It is an absolute nightmare, but you can gain some privacy back with ublock origin, an adblocking DNS on your phone, Firefox, a VPN, and ditching all things google/meta. As I type this out, I am reminded how much effort it takes to claw back your privacy...yeah OP, I'm with you, the modern internet is a profit-at-all-cost cesspool that can eat a moldy potato!
Privacy
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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[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Ditching google is the most difficult part, especially when iPhone is so locked down :(
I’ve primarily been an iphone user over the years and was recently hand me downed an older pixel. Using grapheneOS and firefox, I was surprised to see there were only about a dozen extensions available, good ones, but not all of them like I’d assumed. Then I discovered chrome on android has zero, is that right? I cannot believe that there are so many people that use a mobile browser without an adblocker. On iOS safari, I have dozens of incredible extensions (basically countless through the app store) that make the internet useable again. I’m happy to see safari opening up.
You can get any extensions you want on Android with Firefox Beta (or Nightly) by creating a custom collection at addons.mozilla.org
You can put Google-free Android forks on your phone or tablet. My phone is LinageOS with minimal Google footprint and my tablet has no gapps at all.
I use Gmail, Tasks, Drive and Calendar for the sake of convenience, since I could self-host all of these.
It’s sad, 10-15 years ago it was as simple as Adblock :/
Now it’s nearly unavoidable and/or requires quite a few changes to your native device to make it more secure
Yeah, for all of Jobs' "vision" cell phones were really just a way to profit of of free information.
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.
Thank you for the Hopium
Thank you, author!
aaand there's intel management engine and amd platform security procesor which undermine your foss efforts on most platforms
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.
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/
Thanks for providing a positive perspective! It's really important we don't lose sight of the good things.
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.
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
UK law makers won’t be able to enforce their law even if it’s passed.
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.
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.
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.
I think the end of net neutrality hastened there older internet's demise. now corps are free to monetize as much as they like.
Money happened.
This is absolutely not a “this is fine” comment
But the US “intelligence agencies” have been spying on the US and the world for 2 decades now pretty openly. Yes it’s worse that other countries are joining or ramping up spying, but we shouldn’t delude ourselves into believing this is a new development. The evil fuckos who up at the 3 letter agencies and equivalents around the world know where true power resides and they know methods of controlling people. The fact that France is doing this stuff should be a sign to the French (and everyone) that the government fears the people. A government which fears the people demanding that it serve the people is no longer legitimate. If the French ripped apart their shit from the root it would be justified… as an outsider. They’ve done the proper procedure of ask, then demand… now force. But Americans got out shit to sort out which tbh is incredibly more fucked up so I will leave the French alone in that respect
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.
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 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
Yeah, it's incredibly hard to be optimistic about how things are going. Tech used to be one of those things that made me excited about things to come and look forward to the future, but now (with rich AI tech bros ripping off artists and creatives, proof of work harming the environment, people owning and controlling less and less, etc.) it just feels like so many things are pushing us in a bad direction.
On the bright side, things like Linux, FOSS and the Fediverse are examples of good tech, and at least the potential for a future where the people have some agency and ownership over the digital world. I hope that we can continue to grow software in an open and community-based direction, if only so that the niche of geeks who care about computers and the internet can have some way of fighting back against ever-growing tech conglomerates.
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.
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.
There are ways around it if you are willing to put in the work and deal with incoveniences.
For example, never use native Android or iOS, flash a custom ROM, never install proprietary apps, just that cuts a lot out. Only use cash for all stores and services, never carry payment cards with you, that wipes out financial tracking. Never give real info to stores. Use email aliases so different people have a different address. Don't use Windows on computer if the prgrams you use are not exclusive to Windows.
Those can be the beginner steps to how to be almost invisible in society. One thing I've done is try to push people onto SimpleX chat app for messaging so I can have a different random ID with each person I message so there's no contact info to share. Even people I know in person, we hang out together, I try to get them on SimpleX in place of Signal.
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 genuinely believe that this is nothing new. Governments have just learned in the last few years that most of their citizenry don't give a shit about privacy. They're just making it official, so it can be penalized if you openly try to do something about it. I think...
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 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.
New place for people created
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V
Almost no moderation, real freedom
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V
It becomes mainstream
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V
Corporations take over
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V
Make as much profit as possible
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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 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.