The only way to retake control from Big Tech is to quit Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, LinkedIn (and many others) cold turkey. Install Linux, use a custom ROM on your phone, use Signal, learn about self-hosting. Slightly reducing the amount of time you spend on Facebook doesn't achieve anything, the app is still running on your phone and reporting your location to Meta.
>The only way to retake control from Big Tech is to quit Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, LinkedIn (and many others) cold turkey. Install Linux, use a custom ROM on your phone, use Signal, learn about self-hosting.
This all-or-nothing approach isn't really feasible for the average normie and probably alienates more people than it manages to convert. You can get most of the benefits by switching to privacy-preserving apps (eg. whatsapp -> signal), using browsers with adblock when a proprietary service doesn't have alternatives, and enabling privacy settings. "Install Linux, use a custom ROM [...] learn about self-hosting" is the equivalent of living off the grid with no social security number to the average normie.
How do you know you're getting "most" of the benefits? Data collection for most proprietary apps and websites is still extremely hard to monitor and as long as it's still a primary source of revenue, I don't think the businesses behind them will give up the data without a fight. So I don't think using an ad blocker or relying on the service's own privacy settings will work here.
On the other hand, some of the "simple" recommendations are hard to follow in practice, especially "get rid of whatsapp". Right now, I have 5 messengers on my phone, both Signal and WhatsApp among them. Not because I particularly like them, but because those are the apps that the people I want - or have - to talk to are using.
The network effect is real. For messaging apps, the choice of which apps to use is effectively a group decision, nothing that users can decide on their own.
>How do you know you're getting "most" of the benefits? Data collection for most proprietary apps and websites is still extremely hard to monitor and as long as it's still a primary source of revenue, I don't think the businesses behind them will give up the data without a fight. So I don't think using an ad blocker or relying on the service's own privacy settings will work here.
If you're browsing the web with an ad blocker and VPN, have third party cookies disabled, are using a privacy respecting email service, big tech basically has no insights into your off-site activities. Facebook might know you're still messaging your aunt, but it doesn't know what sites you go on (via facebook embeds). Therefore big tech doesn't know what your interests are (unless you join a facebook group for model train enthusiasts or whatever), or what you buy. You might still object to Facebook knowing that you messaged your aunt at all, but if that's the only way of keeping in touch with her, it's really the best you can do without going off the grid.
But if you're using Chrome, Edge or Windows, how would you know those programs themselves aren't sending back "telemetry" to profile you?
As for ad/tracking networks, there is active research in fingerprinting and "supercookies" to be able to track you even without third-party cookies. It's essentially a cat-and-mouse game between trackers and browsers as far as we know.
I don't want to say those aren't good things to do, I'm just not that confident they would bring the kind of absolute level of protection that you're asserting there.
>But if you're using Chrome, Edge or Windows, how would you know those programs themselves aren't sending back "telemetry" to profile you?
My prior comment mentioned switching apps where possible, and Chrome/Edge is easily switched to Firefox that we can assume they're not used. As for Windows, that's covered under disabling telemetry, and despite all the misgivings about Windows "spying" on you, I haven't seen evidence advertising profiling data (eg. your browsing history, as opposed to something generic like your hardware id or ip) is sent to Microsoft.
>As for ad/tracking networks, there is active research in fingerprinting and "supercookies" to be able to track you even without third-party cookies. It's essentially a cat-and-mouse game between trackers and browsers as far as we know.
You can partially mitigate fingerprinting by using RFP on firefox. It's not perfect, but installing linux/custom rom/self-hosting isn't going to do much more, if anything those will make you more fingerprintable. Moreover it's not something that you can fully mitigate, without literally living off the grid in a cabin somewhere.
>I'm just not that confident they would bring the kind of absolute level of protection that you're asserting there.
Note my prior comment said that you can get "most" of the protection, not that it's "absolute".
One of the best things you can do for privacy is blocking all third party domains by default with uBlock (or uMatrix). A lot of sites will break and not render properly, but it's the best kind of active protection against trackers you can have. You then manually enable what you want, and leave all the rest (social trackers, Google/Adobe fonts, telemetry) off.
There are no privacy-preserving social media apps. There are privacy-invading by design, and some of them, like Facebook, even have an explicit goal of using real names and connections. Your only option here is to dump social media altogether.
Other things like DNS filters/adblockers and privacy settings can help, but they do comparatively little for your privacy compared to quitting social media. And the best thing is that you don't need to be tech-savvy, you just need some awareness and maturity.
>There are no privacy-preserving social media apps. There are privacy-invading by design, and some of them, like Facebook, even have an explicit goal of using real names and connections. Your only option here is to dump social media altogether.
Even something like Mastodon? Where's the privacy invading part, the fact that you're uploading vacation pics for others to view, or that it's building a dossier of your interests for advertising purposes?
Cancel culture has become an official policy of the federal government, the new focus on [performing] "domestic terrorism" means increasing persecution of wrongthink, and all those feeds from the private surveillance industry previously reserved for "national security" are set to be used in support of government-led domestic terrorism. Of course people are limiting their exposure, even "I've got nothing to hide" falls flat when speech has been de facto criminalized.
The only way to retake control from Big Tech is to quit Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, LinkedIn (and many others) cold turkey. Install Linux, use a custom ROM on your phone, use Signal, learn about self-hosting. Slightly reducing the amount of time you spend on Facebook doesn't achieve anything, the app is still running on your phone and reporting your location to Meta.
>The only way to retake control from Big Tech is to quit Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, LinkedIn (and many others) cold turkey. Install Linux, use a custom ROM on your phone, use Signal, learn about self-hosting.
This all-or-nothing approach isn't really feasible for the average normie and probably alienates more people than it manages to convert. You can get most of the benefits by switching to privacy-preserving apps (eg. whatsapp -> signal), using browsers with adblock when a proprietary service doesn't have alternatives, and enabling privacy settings. "Install Linux, use a custom ROM [...] learn about self-hosting" is the equivalent of living off the grid with no social security number to the average normie.
How do you know you're getting "most" of the benefits? Data collection for most proprietary apps and websites is still extremely hard to monitor and as long as it's still a primary source of revenue, I don't think the businesses behind them will give up the data without a fight. So I don't think using an ad blocker or relying on the service's own privacy settings will work here.
On the other hand, some of the "simple" recommendations are hard to follow in practice, especially "get rid of whatsapp". Right now, I have 5 messengers on my phone, both Signal and WhatsApp among them. Not because I particularly like them, but because those are the apps that the people I want - or have - to talk to are using. The network effect is real. For messaging apps, the choice of which apps to use is effectively a group decision, nothing that users can decide on their own.
>How do you know you're getting "most" of the benefits? Data collection for most proprietary apps and websites is still extremely hard to monitor and as long as it's still a primary source of revenue, I don't think the businesses behind them will give up the data without a fight. So I don't think using an ad blocker or relying on the service's own privacy settings will work here.
If you're browsing the web with an ad blocker and VPN, have third party cookies disabled, are using a privacy respecting email service, big tech basically has no insights into your off-site activities. Facebook might know you're still messaging your aunt, but it doesn't know what sites you go on (via facebook embeds). Therefore big tech doesn't know what your interests are (unless you join a facebook group for model train enthusiasts or whatever), or what you buy. You might still object to Facebook knowing that you messaged your aunt at all, but if that's the only way of keeping in touch with her, it's really the best you can do without going off the grid.
But if you're using Chrome, Edge or Windows, how would you know those programs themselves aren't sending back "telemetry" to profile you?
As for ad/tracking networks, there is active research in fingerprinting and "supercookies" to be able to track you even without third-party cookies. It's essentially a cat-and-mouse game between trackers and browsers as far as we know.
I don't want to say those aren't good things to do, I'm just not that confident they would bring the kind of absolute level of protection that you're asserting there.
>But if you're using Chrome, Edge or Windows, how would you know those programs themselves aren't sending back "telemetry" to profile you?
My prior comment mentioned switching apps where possible, and Chrome/Edge is easily switched to Firefox that we can assume they're not used. As for Windows, that's covered under disabling telemetry, and despite all the misgivings about Windows "spying" on you, I haven't seen evidence advertising profiling data (eg. your browsing history, as opposed to something generic like your hardware id or ip) is sent to Microsoft.
>As for ad/tracking networks, there is active research in fingerprinting and "supercookies" to be able to track you even without third-party cookies. It's essentially a cat-and-mouse game between trackers and browsers as far as we know.
You can partially mitigate fingerprinting by using RFP on firefox. It's not perfect, but installing linux/custom rom/self-hosting isn't going to do much more, if anything those will make you more fingerprintable. Moreover it's not something that you can fully mitigate, without literally living off the grid in a cabin somewhere.
>I'm just not that confident they would bring the kind of absolute level of protection that you're asserting there.
Note my prior comment said that you can get "most" of the protection, not that it's "absolute".
One of the best things you can do for privacy is blocking all third party domains by default with uBlock (or uMatrix). A lot of sites will break and not render properly, but it's the best kind of active protection against trackers you can have. You then manually enable what you want, and leave all the rest (social trackers, Google/Adobe fonts, telemetry) off.
There are no privacy-preserving social media apps. There are privacy-invading by design, and some of them, like Facebook, even have an explicit goal of using real names and connections. Your only option here is to dump social media altogether.
Other things like DNS filters/adblockers and privacy settings can help, but they do comparatively little for your privacy compared to quitting social media. And the best thing is that you don't need to be tech-savvy, you just need some awareness and maturity.
>There are no privacy-preserving social media apps. There are privacy-invading by design, and some of them, like Facebook, even have an explicit goal of using real names and connections. Your only option here is to dump social media altogether.
Even something like Mastodon? Where's the privacy invading part, the fact that you're uploading vacation pics for others to view, or that it's building a dossier of your interests for advertising purposes?
Pretty obviously written by an LLM.
Cancel culture has become an official policy of the federal government, the new focus on [performing] "domestic terrorism" means increasing persecution of wrongthink, and all those feeds from the private surveillance industry previously reserved for "national security" are set to be used in support of government-led domestic terrorism. Of course people are limiting their exposure, even "I've got nothing to hide" falls flat when speech has been de facto criminalized.
The kids are all right
Talkin' bout' my generation!