A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
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Many many things, but the main one are probably :
Bonus story : I dislike religions a lot, so I don’t talk about it often. But one day, I and a heated and interesting debate with a christian. First time in month where I talked so much about Jesus. The next hour or so, the first ad I get on YouTube (before I knew how to block them efficiently) was evangelist bullshit. First time I ever saw something even close to this. I didn’t even imagine such ads existed.
Originally, it was due to anti-piracy “make an example of them” court cases, like that of Aaron Swartz. Then hardened by investigative reporting pieces showing how police get access to user data to circumvent 4th amendment protections in the USA, and my own interests in running home servers.
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What a question. My dog was terminal ill, and vet says that we have to euthanize her. In days before that, in the family we talk a lot about the moment. And the day it was…Google photos send me a notification of “memories”…photos with my dog…chills my spine
Once you realize how unhinged everyone is you can’t rule out that the people with the keys to our digital lives are unhinged and motivated by money also.
Because having been part of activism came with being in touch with more critical thinkers and people who already cared about their privacy in real life. Caring about privacy on the Internet was the logical next step.
That’s private
I’m a private person IRL, so I like to keep things as private as possible on the internet as well. I say “try to”, because heaven knows big tech isn’t making this easy for me.
@onlooker @OptimusPrime but you can make things hard for big tech by using degoogled phones, open-wrt/dd-wrt routers and Linux computers.
I never didn’t care. My parents told me that everything you do and write (on the internet or IRL) “out in the open” can be used by people to do you harm, so you better check thrice before you give anyone your data.
I just learned how Google makes all their money.
@OptimusPrime because i didn’t cared enough in the past and it led to a pandemic upon us. Now I have to care to prevent the next pandemic from happening.
how does Internet privacy lead to a pandemic? Which pandemic are you referring to?
You have made an interesting example of a bad faith argument. There is exactly one possible pandemic he is referring to, yet you are acting like he is not specific enough about which pandemic. He is not referring to the black plague, the Spanish flu, or smallpox, as those are not correlated with internet privacy.
If you were genuinely curious about a link between internet privacy and the pandemic, you would not ask the poster to waste everyone’s time specifying “which pandemic” we all know he was referring to.
Personally, I would like to see @mariubrlu@mastodonapp.uk talk more about the link between internet privacy and the pandemic. I have my own theories about it as well, but hearing more from others may help to clarify my own position or even change my mind on some points.
Edit from the future: I was wrong to say “There is exactly one possible pandemic he is referring to”. See https://lemmy.ml/post/713841/comment/372567
Why the aggression and the assumption ? The question seemed sincere and harmless. There may have been more pandemics in other continents where we in the West almost never heard about.
I feel that bad faith arguments need to be called out on sight.
The purpose of a bad-faith argument, for the person making it, is to derail a discussion - with the end-goal of protecting something that the discussion would otherwise cause damage to.
A good-faith discussion would reveal a lot of correlation between social media corporations, misinformation, and vaccine denial - with a good bit of political and religious context as well - but if the posters in the discussion have to waste their time being badgered about “which” pandemic, or whatever else can be nitpicked, then the discussion becomes tiresome and people stop having it. That’s the goal, for some.
Well, I can tell that I am fan of Socrates in the sense that asking questions instead of making assumptions (which you did in your comment) gives flexibility and more direction towards a good and rather balanced conversation rather than monologue versus monologue (For the latter I’m thinking about politicians in some countries who seemed to be mainly interested in their own person and their own party, rather than other people).
Asking the right questions is fine.
If you posted, “I was tremendously affected by the events of 9/11” and someone replied “By which event on 9/11? Lots of things happened that day!” or “9/11, which year?” They are not advancing the discussion, they’re just wasting your time. Asking someone in the early 2020s to specify which pandemic they mean is just as pedantic.
Socrates would have loved to interrogate the possible relationship between internet culture and the pandemic. He would have asked questions to draw out the thread OP’s beliefs and assumptions. Asking “which pandemic” doesn’t accomplish that goal.
@SteleTrovilo @lemmyreader it might’ve not necessarily been a bad faith argument. I would expect that very few people would see and understand the connection.
My explanation is a bit misleading as the lack of privacy in people’s lives didn’t led to the pandemic directly. The bad actors only used the personal data accumulated over the years to deploy the pandemic. They knew exactly when to bring the problem, what restrictions to put in place to benefit only them and when to sell the solution.
The TLDR is that I realized the big internet companies are trying to make our lives worse to their benefit.
It started with the Kindle - I was comparing e-readers, saw that most of them use the ePub format, and learned that Kindle was not supporting that format. They had a custom format instead. Anyone with a computer can make an ePub, but you need special software to make Amazon’s format.
The effect would be that everyone who bought or received a Kindle was tacitly agreeing to make all of their ebook purchases from a single store. If B&N has a sale, or Kobo offers better image quality, the Kindle user will still only purchase their ebooks through Amazon. It’s a per-user monopoly.
(I know that technically savvy users, with a cavalier attitude towards Terms of Service agreements, can work around this. I do not believe this describes a majority of book customers.)
Anyway, when I saw what Amazon was doing, I cut ties with them entirely. I then started examining the other tech giants critically, and saw their bad behaviors as well. How FaceBook manipulates its users’ mental health, and how Google and Amazon slurp up your data and sell it. How Microsoft badgers its users and tricks them into installing anti-features. (I used to be so pro-Windows before this, it’s embarrassing.)
My goal with internet privacy is to ensure that these corporations do not profit from my data or attention. And I try to bring my friends and family with me, when it’s possible.
After reading Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier. The book blew my mind and made me rethink my internet usage. Also, seeing how much money is made off data sales without true consent or any consideration to pay the individual for their data being sold, I began the journey. It’s a marathon as it takes a good while and it’s consistently evolving but well worth the effort!
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Also, I was permanently banned from Reddit for unspecified harassment. No link to reported content, just straight up surprise.