We are starting to see for quite some time big tech trying to get the internet under their control. We have seen half of the internet starting to block proxies. Tor is not usable in the normal internet anymore. More and more services require a government issued id for their account.
And now Google went ahead and did the final blow by announcing WEI. If that gets integrated on all popular sites, there will be no more open web. We try to fight back as much as we can, but the bitter truth is most people are already ‘good little pets’ of these giants.
Most of the people, are not just okay, but want these big brothers to handle everything for them. They want to get their finances, entertainment, social medias, government services all done for them by these giants without them even knowing. They are ready to live as big brother says. Half of them already don’t have individual opinions.
Although the fight still continues, It’s time to think about plan B. What if most of internet is blocked for us privacy conscious people? We need alternatives. It’s time to build an ecosystem that we people can use without the help of popular services. There are already a lot of softwares, but we need to fill the gaps fast. We need an open hardware, accessible and a fully open software stack including everyday apps for most of our needs and entertainments. On PC it’s almost there. Mobile terribly lacks in the lowest levels, but have some apps that can help.
PC
For PC, we can still install linux on most devices, so linux. For browsing, we can use firefox or any forks of that. Proton and skiff are good alternatives for basic email, storage etc. For social media we have federated systems like lemmy, services like odysee, mewe etc. Share services that you think should be in this list
Mobile
For mobile, we miss variety in hardware section. One option might be pinephone or other linux phones. Other option might ironically be Pixel. For OS, we can use graph eneOS, cal yx OS, linux based OS etc. But setting it up is currently very hard. For browsing, firefox for android is good (I use it) which also has extensions support. Above mentioned services like proton, skiff, lemmy, odysee, mewe etc. has android apps. For IM we have briar, Session, simpleX etc. Share services that you think should be in this list
Help me document a full recommended ecosystem. Maybe we can have a recommended guide. Maybe there are better options. Discuss.
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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How can the privacy alt web correlate with the content of data itself and the ability to access the data? How might private storage compete with corporate super hardrives for websites?
This isn’t the last stand. This is the latest stand. While this fight might seem the biggest, never forget it’s not the last we’ll have to take part in. If this fails, they’ll keep coming with some new idea later on down the road in order to deny us our right to privacy. Don’t give up. Keep giving them hell every step of the way.
I’ve started moving over some of my services from Google to Proton now. Using my own domain so a switch in the future is as simple to do as changing the DNS. It’s something I can recommend everyone.
Too bad I can’t get my work to switch from Google.
The problem really isn’t the internet, the problem is how big techs, which have the necessary resources to build complex infrastructures, are dealing with it trying to costantlyincreaseing their profit, and that is son of our broken economical system.
I’m a strong believer that for changing the internet we’ll first need to think about a new and different economic system, where there aren’t central institutions printing money for nothing, and that, as always happened in history, has to start again by switching back to a deflatory system.
Now if i think about a deflatory economic system on which software can be built on i cannot think something else of Bitcoin, if lightning network is the layer granting micropayments on it, software built on lightning network can be what makes us detatch from this shitty web based on ads and unrestricted profilation.
It’s still on its infancy but honestly i don’t think a decentralized network more trusted than bitcoin exists worldwide. Installing a full node/lightning node with every internet modem ineveruy home would make the infrastructure for a completely different internet.
I’ve been seeing some projects built on lightning network like the impervious browser, it kinda vanished, much more work is still needed.
In my opinion that’s what we would need to work for, we can’t exclude the economic model from the internet because that’s just how our society works and always worked, collaboration is needed to build something better togheter, and that most of the times requires and is facilitated by some form of economical incentive. But we need a different type of incentive.
bitcoin is really bad for privacy tho. I think let’s use Monero and it’s tech stack
What do you mean tor is not usable on normal internet anymore?
Trying? It’s a little late to do anything about it now. The internet is controlled by like 5 companies right now.
It didn’t pan out the way it was intended. They came in a scooped everything up. Even the sites not owned by them are most likely running in their datacenters.
Time for Gemini?
Gemini (or things like that) is a part of the solution. We unfortunately need to create spaces outside the WWW…
How
I think it’s time to stop and think whether we really need all of those services? We’ve been slowly trapped into social networks and various unecessary services through dark patterns, and now we somehow can’t imagine being without them, even though they actively make everything worse.
What was the last time you watched a Youtube video that actually was worth the time, and wasn’t just a shallow content about something vaguely interesting, but something you’ll probably could live without? Do we really need to agregate news and articles from the whole internet, while there probably are good local newspaper/news sites that will get you up to speed, without giving you clickbait articles? For example, we have a pretty great news company that is independent and funded entierly by users, and it’s enough for keeping up to speed on world events without having to scroll through a lot of bullshit.
The more enshitificated the internet gets, the more I’m starting to realize that I really don’t need almost any of it. Sure, some things are pretty usefull, like cloud storage, but almost anything I needed so far was solved by just getting a NAS with Nextcloud. The only thing I really need the internet for is messaging and email. And if I want to stay up to date, we have amazing smaller local sites for both gaming news and for world news, and those two are enough.
The more that I think about my internet usage, the more I’m realizing that I don’t really mind its enshitification - because ever since it started happening, I’ve been just removing addictions from my life and replacing it with more niche or smaller sites that are updated less frequently, don’t stalk me, and I’ve slowly started to realize that thanks to that I can do a lot more done and don’t get trapped by scrolling through clickbaity dopamine rush made to keep me glued to a screen.
I recommend reading https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672036-digital-minimalism . I’ve already read it several times, and never managed to get into fully implementing it. I did stop using Facebook, and reduced my Reddit usage drastically during those years, but this enshitification is only making it easier to just not using anything I really don’t need. I’m looking forward to WEI and other “You can’t do this” stuff that will come with it, because it’s exactly the trigger that will make me stop and think “Do I really need to do this? Or are there better ways how to solve this.”. And the answer is almost always “Nope”.
What’s the consensus on https://www.privacyguides.org/en/ and https://www.privacytools.io/ ? I was always just using privacytools’ recommendations, but then discovered that the original people behind it somehow split into privacyguides, and both sites have almost entirely different recommendations.
So, which one to believe?
Privacy Guides. It was formed by former Privacy Tools staff after the founder went AWOL while retaining full control over the domain. Since then, Privacy Tools has begun making “recommendations” based on sponsorships, even going so far as to remove competitors from the website despite them being vastly superior options. You can read about it here.
People using Windows and MacOS, and to some extent even Ubuntu, are using cancer. I will not speak for them.
Now, there are some things that can be done in the current situation, and a few suggestions for possibilities in the future. However, I will refrain from commenting about events which rely heavily on probability.
I do not know much about SOCKS5 to be able to comment on how useful that would be (I don’t even use proxies because I’m never sure if they are as useful as VPNs for privacy).
Cheers
Firefox on android isn’t really all that great. Use a freed soft fork like mull
I am not so worried. Metaphysical reasons aside, why can’t a proxy do what needs to be done?
There is 0.0 things that can stop an edge proxy that appears trusted from the proxy on out, and but is doing what the end-user wants from the proxy on in. At some level, network traffic is physical…once data enters the physical realm, it is the end-user’s data.
The irony is…if the information was that important & valuable, it could be printed and purchased by consumers, you know, like…it used to. lol.
How can you trust the proxy? Also it’s still giving in to chrome’ s monopoly
ahh…the proxy you run? I hope you can trust it.
That is how ad blocking worked before plugins :)
I am not sure what kind of monopoly they have. I guess on Android?
GrapheneOS setup is very easy, anyone who can follow a manual is able to do it.
Btw, does banking apps work on graphene? What banks still work?
My bank app works great even without google services!
I live in Germany and germans are bad at software, so they generally don’t work as well as cards or the respective web interfaces and I never tried using them.
In the US, they do.
Being able to follow a manual is a high bar nowadays
Yes its true. Privacy through a VPN doesnt work often as sites secretly block the proxies. You are no longer anonymous, or you need to use your own server and thats fingerprintable.
Services I Use:
Arms of the Fediverse I Use Regularly:
Dormant Arms of the Fediverse:
I have installed Linux on all four of my laptops, and I’m hoping to migrate from my iPhone to a Pixel with DivestOS as soon as I move out of my parents’ house (I’m currently 17), or sooner if possible.
I have also swapped many web apps for desktop apps, and my music collection has been based around CDs and DRM-free files since it started in 2016. In addition, I still use DVDs, VHS tapes, and (to a lesser extent) good old-fashioned Torrents for my films and TV shows.
If the internet becomes altogether too bad, there’s always Gemini. Making web apps is trickier, but entirely feasible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)
https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
I think there was also a federated social media site on Gemini, which could interact with Mastodon, but I can’t find it.
Bookmarked! Make a post for others to see!
If all else fails, I vote we start taking this to the people like the crazy gun nuts, the anti-vaxxers, and the crazy religious folks. Specifically the ones who aren’t as smart.
Convince them that googl€ is going to censor all the information/imagery regarding guns, Jesus, and anti-vax no matter what they say and tell them that if they want it back/to stay, they gotta pull the election riot thing that happened in Washington DC at googl€ headquarters.
If the message spreads far and quick enough, we might see them pull it off. I’d hope it works and we see them break into the headquarters and storm the place. Even if googl€ calls in the police because they get word of this happening, they won’t be able to stop a large enough crowd. In that scenario, if we’re lucky, we’d see the death of many of the traitors destroying the free web. It’s a win-win for our cause and theirs since what we would be telling them is a lie, but the people who actually go wouldn’t believe it’s a lie.
lol that’s pretty desperate… A better idea I think is let all of us privacy minded individuals from the world migrate t ONE country specifically thereby becoming a major force or even the majority of them. Then we can have like minded politicians and government that can help us protect our privacy. An island in this shit world.
What about swiss or sweden? Are they good?
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. You’re basing your understanding of an entire group of people off a stereotype that circulates on social media. If you gathered up everybody you just described, you’d have an army barely capable of storming a McDonald’s. Touch grass
I was talking about getting those who actually fit that stereotype and not just everyone in those groups.
I’m positive you can get enough of them to believe it through clever social engineering and falsified information/files since the people I am referring to are the ones where that type of tactic works on since they tend not to do any research that disproves their beliefs and refuse to listen to anyone of a differing opinion.
America is full of unintelligent people, so it’s possible it could happen.
Even so, that’s a sick misuse of people’s trust, and even if you managed to pull it off, you probably wouldn’t accomplish anything of note
If you’re in the EU, Taiwan or US, may I suggest a Fairphone? They have open bootloaders and support re-locking. You can get a Fairphone with /e/os pre-installed on murena.com /e/os is great and Fairphone has stellar customer support.
Edit: thanks for helping me discover Kiwix. That’s awesome.
Fairphone is increasingly becoming a global option. Their network compatibility seems to be improving with each generation, whereas earlier models were pretty much limited to the EU. Definitely work looking at if you’re outside of those three regions, since they have full (or close to full) network compatibility in many other places now.
I didn’t know they were that compatible. That’s awesome!
Yeah it’s pretty great. They still might be somewhat difficult to buy everywhere but if you can find one then there’s a good chance it will work. It’s increasingly becoming a legitimate alternative instead of the very niche product it started off as.
Of course! I keep forgetting about Fairphone!
I try to never use the word “hate” because I believe it’s way too much for things that I simply dislike a lot.
But I HATE the average joe.