I am fucking scared of the mass surveilence nightmare direction that the internet and the world as a whole is going towards… C2PA, france hacking itself into citizen phones, the UK anti encryption law, EU’s chat control, etc. Im also sick of and hate the “you will own nothing and be happy” mentality that corpos try to push. I dont wanna know how the world will look like in 5-10 years.
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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.
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Combine this with laboratories learning how to literally control pathogens and we could have the distophia of the future
There’s a reason why I’m structuring a home server build right now, I’m so tired of this internet, I just want to enjoy my things and not feel like an asshole supporting these companies. I don’t want to live in a dystopian net, even though we’re slowly approaching it. What will I do about private messaging? Who knows, I might have to make my own app to encrypt my messages before sending them through another app.
It truly sucks. but seeing decentralized/open-source projects - Lemmy, I2P/TOR, Linux, etc. warms my heart. It helps me see there’s truth out there and pushes me forward down this path.
I also recently noticed that everything get’s more and more hostile towards the user. I observed so many apps and Websites that have hidden some big features behind a paywall recently - as if they don’t already make enough money with data collection and selling. First they make you comfortable with these QoL Stuff and then they steal it away, holding it in front of your face and want you to pay for it now, something that was free for years. It’s filthy…
I bought a lifetime license for the Spark email app. I even sent them some extra money when I learned their engineers are in the UK. Then they pushed out an update that removed the feature that caused me to buy their app in the first place, locked half of the other features behind a subscription, and said that since it’s an “update”, the previous lifetime subscriptions don’t count. Mother fuckers! Fuck the Spark team. I uninstalled it, gave them a 1 star review, and installed Fair Email. It’s a better app in most ways, is completely free, and is privacy focused. The only thing is that it’s missing the one feature I paid for, which was to be able to long press an email, tap “search for all emails by sender”, and then bulk action them. It was really useful for bulk deleting all Amazon confirmations and stuff like that.
I’ve had a couple pieces of software revoke my lifetime licenses when they switched to fully subscription (even though they swore lifetime license holders would be grandfathered). I get needing to make money to pay your software engineers to keep pushing out updates but man I hate this subscription hell we live in now
Software engineers have always needed to be paid, and companies got along just fine without subscription services. Bill Gates was the richest man in the world for the majority of my lifetime without a subscription service. The greed these days is immeasurable and needs to stop. It’s ruining everything! I just noticed today that they’re using the information band of the HD radio waves to push text ads to the car stereo while songs are playing now, instead of delivering song info like they said they’d do when they captured those public frequencies.
I get that not everything can be free. I’m more than willing to pay for sites and services that have value to me. But companies constantly selling your data, blasting you with advertisements and then having the gall to ask you to pay for the pleasure? It’s blatant rent-seeking.
I feel the same doomerism that it just won’t be legally possible to own your servers, and it will be that only corpos are trusted by the big governments to operate platforms. I feel like we are in a battle right now and they won’t win in the end. I also think it’s helpful to watch the various big platforms implode recently, it signals to congress that maybe we can do a better job than facebook. I also feel decentralization is key honestly, if I host my instance in some place that does not really care about these anti encryption laws there is not a ton another nation can do about it, and if it’s decentralized it becomes even harder
I feel like I’ve explored very deep edges of sound alternatives. I’ve tried replacing my phone with consumer friendly alternatives and they just weren’t as good unless you can get a fair phone in the US which is hit or miss. The Internet itself lending itself to subscription based models is because servers and data storage costs money.
I hate to say it, but even if you remove power through solar investments and using lightweight servers you still have ISP to pay. Everyone’s got bills and overhead, because nothing is free.
My advice is to ground your logic in that everything requires resources to run and rejoice in community wins like Lemmy or mastodon or Graphene OS. It’s not all bad. Find the good in the bad and move towards what works for you personally. I’ve been off of windows for like a year now and I think that alone is impressive despite Xbox for example costing an arm and a leg.
The internet as we knew it was based on something that doesn’t exist anymore.
Back in the '90s the internet was a million small companies all posturing and juggling for position. The great late capitalism push means that everybody needs to make 20% more every year which is completely possible to do when you’re tiny.
The advertising fire hose back then was enough to expand small companies year-over-year. The return on investments from some well placed static ads, and then later on YouTube ads was more than enough to oil the gears of commerce.
Now the only thing that’s left are the mega corporations, They can’t sustainably expand at 20% per year, but they sure do like to buy up those tiny corporations.
Advertising is no longer sufficient, so subscriptions are going to creep in. At some point subscriptions will no longer be sufficient.
Nothing was ever free, we were the product. In the current economic situation we’re no longer as profitable a product. Interest rates exist again venture capital is drying up.
At some point everything we use that’s not private community funded is going to end up being paid for by both a subscription and advertising
I was honestly kind of hoping more web 3 peer-to-peer stuff would be the final answer but all those projects seems to be fizzling out.
Yeah agreed. I’m working on a solution but it’s going to cost the consumer. According to Zuckerberg the first sin of the Internet was making everything free. If you’re doing things in the dapp space it’s harder since every person needs a server not just an app in an ideal world.
These monolithic websites have a lot less of an excuse imo since they run on a shared server though.
The EU is very much hit and miss. I do appreciate them putting Google, Meta, and Apple in their place, and some on the legislation regarding smart phones they have passed. But ultimately they want to have all your data for “security”.
Still, I think the situation in the US is a bit worse.
EU policy is so hit and miss because the EU Parliament mostly has our backs, and is introducing good legislation protecting consumers of corpo overreach (like the roaming directive). The EU Commission on the other hand has only the interest of the EU countries’ governments in mind, which makes many of its proposals rather shitty of the common citizen. Also tells you a lot about what the actual national governments stand for, when somebody else is doing more for the citizens than they are.
thank you for that brief explanation, didn’t really know the difference between the two branches(is that what they call em?)
That explanation doesn’t really go into any detail.
The EU Parliament is made up of elected MEPs from each member state (EU countries). They vote on EU citizens’ behalf for the regulations that the EU imposes. Typically, these regulations are basically the EU saying “member states need to make a law about this within these confines” and then it’s up to each member state to flesh out their own version of the law internally.
The European Commission is made up of lawyers. They are not elected, instead they are selected by the government of each member state. The EC lawyers write the rules that the EU Parliement MEPs vote on. The idea being, you want talented professionals in this role, rather than someone who is merely popular - they need to write robust rules that can withstand challenge and suit the entire EU. However it depends on member state governments correctly selecting for this position.
People knowledgeable in law write the laws, then democratically elected representatives vote on them.
So I don’t think /u/Queztacoatl@feddit.de really had it right in their statement of how it functions. The EU Parliament doesn’t introduce any laws, the EC writes directives that the EU Parliament vote into force, then member states write laws within the bounds of the directives.
However they may be right that members of the EC can be more politically motivated, given that they are appointed to their position by the government of their home country, rather than by the people of their home country.
That’s a more detailed explanation thanks. The OP explanation was helpful for someone who hasn’t really looked into how it functions.
Is there some sort of judiciary at the EU level or is the robustness of laws tested in national contexts?
There are definitely EU courts, one of the reasons the UK left was to get out from under the EU courts. All member states have to implement laws that fit within the EU directives, if these laws don’t match or aren’t enforced then a citizen may end up escalating their claim to the EU courts, after exhausting their national courts. The nation then has to follow the EU court’s ruling.
Saying that I can’t think of any example where the EU court didn’t bring forward a fair ruling that the UK had to adhere to. There certainly was plenty of shit stirred up by the government about it, but when you looked into the claims they fell flat.
It’s like governments and corporations are competing at control over information flows. In EU bureaucracy wins more often, and in US corpo lobbyists win more often.
Can’t say I find this competition healthy…
It’s pretty much the story of Arsenal Gear in Metal Gear Solid 2 lol
Kojima always had a way of seeing into the not so distant future and pretty much nailing it.
Yes, they are unfortunately not as opposed to surveillance by governments as they are by that of megacorporations. While I appreciate that they are trying to keep the likes of Google and Meta in check, I also very much dislike the several attempts to enforce data retention and essentially encryption bans.
That the Data Retention Directive was eventually annulled by the Court of Justice of the European Union gives me some hope that the legal system within EU can withstand these attempts, but maybe I am being too naive? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
Just a little little bit
I’m concerned about when governments get ahold of usable quantum computers.
We’ll always be one step ahead of the bad guys. Fortunately we have places like this where like-minded people can gather who understand the dangers.
AI has entered the chat
Honestly it’s one of my personal reasons for disliking AI. I (let alone most of our kids) don’t want or need a reason to think less, let alone own less of my content. FFS.
There’s actually a lot to look forward to. In fact you’re talking on one of those reasons right now.
e2ee is only a recent thing which is significantly more private. You can have an entirely private FOSS operating system that has parity with Windows for free.
The privacy and FOSS ecosystems are thriving more then ever. There are more VPN providers then ever before, and Tor gets better and better.
We have decentralized social media like the fedi which gives complete freedom against corporate control.
We have all sorts of amazing FOSS tools out there. We even have an AI that can be run completely locally and with custom unfiltered models that is very close to competitive with ChatGPT, and also free.
None of these things even existed like 10 years ago, or were in their infancy. They’re all competitive to modern corporate alternatives. Privacy alternatives are by far in the best state they’ve ever been, and they’ll just continue to improve as the community grows larger.
We can own all these tools and self host. In fact we’ve never been able to “own” anywhere near as much as we can today.
What is this local ChatGPT alternative you are talking about?
https://gpt4all.io/index.html
Thanks for providing a positive perspective! It’s really important we don’t lose sight of the good things.
removed by mod
aaand there’s intel management engine and amd platform security procesor which undermine your foss efforts on most platforms
Why do people want to be doomers over literally nothing. There’s so much good that you’re just ignoring.
Intel can read RAM directly and other parameters using their built in security systems on certain chips. Maybe do more research first to understand why that is distressing. There are some projects for open source CPUs on-going.
I’ve looked into this extensively but see zero actual real world effects other then being a boogyman to hardcore FOSS nerds
Idk what you’re talking about, it’s been done plenty of times?
Plus we dont even really know what new “Security” tech their cooking up nowadays. Especially with in-house chips like Apple M chips.
Meltdown Redux: Intel Flaw Lets Hackers Siphon Secrets from Millions of PCs
I feel like the management engine card is sneakily changing the threat model in the middle of the conversation.
Is it bad? Yes. Is it a big source of security holes? Absolutely.
Is it a way that Facebook is going to profile you to try and sell you to advertisers? Or a reason why you can’t ditch Windows? No.
What does ditching windows have to do with security chips? OS sits above the hardware so that does not make sense. Any linux distro is just as susceptible as it stands.
No ones worried about social media companies messing with your hardware (not yet). That’s off-topic. Besides, legally nothing stops Intel or AMD from just selling the harvested data to Fb or whoever so that point is kind of moot too.
Actually news just broke as I was writing this and guess what. Now there is a bug allowing browser exploitation of the CPU using… Javascript! What a time to be alive…
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/encryption-breaking-password-leaking-bug-in-many-amd-cpus-could-take-months-to-fix/
This is why we need RISC-V.
Even phones have security chips in them these days.
Fun fact: Intel introduced the Management Engine right around the time they joined the NSA’s PRISM program.
AMD (for that matter, any other processor manufacturer) isn’t off the hook either - eg. see “Platform Security Processor”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processor
They’ve been locking processors to individual motherboards and eliminating second-hand resale value for “enterprise” hardware in the name of “security” too: https://www.servethehome.com/amd-psb-vendor-locks-epyc-cpus-for-enhanced-security-at-a-cost/
If that was our only problem and most people would be using FLOSS software I’d be happy. Intel ME is bad but you can have a “good enough” usage of tech today.
Thank you for the Hopium
Thank you, author!
What happened to the ethos of the original internet cultures that were so dominant. It’s like large swaths of that generation grew up and sold out to become the oppressors. And the other portion are being crushed by that system.
Money happened.
I think the end of net neutrality hastened there older internet’s demise. now corps are free to monetize as much as they like.
Yup. When net neutrality died it let a few corporate overlords rise up and kill off much of the old free web. What much of us grew up on was a much fewer, wilder web. One you could still dream on and where you could still think damned near any new thing could come from anyone. Now, you pretty much have to already have $.
Wait, what do you mean Net Neutrality died? I thought they lost signing the bill to end it?
When was the last time you accessed a http website (not https)? Basically any schmuck in his basement could cobble one up. Nowadays you have to rent a server from some cloud service which goes against the whole net neutrality concept.
People just stopped bothering when their browser screams at them for accessing an unsafe website. That’s where net neutrality died IMO.
Wait, I don’t get this. Https certs are trivial to acquire and keep up-to-date with Let’s Encrypt. You can deploy a server like Caddy that will handle most of it for you. I’m a schmuck whose own website is self-hosted and I put an nginx rule to redirect http to https, because I don’t think anyone along the path between your computer and my website deserves to eavesdrop on the conversation.
The path of least resistance isn’t self-hosting anymore. No matter how easy it is, a twitter/facebook/youtube account will give you much more credibility and reach for a smaller cost and less setup time. I suppose I didn’t include that in the original message because I didn’t want to treat self-hosted websites and user accounts on large websites as similar, but it seems like they fulfill the same purpose nowadays.
Only a small % of people were on the internet then it grew and grew and the new people flocked to new spaces and didn’t like the old internet culture because it was quite elitist and toxic.
You say elitist as if it was a bad thing. As to toxic, 1990s online communities has no comparison with casual baseline hostility everywhere today that is just off the charts. In fact, Lemmy already has enough of it for me to start disliking commenting. This is what almost drove me offline in the last few years.
I’m not sure still care enough to run my own instance and enforce stricter standards. It’s all so much work and ultimatively futile.
This is such a surreal comment I feel like we have two completely different experiences. I found the old internet to be full of flame wars and hostility, which at the time I had no issue with and definitely participated. Today’s internet is overly an nice hugbox. The stuff I used to say in 2002 would probably land me in jail today.
The technical communities were different. Yes, we had flamewars but these were largely rituals. That things we used to say would now land you in jail is a testament to how oppressive our socities have become. It’s definitely a contributing factor to the trend of capable people disengaging.
I wasn’t in the technical communities only gaming. I agree that it’s a testament to how oppressive society is but I also think things were taken way to far back then.
It sucks you feel afraid to comment, I definitely understand how you feel. Even if someone responds to you in a hostile way I’ve seen the rest of the community come in for support. And really, report bad actors. Having a good community isn’t easy.
Thread closed. Dont insult the community.
Ich bin nicht die Signatur, ich putz hier nur.
1v1 me snitzel boy
Be more optimistic friend.
Government will continue to do surveillance but they can be constrained by the legal system. Corpos will build ai to sell you bullshit off whatever data they can get on you but you can block their ads and leave their platforms. Encryption is math and can’t be stopped by a law. UK law makers won’t be able to enforce their law even if it’s passed.
It’s cheaper than ever to run your own server, and will continue to get cheaper. Manage your own digital footprint and work towards decentralizing the web. Don’t worry so much about other people, they’ll come around eventually.
that said, we should also always remember that unenforceable law is law that can and will be selectively applied. Something they can whip out against people when they don’t have anything else.
This is being made increasingly difficult every day, with huge corporations openly discussing the advantages of killing the open internet as it is today: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/README.md
The endgame seems to be to turn you into a mindless, agency-less zombie slave to these corps with your input being ads delivered to your (sub)conscious, and your output being you mindlessly doing whatever the ad wanted you to do. This is as much psychological – and social – divide-and-rule as it is technologically damaging, so even if you don’t know (or want) to run your own server, you will end up being affected, fractured and sharded against your own community all the same.
A sample case in point: It is getting more and more difficult to run your own servers when you are forbidden to spend your own money from your own electronic devices to pay for goods and services without being surveilled (and pounded by ads).
Most payment apps rely on device attestation “security”, that requires your mobile device be “compliant” to someone else’s rules, standards and endgames, to the effect that if you want to change your own bought-and-owned device in a way your ad-masters disapprove, you will be prevented from making payments from your device – and more significantly thereby, from participating in your community, economy and society unless you bend over to one of many private corporations that want you just as bent and broken as the rest of the people they already have.
This is pure, unadulterated evil at your doorstep, ringing your doorbell.
I know I probably sound far more pessimistic and hopeless than things actually are, but that is better than being asleep at the wheel. I do not wish to rob you of your optimism (I am actually happy that we still have it), but unless we see our world for what it really is today, it will be far more difficult to know and drive what it may become in the future.
Here is another example of how hard some people have worked to turn your own devices against you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo
Thanks for the video link. Very interesting. This is how all computers will be built eventually. So seize the means of computation until we can…
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I suspect to get downvotes into oblivion for this, but there’s nothing wrong with the concept of C2PA.
It’s basically just Git commit signing, but for images. An organization (user) signs image data (a commit) with their public key, and other users can check that the image provenance (chain of signed commits) exists and the signing key is known to be owned by the organization (the signer’s public key is trusted). It does signing of images created using multiple assets (merge commits), too.
All of this is opt-in, and you need a private key. No private key, no signing. You can also strip the provenance by just copying the raw pixels and saving it as a new image (copying the worktree and deleting .git).
A scummy manufacturer could automatically generate keys on a per-user basis and sign the images to “track” the creator, but C2PA doesn’t make it any easier than just throwing a field in the EXIF or automatically uploading photos to some government-owned server.
it’ll look either
more like where the vikings live
more like where Americans die
New place for people created
|
V
Almost no moderation, real freedom
|
V
It becomes mainstream
|
V
Corporations take over
|
V
Make as much profit as possible
|
V
The place loses its initial charm
That’s the cycle more or less. You can apply it to internet or to other things. You can look at the privacy aspect, at the freedom or any other.
The internet was taken over by gigant corporations and had it’s former soul sucked out of it.
VR Chat is still a place without that much moderation or corporate control. I wouldn’t say it’s mainstream but facebook already tried taking over that space.
You can even find this in real places like America.
People who could get there were free, could start a new life. Then the USA became just another country with (not a corporation but) a government there to “moderate” people and spy on them and eventually become a global superpower.
That’s all i had to say. I know it’s slightly off topic but i really think its important. This is the video that made me think about all of this https://youtu.be/4PHT-zBxKQQ
I love how vrchat is so much of a freak show (and I love it for that) that corpos are too scared to even acknowledge its existence. Dunno if you’ve noticed, but whenever a company talks about “the metaverse” they tend to mention all the mainstream social programs except vrchat, despite vrchat being one of the largest. Vrchat seems like it’s too gay, trans, furry, weaboo, autistic and neurodivergent for corporations to be able to apply their normal methods of sanitation and control to it.
/c/enshittification
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/4PHT-zBxKQQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.