We are not empowered with the free choice of privacy like many people think we are
There is this common narrative I see all the time, implying that we as individuals are empowered to choose and manifest our own destiny, and this comes up often in privacy discussions.
Don't like Facebook's privacy nightmares? Just don't use Facebook!
Don't like personalized ads? I remember a popular post on reddit saying "if your ad interrupts my YouTube video, I will hate your product".
Don't like Google chrome hegemony? Just use Firefox!
And while I agree that we should strive to do that, the battle doesn't end here. Facebook has shadow accounts for people who never signed up. Google chrome keeps it's hegemony despite people on the Internet advocating Firefox day and night. And ads continue to be extremely profitable despite you "hating the product" because it interrupted your YouTube video.
Even worse: even if you "hate the product", you now already know it. You now know they product exists, and possibly whatever they wanted you to know about it. The reality is that these companies own your eyes. They control what shows up on your screen. And even if you hate it, they control what you end up learning.
the reality is that our individual resistance is very far from enough
I am not saying it is completely futile. It is a step in the right direction. But the only effective solution is organized action. We, alone, cannot achieve much. Unless we organize our resistance against privacy violations, we will continue to live through this privacy nightmare.
Not only this. Just by existing and living like this around your friends, family, and coworkers and they'll notice and get interested. In the span of a year of just using Linux, firefox, adblockers, password managers, and email aliases I've unintentionally gotten the attention of two of my friends and they've now started on their privacy and security journey. I share privacy articles around to my friends because I think they should be aware that stuff like 23andme can leak your entire genome and could be targeted for a racially motivated attack. Just exist and share it around with people around you and some may catch on.
Voting and calling representatives is a futile approach. They're a distraction at best. Unions are an example of what I mean by uniting our efforts and taking action.
"Go vote" and "call your representative" presupposes you both believe there's a genuine, believably electable option out there that's gonna really fight for you on this subject, and that the electoral system you live in is legitimately going to represent your vote. There's an argument to be made against both points, depending on where you live.
It doesn't presuppose that at all. The only way to get that option is shift the overton window to the left, and the only way to do that is to vote for the candidate on the left, even if they're not as far left as we'd like.
Man I have been on the internet since before you could even pay to have a dialup account. I hate ads so I just block them. Via DNS currently which is working well. It breaks google serps. It breaks youtube. I often can't read articles people link.
who fucking cares, I don't want to see ads so I don't see ads. It isn't really that hard. Hulu started showing ads even if you paid so as i canceled hulu. If netflix shows ads I will cancel netflix.
I think trying to get rid of advertising is tilting at windmills, as much as I agree with you there's so many more pressing issues to worry about. If you don't like ads just avoid them. Who cares if facebook has a 'shadow profile' on you? how does that affect your life?
I feel completely empowered as an individual online because my eyes only see what my fingers direct them to, and when it offends my eyes i go somewhere else.
There are definitely some steps you can take for your personal privacy. Get a phone with GrapheneOS, use LibreWolf as your browser, switch from Windows/Mac to Linux, use a DNS filter like NextDNS and try to communicate with people over Signal. You can also use a reputable VPN like IVPN or Mullvad and switch away from Google/Big Tech services (Google search -> DuckDuckGo, Gmail -> ProtonMail, Microsoft Office -> LibreOffice, Google Drive -> Proton Drive, YouTube -> Odysee, etc.)
They allow for anonymous registration without an Email address. They just give you an Account ID. They also allow you to sign up via Tor. Mullvad even has an onion site.
I personally feel like Mullvad provides a better, faster and cheaper service than Proton. However, Proton has other very interesting products such as ProtonMail, ProtonPass and Drive. I'm interested in all that, so I ended up moving to Proton.
I don't have a single bad thing to say about Mullvad, excellent service and pricing policy.
What about reading an article that has a Facebook share button or independent trackers? Using your credit/debit cards, buying anything online. There's a million ways to track people's habits
If you have an adblocker, you can block the Facebook embedded spyware and other trackers. You can use Monero, a privacy-focused crypto currency to anonymously buy a prepaid credit card, and then use that to make your payment.
GrapheneOS only supports pixel phonea therefor /e/OS is a great option too. I don't recommend Librewolf. Any firefox fork is unnecessary just use arkenfox and ublock origin set it up to block scripts. Except fennec or mull, they are necessary on mobile firefox is atrocious. I have never heard of IVPN before so I question how private it actually is and Odysee is filled with alt-right wastes of space. Linux Experiment tried using it a while ago ended up leaving. So there is no true alternative to youtube but privacy frontends like Libretube and Newpipe on mobile and individious or piped on PC. Or you can use freetube on both as well.
/e/OS is a terrible option, they sometimes take half a year to ship basic security patches. If your device is not supported by Graphene, you can check out DivestOS.
Sure, you can use arkenfox, I just included LibreWolf, because it's easier to set up.
+1 for Mull on Android. I use it too.
IVPN is one of the most private VPNs, I'd say it's on the same level as Mullvad in regards to privacy. Check out the Privacy Guides article: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/#ivpn
Yes, there are currently some really weird people on Odysee, but the more normal people like TLE leave, the worse it gets. I hate these right-wing bastards as much as you do, especially in the comments, but that's the reason why more people should use Odysee instead of YouTube. We just need to outnumber them. Odysee is definitely not perfect, but it's better than being dependent on YouTube, who currently try to shut down all private frontends. They sent a lovely cease and desist letter to Invidious, and they IP-ban Piped instances (which LibreTube relies on).
I want to add to this: In my country (Poland, but probably many others) you are sometimes almost forced to be tracked by FAANG companies. For example our mObywatel app, which can be uses as driver's license replacement requires you to download it via Google Play and have Google Services installed. Of course it uses firebase to send notifications.
You're aware of the EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, right? It's one of I'm sure several groups that organizes & strives to push back against malicious action from tech companies, as well as over-encroachment from governments (at times itself coming from tech company lobbying). It's based in the United States though, if memory serves, so others may want to chip in and mention similar groups for their region/nation.
At the same time, services/platforms that don't rely on ads pretty much always welcome donations, e.g. Wikipedia, Internet Archive, Gutenberg, as well your resident Fediverse sites, so also keep those in mind.
Facebook has shadow accounts for people who never signed up.
Can someone please explain how they are doing this?
Use Adblocker
Use DNS filter
DoH to prevent MiTM/use your own resolver in Unbound.
I'm still trying to look up how to prevent ISPs from logging my SNI Well, it seems Cloudflare and other domain service providers have implemented ESNI.
And what happens when you change your phone number? Does that become a new shadow profile? What of they change your name in their contact list? I'm trying to gauge how Facebook handles the inconsistencies of navigating contacts who don't have Facebook accounts
At the moment, there is no way to avoid having your information taken by corps. But what if we fought back by trying to pollute the information they gather? Instead of just trying to disable data collection, we could try to interfere with it and make it collect all kinds of useless crap that cant be separated or distinguished without serious effort. This way you could achieve same kind of anonymity as standing in huge crowd.
Another way to do it could be having huge community data pool that every participant adds to and also claims as "their own". I bet its really useful to see 1000 people with almost identical dataprofile and no way to distinguish which entry belongs to who. How do you even use ai to sort it out?
I think that is something we could do about it even on individual level.
On a small scale, that's what some of these privacy-focused browsers are doing in regards to fingerprinting. Make the data that has to be provided as standardized as possible and randomize the rest that is being tested behind the scenes. That is really great, but we can't randomize our behavior and there's a lot of data we can't randomize for the sake of functionality. Dunno how we handle that. Maybe we all install bots on our devices that act like users and go to random sites and click on random shit while we're not using the device.
consumer boycotts aint shit. we need tech workers, some of the people with the least class consciousness and poorest ethics, to refuse to create and maintain surveillance tools.
This post left me thinking in something. What if we could organize, so a city-owned ISP with a built-in pihole exists? What if we can just block tracking at the metropolitan level as we do in our houses? What if we don't just stop at DNS? What if we made just one city more private? What if we start with that?
This reminded me of an idea of using mesh networks to create an internet separate from the current internet. By that I mean physically running Ethernet cables from window to window between houses. It is unlikely to ever happen because it would need a lot of people to join it all at once, but I think it is a cool concept. Perhaps if I put my Jellyfin server on it and tell my neighbors about the free tv opportunity…
Edit: Forgot to mention, this was inspired by the Cuban networks that were basically the same thing. It is worth a browser search if you are bored.
Nice, I'll look into it, sounds interesting. I'm definitely community driven and anarchism friendly, real freedom comes from our pairs, not from above.
The best way to counter publicity is to simply erase from your mind. Turn it into white noise.
I don't have a clue how I've learned how to do this but I can have multiple publicity spots thrown at me that I won't retain a thing. Sometimes to the point I get a song stuck on loop in my head and I can't figure where I heard it.
Using tools to dodge or simply eliminate ads is also an option, especially online.
You can take back your freedom of choice to take part of an audience for publicity if you are willing to put some effort to regain it.
The sumbitches have since learned to work quietly and boil us frogs slowly. But they sure have been busy since 1999.
When I heard Scott McNealy utter that obscene statement back then, I laughed and I remember telling a coworker "That guy is off his goddamn mind". A decade later, I understood that he actually let slip something we should have paid a lot more attention to. But it was already much too late.
I agree with you in all your points and I have also look into why people just give up their privacy so easily , most of the time what I have noticed is that they (we all) love convenience. You want a plug and play camera? Buy ring , Need a plug and play router with a nice App? Buy google and Amazon Eero. Need to promote your business? Where is everyone at? Facebook , Twitter and Google. Most regular people give up their privacy for convenience, they don't have time dealing with thousands of option on a PF sense router , no time to create VLAns.
What may be needed is to first promote the basic idea that doing the right thing is most often harder than not. It applies to a lot of areas including this one, and it's a hard one to make a habit of. I figured this out many years ago and yet here I am typing this out on an Android phone, wishing that I had spent that money on a more privacy respecting one when I had the chance. But people have to get into the habit of not always choosing the "quicker, easier, more seductive" route all the time, because we all know where that leads.
which party do i for if i want antitrust suits brought against tech companies and which party is running candidates who know how to write hello world in any programming language?
In 1968, a bunch of hippies opened up a 'Dick Gregory for President' office. They had enough money for the first month's rent and phone, and figured that they would make a small impact. Somehow, someone kept paying the office rent and phone for months.
You not voting is exactly what the people you hate want you to do.
I mirror your concerns but as long as there's money to be made, the thing that makes money will continue to happen. Advertising is part of that, and if they can harvest our data to target ads, they will.
We won't win the fight against money. What we can do is block/avoid advertisements, avoid (as much as possible) services that are known for this behavior, support services that are known to respect privacy, and educate those that are receptive.
After reading about Snowden leaks and what world governments are capable of technologically, I've come to the same conclusion that privacy is now an illusion. Sure, one browser might send less data to corporations, but the government can see whatever they want on anyone's computer with an internet connection. The answer is to take a step back technologically. Interact with people in person. Read books at the library. Shop locally instead of online or at big box stores. Buy thrifted DVDs. The further you remove yourself, the more private you will be.
Another user, in a similar thread, shared this speech on enshittification. Addresses a good bit of what you are talking about and why mass action is hard in the current legal framework. We need better laws.
Just block the ads? And pay for what's important to you? I pay for YouTube because I like YouTube but hate ads (and ad blockers don't work well there). Everything else I block, I don't see almost any ads.