I wouldn’t call going from mad profits to okay profits a sign of downfall. Having decentralized technology doesn’t mean decentralization will actually happen. For instance look at E-mail. It is technically a decentralized service, but most people still uses services provided by big tech vs operating their own servers. Such a system does give you more choices, but don’t expect this future will be without big tech.
Then you need both anonymity and privacy. Sometimes you do need both but they’re not the same concept.
Privacy without anonymity is you using the bathroom with everyone seeing you walking in. They know you used the bathroom but have no idea what you did inside.
Anonymity without privacy is like you pissing on the street with a ski mask on. Everyone saw what you did but no one knows who you are.
Having both is walking into the bathroom with a ski mask on. No one knows who you are nor what you did inside.
I’m sort of a Linux nerd and I have an iPad. The reason being when I bought my iPad not many Android tablets satisfies my needs. The few that sort of do don’t support third party ROMs and stock / manufacturer bloated Android imo is even more of a privacy disaster than stock iOS. However that has changed since the release of the new Pixel tablets which supports Graphene. I might try that out when my iPad retires.
The approach I took is organize my contacts into three categories The people that I talk to on a daily basis, people that I occasionally talk to, and people who I rarely ever talk to. For the first group (less than 10 for me), mostly close friends and families, I just bullied them to use an alternative platform like Signal until they caved in. For the second group, I recommend Signal to them but also left them with my phone number so they can text me if needed. For the third group I did nothing. Then I proceeded to delete FB Messenger off all my devices. I still log in to the web version maybe once per month to check if anyone from the third group needs to reach me or if there’s any group events going on. I did not fully get off FB but I ended up reducing 99% of my usage and 100% of the garbage in app and location tracking. To me this is good enough
I got some insight from a friend who works at a major supplier for these retail stores in Canada. He said how they manage prices is that when they anticipate a rise in cost they’ll jack the price all the way to a future projected target instead of following the current inflationary rate so that they won’t need to constantly quote their customers different prices. They don’t care because they know it will get passed downstream.
It depends on your threat model. Do you think Google knowing your video watching preference is dangerous? For me I don’t care if Google knows my music and video preferences in general. If I’m watching things that I don’t want Google to know I use Newpipe on a VPN. But sensitive document uploaded to Google drive? Not anymore.
I do understand the reaction. I have relatives in China that believe the HK protestors are foreign spies and a threat to national security that needs to be hunted down. They also thinks the political interference scandal is all made up by the Canadian government. If that’s the information you hear day in and day out then it’s natural that you believe in it and become upset when your reality is getting challenged.
I also agree with you on the last part. It doesn’t make sense for Trudeau to take on India for no reason at this point in time when India is crucial to the West in the Indo-Pacific strategy. Unless the matter is serious he has nothing to gain and everything to lose.
Fellow Canadian here. Aside from the obvious troll farms I’m wondering shouldn’t Indians be more concerned of these kind of conduct than others? If the world turns a blind eye imagine in the future if the Indian state label you as a “terrorist” for saying something they don’t like, you are not even safe even if you managed to get out of the country.
When I quit mainstream social media platforms half of my friend added me on signal and the other half agreed to just text me. Would I miss out on some group events? Maybe, but I don’t need to be in every one of them. If I want any sort of group gathering I’d just organize one.
Your cousin just sounds miserable and it’s really her loss for judging people by a tool of communication.
I consider myself right leaning but I don’t think subscribing to right vs left wing ideology is nearly as important as supporting liberty vs authoritarianism. A lot of folks on both sides claims to believe in liberty but in actually they’re authoritarians in disguise because they just want the government to step in and eliminate dissent. I have a close friend who’s an anarcho communist just like you and whenever we have these discussions it just stays on a thought experiment level and has never harmed our relationships. Since at the end of the day we agree that people should be left alone.
I went through their privacy agreement and personally speaking, I’m not too comfortable with them when Location and Device data is part of their data collection, as these doesn’t seem to be necessary for them to provide the service.
There are also a couple of other clauses that I find concerning with their data sharing agreement:
- With third parties who may access data about you to provide you with the Services;
- In Connection with, or during the negotiation of, any merger, sale of company stock or assets, financing, acquisition, divestiture or dissolution of all or a portion of our business;
My problem with the first clause is that it’s too vague. From my interpretation, they can potentially sell your data to any third part as long as they can make the argument such data is necessary to provide you with the “Services”
The problem with second one is in the case of this company getting bought out. Even if we trust that they are currently a privacy respecting and trustworthy entity, there is no guarantee that in the case of a future buyout the buyer is equally trustworthy (e.g. what if Intuit buys them?). With the amount of data that they know about you (e.g. spending behaviour, device / location info, government IDs etc.), this could be extremely detrimental to your data privacy in the long run.
Now whether this is the lesser evil vs giving your payment info to websites is a judgement everyone needs to make. I steered away from it because I think it consolidates too much of my online purchasing habit into one place, and it’s a risk on top of all the info I already provide to my banks. I can definitely see merit if you’re using one throwaway card with low credit limit on this service or using it to make purchases on websites that you don’t frequent.
Keep in mine not everyone uses TOR to evade the three letter agencies. I’m a TOR relay operator and the main reason I’m running it is to give people in oppressive regimes a better chance at exchanging free information. To these people getting spied on by western intelligence agencies is probably the lesser evil compared to their own tinpot dictatorship governments.