this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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If you don't want to be tracked, you shouldn't own a smartphone.
Because let's face it, you're never going to be able to stop it unless you get rid of all your tech.
Imo it should be a choice whether we are tracked for monetary gains or not, and not a necessary evil. But with most basic services/devices you are not even presented with that choice. E.g. when buying a phone.
And if you do have a choice, sometimes accessibility is restricted so much that you can't participate in our networked society.
I think we have to find ways to provide access to the most basic services with a minimum of tracking. Anything else should still be an option of course.
How to achieve this? I don't know. But EU regulations certainly wouldn't hurt for now.
I agree it should be a choice. But at the moment now, it’s not. And there’s content and entertainment I get out of it that I can’t replace with other options.
I pay for it as well. The AdBlocking options I use on my other devices aren’t as easy to implement in others (like SmartTVs or in YouTubes own app), and YouTube ads are worse than websites page ads in a lot of cases, so it’s worth it at the moment.
Since I’m already neck deep in their services for Gmail, drive, etc at the moment, there’s no benefit from distancing myself from YouTube. I’m working on transitioning to either self hosted (which is fine for a calendar or a shared drive, I don’t care if they’re down for maintenance/failure) or privacy focused alternatives, like ProtonMail, I’m currently testing it to see if I like it before I debate if it’s worth the coin.
Tracking != taking all of your data and selling it for profit. That’s what Google does with YouTube, even if you pay for premium. So I see no reason to pay for it.
Not to mention a premium sub costs more than most streaming services out there, including double the price of lots of Plex shares that have thousands of movies and shows to watch.
I don't understand the Google selling data argument. I thought Google was an ad broker. Someone goes to Google and says I want to play ads on YouTube for my awesome baking book, play it for people who are into baking. YouTube has the watch history of people and is able to tell who watches a lot of baking content. That's not selling data to someone in my books as the advertiser does not receive any personal details about the people where the ad is played. He is just buying impressions. Or am I missing something?
I see your point, but it assumes I want other streaming services or content. I have YouTube Premium to avoid ads. The content I watch is almost exclusively YouTube creators.
That and paying for other services isn’t free of tracking either.
I guess I’m resigned to being the product in some instances.
You know there are ways to avoid being tracked, even with a smartphone, right?
You're objectively wrong. You can have a fully free and open source android rom without any spyware (not even from google) and be free, and I also use Piped for watching youtube because I don't have a google account. Check out privacy communities on lemmy.
Edit: And about getting rid of all tech, of course you can't be 100% independent and have 100% privacy, but you can mitigate most of it if you know what you're doing.
Many years ago I tried that, and found out that privacy is possible, but the cost is incredibly high.
By using pi-hole I was able to find out if my mobile phone was communicating with Google. As long as I had GAPPS on LineageOS, there was plenty of traffic. When I removed GAPPS, the traffic went quiet, but my phone became severely crippled.
Sure, I still had some smart apps on my smartphone, but I was also cut off from my bank, so basically living without money in todays society. Not really a viable option. Also, updating apps from fdroid was incredibly inconvenient, but I hope that issue has been fixed now.
No, sorry but you’re wrong. Your phone will still ping towers it’s near, those pings are logged. You’re being tracked as long as you carry a smartphone.
That's how the internet works, a ping is not an issue for my privacy and my threat model