Privacy

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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.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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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
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We are not empowered with the free choice of privacy like many people think we are (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by cyclohexane@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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There is this common narrative I see all the time, implying that we as individuals are empowered to choose and manifest our own destiny, and this comes up often in privacy discussions.

Don't like Facebook's privacy nightmares? Just don't use Facebook!

Don't like personalized ads? I remember a popular post on reddit saying "if your ad interrupts my YouTube video, I will hate your product".

Don't like Google chrome hegemony? Just use Firefox!

And while I agree that we should strive to do that, the battle doesn't end here. Facebook has shadow accounts for people who never signed up. Google chrome keeps it's hegemony despite people on the Internet advocating Firefox day and night. And ads continue to be extremely profitable despite you "hating the product" because it interrupted your YouTube video.

Even worse: even if you "hate the product", you now already know it. You now know they product exists, and possibly whatever they wanted you to know about it. The reality is that these companies own your eyes. They control what shows up on your screen. And even if you hate it, they control what you end up learning.

the reality is that our individual resistance is very far from enough

I am not saying it is completely futile. It is a step in the right direction. But the only effective solution is organized action. We, alone, cannot achieve much. Unless we organize our resistance against privacy violations, we will continue to live through this privacy nightmare.

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[–] HumanPerson@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This reminded me of an idea of using mesh networks to create an internet separate from the current internet. By that I mean physically running Ethernet cables from window to window between houses. It is unlikely to ever happen because it would need a lot of people to join it all at once, but I think it is a cool concept. Perhaps if I put my Jellyfin server on it and tell my neighbors about the free tv opportunity…

Edit: Forgot to mention, this was inspired by the Cuban networks that were basically the same thing. It is worth a browser search if you are bored.

[–] josefo@leminal.space 1 points 1 year ago

Nice, I'll look into it, sounds interesting. I'm definitely community driven and anarchism friendly, real freedom comes from our pairs, not from above.