Everyone says this kind of stuff about any and every social issue. It drives me insane, do people not realize that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy? If everyone I heard say “there’s no point fighting it” got together and fought it, they’d easily win.
There is a 3rd argument which I think is a bit more valid in “I value the service I receive in exchange for my personal data”
Using the internet without an adblocker, noscript, and whatever else is really nasty. But even if you aren’t on these platforms, marketers are still building profiles on you. Honestly we need data privacy legislation and some real talk about marketing and the costs of using the internet as a society.
But I don’t use those services; they still keep my data.
Exactly why we need data privacy laws. Sadly there are “profiles” out there for all of us, whether you chose to be tracked or not. Personally I think that any kind of sharing of personal data with marketers should be illegal nor should it be legal for any entity to purchase personal data without a signed consent form from the person in question.
That’d probably end “free” services and our credit score system in the United States but honestly that kind of data collection is equivalent to stalking and unethical.
It’s funny, because people who defend DRM also use this argument. They are happy with the service, so they don’t mind losing freedom. They can’t understand that they could have both.
Might be defeatist, but it’s still an up hill battle. It’s a lot of effort to stay off the grid while still having access to a lot of modern technology.
I’m not about to start using multiple phones, swapping them in and out of faraday cages, never connecting to the net through anything besides proxy chains, and keeping my pc on an external hard drive. The list goes on and on for what you’d have to do to really truly have privacy. It’s a lot of work.
I see lots of folks here who are programmers or have a ton of knowledge on ways to get around the big 5 to maintain privacy, but as a layman with only so much time in the day, it’s hard to avoid taking the path of least resistance when using the Internet.
I am a musician with a public profile on Instagram, and many of my friends who are also artists use TikTok or YouTube to get their exposure. It’s kind of a necessity if you want to simply book a gig at a venue (they will ask for your social media handles to see how many followers you have to determine if it’s even worth having you on).
As artists we are also not flush with cash to pay for all the privacy software or VPNs. On top of that, so much of our information is already out there, I’m not sure how we’d even start reeling it back in.
you don’t have to go all in at once, mate. you can start by getting most important things in your control: your browser and search engine.
if you like the interface of Google chrome and can’t part away with it: use brave. else highly recommended to use Firefox.
if you just like Google search results, use startpage, else use duckduckgo or brave search.
these two things alone would make a meaningful difference.
then for neutering most of third party tracking: use a private DNS(I’d suggest nextdns). it’s just a "add a URL and forget about it’. it’ll stop the tracking significantly.
then you can continue by replacing other inconsequential stuff like Google notes(use Joplin), Google assistant(don’t use any of this “smart” crap), Google fit(just exercise regularly. you don’t need to micromanage it).
then next step would be to start making some tough decisions: replace the keylogger that is Google keyboard with it’s open source equivalent heliboard.
then eventually you can go hardcore and use Facebook and other crap on browser only.
so, all in all, even if you do only the first two(or just first) step, you’re already 50% there.
let me know in case you got any questions. and happy journey.
Quick question why are you so sure that startpage, duckduckgo or brave are not tracking your data ? As far as I’m concerned they need to make money too there is no such thing as free shit. Also even if they are more private and don’t track your date if the search is not giving the results you want/need it’s not really a good search engine, I’m saying this as a few years back I tried duckduckgo and it was so bad at that point at giving results I wanted/needed that even bing was doing a better job.
because they don’t serve you targeted ads. duckduckgo’s(and startpage’s) business model is keyword-based ads, for which they are getting plenty of revenue.
brave has other paid offerings like search without ads(premium), brave VPN, their own shitcoin(BAT) and so on.
as for the search results, I’m a software developer. most of the time I know what I am searching for, and I don’t want my search engine to go on overdrive and interpret it as something else. for me, duckduckgo is perfect. google, on the other hand, is worse for me for this and other reasons.
and there shouldn’t be much difference between duckduckgo and bing(sans account) since duckduckgo sources the results from bing.
I don’t know when did you last try duckduckgo, but I’ve been using it since 2015 and I’ve rarely been disappointed. in case i am missing on something, it’s just a !sp away(duckduckgo bangs).
‘There’s no point fighting it’ or ‘Privacy is already dead’
The arguments that make my eye twitch, It’s such a defeatist outlook but seems like the most common nowadays.
Everyone says this kind of stuff about any and every social issue. It drives me insane, do people not realize that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy? If everyone I heard say “there’s no point fighting it” got together and fought it, they’d easily win.
There is a point in fighting it and privacy is not dead lol
There is a 3rd argument which I think is a bit more valid in “I value the service I receive in exchange for my personal data”
Using the internet without an adblocker, noscript, and whatever else is really nasty. But even if you aren’t on these platforms, marketers are still building profiles on you. Honestly we need data privacy legislation and some real talk about marketing and the costs of using the internet as a society.
That argument pisses me off.
“I don’t mind so fuck you.”
If you want to use those services, that’s your business. But I don’t use those services; they still keep my data.
Exactly why we need data privacy laws. Sadly there are “profiles” out there for all of us, whether you chose to be tracked or not. Personally I think that any kind of sharing of personal data with marketers should be illegal nor should it be legal for any entity to purchase personal data without a signed consent form from the person in question.
That’d probably end “free” services and our credit score system in the United States but honestly that kind of data collection is equivalent to stalking and unethical.
It’s funny, because people who defend DRM also use this argument. They are happy with the service, so they don’t mind losing freedom. They can’t understand that they could have both.
Might be defeatist, but it’s still an up hill battle. It’s a lot of effort to stay off the grid while still having access to a lot of modern technology.
I’m not about to start using multiple phones, swapping them in and out of faraday cages, never connecting to the net through anything besides proxy chains, and keeping my pc on an external hard drive. The list goes on and on for what you’d have to do to really truly have privacy. It’s a lot of work.
Maybe you can help me out.
I see lots of folks here who are programmers or have a ton of knowledge on ways to get around the big 5 to maintain privacy, but as a layman with only so much time in the day, it’s hard to avoid taking the path of least resistance when using the Internet.
I am a musician with a public profile on Instagram, and many of my friends who are also artists use TikTok or YouTube to get their exposure. It’s kind of a necessity if you want to simply book a gig at a venue (they will ask for your social media handles to see how many followers you have to determine if it’s even worth having you on).
As artists we are also not flush with cash to pay for all the privacy software or VPNs. On top of that, so much of our information is already out there, I’m not sure how we’d even start reeling it back in.
you don’t have to go all in at once, mate. you can start by getting most important things in your control: your browser and search engine.
if you like the interface of Google chrome and can’t part away with it: use brave. else highly recommended to use Firefox.
if you just like Google search results, use startpage, else use duckduckgo or brave search.
these two things alone would make a meaningful difference.
then for neutering most of third party tracking: use a private DNS(I’d suggest nextdns). it’s just a "add a URL and forget about it’. it’ll stop the tracking significantly.
then you can continue by replacing other inconsequential stuff like Google notes(use Joplin), Google assistant(don’t use any of this “smart” crap), Google fit(just exercise regularly. you don’t need to micromanage it).
then next step would be to start making some tough decisions: replace the keylogger that is Google keyboard with it’s open source equivalent heliboard.
then eventually you can go hardcore and use Facebook and other crap on browser only.
so, all in all, even if you do only the first two(or just first) step, you’re already 50% there.
let me know in case you got any questions. and happy journey.
Quick question why are you so sure that startpage, duckduckgo or brave are not tracking your data ? As far as I’m concerned they need to make money too there is no such thing as free shit. Also even if they are more private and don’t track your date if the search is not giving the results you want/need it’s not really a good search engine, I’m saying this as a few years back I tried duckduckgo and it was so bad at that point at giving results I wanted/needed that even bing was doing a better job.
because they don’t serve you targeted ads. duckduckgo’s(and startpage’s) business model is keyword-based ads, for which they are getting plenty of revenue.
brave has other paid offerings like search without ads(premium), brave VPN, their own shitcoin(BAT) and so on.
as for the search results, I’m a software developer. most of the time I know what I am searching for, and I don’t want my search engine to go on overdrive and interpret it as something else. for me, duckduckgo is perfect. google, on the other hand, is worse for me for this and other reasons.
and there shouldn’t be much difference between duckduckgo and bing(sans account) since duckduckgo sources the results from bing.
I don’t know when did you last try duckduckgo, but I’ve been using it since 2015 and I’ve rarely been disappointed. in case i am missing on something, it’s just a
!spaway(duckduckgo bangs).You’re in a career that demands exposure, so you’re going to have to have two different personas - the public one and the private one.
I’m also a layman. Unfortunately, privacy is complicated nowadays so it does require a lot of research.
I would start here: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/