[Eric Murphy] "Caring about privacy almost ruined my life."

TL;DR think about your opsec before going full paranoid.

Thats the idea. make everything difficult unless you do it the way they want. Have to call my insurance today to find my account number for sending a payment through billpay as they are basically hiding it because it necessary to pay outside of putting something on their system. don't want you paying from your system (bank) must put in your card in theirs.

Tries soloing everything, then cries they're tired...

Tech bros can't think beyond themselves. When will they say work together, make a group, make your own little groups.

Start with stuff that affects others, like escaping Discord (or only keeping it to help more escape).

I've seen this dude's videos before, it's always the same. Whine about how hard privacy is in a monotone voice.

He's not wrong, but goddamn is it monotonous content.

I tried to go hard on privacy, but the more you know the more you realize how difficult it is.

So, the best thing to do if figure out who you don’t want to see your info. If it’s the government then you are basically out of luck in my opinion.

I stopped stressing about it when I decided to not let my need for privacy to interfere with my work.

In my personal life, things are more private luckily.

Fun story, my neighbor locked himself out of his house last night and knocked on my door to borrow a cell phone to call his wife. I trotted over with a Costco card, slipped it in the door, and had it open with 30 seconds of jiggling.

Sometimes people need to chill and learn to prioritize their security efforts. There are compromises to be made, lines to draw and accept that sometimes where they are is "good enough". No sense self-hosting stuff, losing contact with friends and family because they won't install fb anywhere, while they leave windows and sliding doors open to the house.

He needs to have a Monero donation address

Maybe a bit old but nevermind

2:10 "I assumed that, if I couldn't beat the system, there was no point on whatever I was doing": that's the old nirvana fallacy. The rest of the video is about dismantling it for the individual, and boils down to identifying who you're trying to protect yourself against (threat model), compromising, etc.

It's relevant to note that each tiny bit of privacy that you can get against a certain threat helps - specially if it's big tech, as the video maker focuses on. It gives big tech less room to manipulate you, and black hats less info to haunt you after you read that corporate apology saying "We are sorry. We take user safety seriously. Today we had a breach [...]".

And on a social level, every single small action towards privacy that you do:

• makes obtaining personal data slightly more expensive thus slightly less attractive
• supports a tiny bit more alternatives that respect your privacy
• normalises seeking privacy a tiny bit more

and so goes on. Seeking your own privacy helps to build a slightly more private world for you and for the others, even if you don't get the full package.