AbusedInnocent
Student
- Apr 5, 2024
- 110
Would like to rant about the lack of awareness about digital rights and online privacy.
In many ways the 90s internet was better than the current one, and we ruined it ourselves.
Every time I talk to someone about online privacy they say some bullshit like "I have nothing to hide", by that logic if you wear clothes you must be an alien pretending to be human, if you close your windows you must be cooking meth in your room.
You have plenty of things to hide and any data collected about you can be used against you, for example when Roe v. Wade was overturned some apps and services sold users' data to the US government so they could track who was traveling across states to get an abortion or buying abortion pills, you still sure you have nothing to hide? why are you willing to share such information anyway?
www.businessinsider.com
www.theverge.com
Surely if someone is spying on you they don't have your best interests in mind, if someone was stalking you on the streets you wouldn't think they're making sure you get home safely, you'd think they want to rob/murder/rape you and you'd call the police.
And what about the people who REALLY have things to hide? how are we supposed to plan protests if everything is tracked? saying privacy doesn't matter because you have nothing to hide is like saying free speech doesn't matter because you have nothing to say, privacy should should be protected by everyone for those who need it the most, without Tor/VPNs all whistleblowers would be dead.
I hear these idiots say that some potentially harmful information/content should be universally censored, I think it's only rational that censorship be implemented by platforms independently with some choosing to remain completely uncensored, sure if you regulate the whole internet you can stop people sharing child porn and hateful ideologies but you also make it impossible for whistleblowers to share their findings and allow dictators to censor and arrest anyone who criticizes them which is arguably a much greater harm, I believe that regulation should always be kept to a minimum and should be decentralized if possible, when it comes to the internet it's better if it remains completely unregulated.
The governments are constantly trying to censor the internet and the people don't realize this, they come up with excuses like "think of the children" to censor opinions they don't like and take control of the web.
Speaking of Web 1.0, most websites were simple forums and blogs run by people, no data collection, no algorithms, noBig tech Big brother, an internet by the people for the people.
Unfortunately as the internet became easier to use and more accessible you didn't need to even understand how it worked in order to use it, it was easy for tech startups to trick these people with some ads and suddenly we became dependent on their platforms while they grew to become billion dollar companies.
To prove to you the effectiveness of advertising and how clueless people really are, Mastodon and X (formerly twitter) are basically the exact same except Mastodon is open-source, federated, decentralized, run by volunteers, not owned or controlled by any centralized entity, while X was fucked up by Elon without its users having any control, yet X remains much more popular.
Same with Signal and Whatsapp/Telegram, Lemmy and Reddit, Odysee and Youtube, and many others.
These are social media services that are only useful if enough people use them, they really ruin the internet for everyone by using these awful services and forcing everyone else to use them as well.
With some time and effort most people can find open-source alternatives to almost all the software they use, even the people who are aware of how bad Windows is and where Microsoft is heading with it refuse to even try Linux, I think at this point Windows is only good for gaming and compatibility with some obscure/legacy software.
How can anyone actually buy an Adobe software license with all the shit that company has been doing? you don't think it's better to pirate it and donate the money to GIMP, Krita or Blender? these are open-source projects that will remain free forever, respect your privacy and rely on donations for support, at this point only corporations are buying Adobe licenses, I refuse to believe anyone buys it for personal use. Do you want Adobe to continue to dominate the media creation market and fuck with users?
I refuse to let anyone fuck me over, I keep all my data locally and don't stream movies or music, subscription services are just paying someone to offer you a service from their computer where they can change the terms and conditions, features or price at any time, the cloud is just someone else's computer that you know nothing about, some people still use unencrypted cloud storage or don't keep physical backups for fucks sake.
There might be hope though with Linux rising in popularity and the Fediverse becoming more popular, Mastodon is usable but Lemmy is still a ghost town.
If you've never heard of the Fediverse basically it's a network of social media servers that are decentralized and federated, each having their own rules and content policies and communicating over a common protocol called ActivityPub, it's the best of both worlds between Web 1.0 and popular modern platforms, you can have large social media networks with plenty of users and content while still remaining decentralized and free.
en.wikipedia.org
I've been reading about online privacy and digital rights for a few years now and it has taken me on a strange path, it's better this way though, I almost exclusively use open-source software now, I block internet access to all the closed-source apps on my phone with a firewall (my phone doesn't support any custom android ROMs unfortunately) and most of it is open-source anyway, I dualboot Windows and Ubuntu only keeping windows for games (telemetry blocked of course) and exclusively use open-source apps on Ubuntu (not much I can do about drivers though).
Please don't make fun of me for using Ubuntu, I haven't had too many problems with it and don't want to try other distros for now, also I'm aware that it's GNU/Linux.
Surprisingly I don't have a Google, Microsoft, Apple or Meta account and I get by just fine, you probably don't really need them anyway except for email and there are various privacy respecting email alternatives, freeing yourself of these services should be a priority on the road to privacy.
Least you can do is check if open-source alternatives are available before downloading any software and check for decentralized alternatives before using any service, you may not be able to give up features or convenience at first but just keep privacy in mind, help make the internet and computing in general a better place for everyone.
Interested? Here are some great resources to check out, sorry to redirect you to Reddit but it's a good wiki and subreddit in general, you should be fine if you use a fingerprint-resistant web browser with ad and tracker blocking.
www.reddit.com
Let me know if you'd like another post focusing just on the benefits of open-source software as this thread is getting quite long.
In many ways the 90s internet was better than the current one, and we ruined it ourselves.
Every time I talk to someone about online privacy they say some bullshit like "I have nothing to hide", by that logic if you wear clothes you must be an alien pretending to be human, if you close your windows you must be cooking meth in your room.
You have plenty of things to hide and any data collected about you can be used against you, for example when Roe v. Wade was overturned some apps and services sold users' data to the US government so they could track who was traveling across states to get an abortion or buying abortion pills, you still sure you have nothing to hide? why are you willing to share such information anyway?
Police are prosecuting abortion seekers using their digital data — and Facebook and Google help them do it
Social-media sites are inundated with police requests for user data and may cooperate even if not legally required to, one legal expert told Insider.
www.businessinsider.com
Flo period tracker launches “Anonymous Mode” to fight abortion privacy concerns
“We need to rethink all of the internet,” said the company’s CTO.
www.theverge.com
Surely if someone is spying on you they don't have your best interests in mind, if someone was stalking you on the streets you wouldn't think they're making sure you get home safely, you'd think they want to rob/murder/rape you and you'd call the police.
And what about the people who REALLY have things to hide? how are we supposed to plan protests if everything is tracked? saying privacy doesn't matter because you have nothing to hide is like saying free speech doesn't matter because you have nothing to say, privacy should should be protected by everyone for those who need it the most, without Tor/VPNs all whistleblowers would be dead.
I hear these idiots say that some potentially harmful information/content should be universally censored, I think it's only rational that censorship be implemented by platforms independently with some choosing to remain completely uncensored, sure if you regulate the whole internet you can stop people sharing child porn and hateful ideologies but you also make it impossible for whistleblowers to share their findings and allow dictators to censor and arrest anyone who criticizes them which is arguably a much greater harm, I believe that regulation should always be kept to a minimum and should be decentralized if possible, when it comes to the internet it's better if it remains completely unregulated.
The governments are constantly trying to censor the internet and the people don't realize this, they come up with excuses like "think of the children" to censor opinions they don't like and take control of the web.
Speaking of Web 1.0, most websites were simple forums and blogs run by people, no data collection, no algorithms, no
Unfortunately as the internet became easier to use and more accessible you didn't need to even understand how it worked in order to use it, it was easy for tech startups to trick these people with some ads and suddenly we became dependent on their platforms while they grew to become billion dollar companies.
To prove to you the effectiveness of advertising and how clueless people really are, Mastodon and X (formerly twitter) are basically the exact same except Mastodon is open-source, federated, decentralized, run by volunteers, not owned or controlled by any centralized entity, while X was fucked up by Elon without its users having any control, yet X remains much more popular.
Same with Signal and Whatsapp/Telegram, Lemmy and Reddit, Odysee and Youtube, and many others.
These are social media services that are only useful if enough people use them, they really ruin the internet for everyone by using these awful services and forcing everyone else to use them as well.
With some time and effort most people can find open-source alternatives to almost all the software they use, even the people who are aware of how bad Windows is and where Microsoft is heading with it refuse to even try Linux, I think at this point Windows is only good for gaming and compatibility with some obscure/legacy software.
How can anyone actually buy an Adobe software license with all the shit that company has been doing? you don't think it's better to pirate it and donate the money to GIMP, Krita or Blender? these are open-source projects that will remain free forever, respect your privacy and rely on donations for support, at this point only corporations are buying Adobe licenses, I refuse to believe anyone buys it for personal use. Do you want Adobe to continue to dominate the media creation market and fuck with users?
I refuse to let anyone fuck me over, I keep all my data locally and don't stream movies or music, subscription services are just paying someone to offer you a service from their computer where they can change the terms and conditions, features or price at any time, the cloud is just someone else's computer that you know nothing about, some people still use unencrypted cloud storage or don't keep physical backups for fucks sake.
There might be hope though with Linux rising in popularity and the Fediverse becoming more popular, Mastodon is usable but Lemmy is still a ghost town.
If you've never heard of the Fediverse basically it's a network of social media servers that are decentralized and federated, each having their own rules and content policies and communicating over a common protocol called ActivityPub, it's the best of both worlds between Web 1.0 and popular modern platforms, you can have large social media networks with plenty of users and content while still remaining decentralized and free.
Fediverse - Wikipedia
I've been reading about online privacy and digital rights for a few years now and it has taken me on a strange path, it's better this way though, I almost exclusively use open-source software now, I block internet access to all the closed-source apps on my phone with a firewall (my phone doesn't support any custom android ROMs unfortunately) and most of it is open-source anyway, I dualboot Windows and Ubuntu only keeping windows for games (telemetry blocked of course) and exclusively use open-source apps on Ubuntu (not much I can do about drivers though).
Please don't make fun of me for using Ubuntu, I haven't had too many problems with it and don't want to try other distros for now, also I'm aware that it's GNU/Linux.
Surprisingly I don't have a Google, Microsoft, Apple or Meta account and I get by just fine, you probably don't really need them anyway except for email and there are various privacy respecting email alternatives, freeing yourself of these services should be a priority on the road to privacy.
Least you can do is check if open-source alternatives are available before downloading any software and check for decentralized alternatives before using any service, you may not be able to give up features or convenience at first but just keep privacy in mind, help make the internet and computing in general a better place for everyone.
Interested? Here are some great resources to check out, sorry to redirect you to Reddit but it's a good wiki and subreddit in general, you should be fine if you use a fingerprint-resistant web browser with ad and tracker blocking.
Reddit - Dive into anything
www.reddit.com
Let me know if you'd like another post focusing just on the benefits of open-source software as this thread is getting quite long.
