It's not ironic. In 1890 your privacy couldn't be violated six ways from Sunday before you even finished breakfast. Your privacy was inviolate simply because it couldn't be compromised by a dozen different "disruptive" VC-backed apps shoved onto a device you carried with you to take and share pictures of your cats.
The right to privacy exists to protect the individual from the kind of harm that couldn't happen before 1890.
In 1890 most Americans lived with much less physical privacy than we enjoy today. Extended families, small towns or crowded urban apartments, everyone knows everyone else’s business. Police and employers had much more power to intrude into private affairs. People would spy and snitch. Women and children treated like property, employees under surveillance.
Sure, in 1890 people were free of social media and advertisers and the NSA. On the other hand their boss or the police could ask about very personal things and fire or arrest homosexuals or anyone perceived as socially deviant. If you go back farther in history you discover a world where privacy was something only the very elite might enjoy. Everyone else had about as much privacy as cattle.
In 1890, and even when I was young several decades ago, finding out that someone you knew was carrying on an affair was a potentially career- and social life-ending situation should the secret get out. Now no one would care much about it.