretty good example of it.
Where I see a problem in regards to this situation is that such a situation would be desirable compared to our current one. It sometimes is portrayed as if it were our current situation, which to me borders on normalized dishonesty (for the record, I know you're simply throwing it up for discussion). Data, of course, is and has been so profitable for more than half of a century that it is already a cliché to call it the new oil.
It is problematic to me that the inoffensive claim that data collection could improve a product or process is coupled with other inoffensive claims and the nearly universally acceptable desire of some mutual benefit arising from nearly any situation with two parties in exchange, and is then somehow used to justify what is in essence a vastly asymmetrical relationship where it seems more that the customer was deceived by the world's largest corporations in a vicious cycle of having to keep up the facade of eternal rapid expansion on the basis of unstoppable technological innovation, not being able to deliver on this promise, and having to meet profits another way (worse every cycle, seemingly).
Painting this as only (or even mostly) a privacy problem is faulty at best and counterproductive at worst. One of the biggest 'privacy scandals' in recent years that I can think of, for example, Cambridge Analytica, was one where in actuality privacy hardly comes into play beyond the peripheral discussion generated by it. The issue there is that it does not entail the absence of a massive problem, but rather that there is a massive misdiagnosed problem, or several sizable misdiagnosed problems. It's hardly a challenge to think of situations of such data collection/digital surveillance and find problems that are barely privacy problems, if at all, but are predominantly discussed as such. Not only is that not helpful as the problems aren't tackled, but it can lead to the undesirable situation where the problem is not addressed but swept aside as privacy is found to not be an issue. Data being stored encrypted in the Cloud does not do away with the issues of surveillance and data collection (amongst others), Google making an advertising profile of you is not perfectly acceptable as long as it's abstracted as a hashed ID, Tesla Sentry mode not recording 24/7 and data being encrypted does not make it okay, Amazon's Ring camera doorbell activating and tracking based on a black box algorithm is problematic regardless of whether or not their promise of employees not viewing the data holds or not.
Not that privacy does not have a part to play here, it has, from memory all three of those I named have had scandals where a rogue employee viewed customer data, but the problem(s) neither starts or ends there.
Having said that, my claim is deliberately quite modest. There's an argument to be made that some might have more urgent and legitimate issues squarely in the domain of privacy here, and that I am underselling those issues. That's not my intention, quite the opposite. For myself and I would assume most other Westerners—dissidents, (sexual or religious) minority groups, journalists, and other vulnerable people aside— it is quite easy to diminish the importance of privacy due to a lack of realistic consequence, and on that basis selfishly deciding that there's no consequences for anyone. I believe my position still works for both, and will always be on the side of privacy, just not because of privacy alone.
In short, I think both situations you describe are likely true, but I reject both the implication that this alleged hypocrisy makes it a non-issue, and the implication that if this is not an issue of privacy for a privileged majority, there is no issue at all.
Iirc the intent of the past two changes was to make liable for punishment both content of sexual acts done to or by the underage victim, as well as the content where an underage victim is simply in the content in any way, posing or being unwillingly or unknowingly photographed. The latter so as to cover the problem of images (selfies, own content) being spread around, but also to cover cases of abuse that wasn't clear physical sexual abuse in the previous conception.
They did this first by adding the new b) and c) under (1.) in both 184b and 184c StBG, for posing. Subsequently they raised the minimum punishment in 2021 to make all liability under 184b a criminal liability due to the one year minimum. The only exception is the clause under ^2 that limits non-factual/non-realistic acts, think writing, art, etc. 184c remained unchanged as far as minimum punishment is concerned.
If you observe StGB 184b you'll notice that it makes it so that the liability will be imposed on anyone who distributes or otherwise makes public, obtains, offers, takes with intent or possesses that which is as described under (1.)-1-a/b/c (child content) is liable to prosecution.
Caveat here is that children (under 14) are not liable for criminal prosecution, they're Schuldunfähig. This is pretty standard EU-wide, and comes from Roman law originally.
In StGB 184c, you will find the operative clause under (1.) and the exception under (4 ), and this article is about the "youth" category, meaning underage but older than 14.
As you'll notice there, the minimum punishment is less than a year and there's the possibility of having to pay a fine.
No matter the article, in both cases, taking a selfie means you're Strafbar, liable (punishable). However, per article 12 StGB, only 184b is a crime, 184c is a misdemeanor, provided the unlawful act is punished with a sentence under 1 year or a fine, yet leaves the door open for criminal liability of a perpetrator who commits a heinous act against a 16 year old, for example. The child under 14 goes "straflos" and is criminally not liable, even in the scenario where that 14yo is a perpetrator. Those aged 14 until 18 are then subject to juvenile criminal law which focuses on rehabilitation over punishment. More importantly, remember the minimum punishment is under a year, allowing the judge to just throw it out as proportionality is nowhere to be found here, if such a case even sees the court, regardless.
So yes, technically you can take a pic of your naked self as a minor and become a criminal because of it, but only in the sense that very mundane, trivial infractions can do the same in any legal system across the world. Almost exclusively limited to it being a criminal act, as opposed to criminal charges by formal accusation from LE.
The only odd part is the broad application on self-owned content, but that seems preferable to letting abusers escape due to the previous loose application.