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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The mindset about privacy is just all wrong. It's not an all or nothing game. Any privacy gain is a net positive to no privacy at all.
To many people conflate privacy with anonymity or try "accomplish" privacy without understanding what they want to be private from and why.
Many people don't even distinguish
So you know... For example Signal is private but not anonymous as it is tied to you in some way (username, phone number). Security is just not exposing yourself when you haven't allowed someone to have this information / access.
Exactly. Now to click the “copy text” button and keep your fine words handy for my next convo with a friend who thinks life with Facebook and Google is grand.
but it was trash at loading html websites
as opposed to websites written in excel 2003 format or what
Bro's from the timeline where Flash became the dominant species.
my guess is its just another flavour of cope.
imo likely because recent history has began to undermine the delusions which were propping up the former flavour.
i had the same thought since i sometimes wonder "why bother" when i know that things like prism gave them everything they wanted 15 years ago.
Haha holy shit id forgotten. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
i'm reminded of it each time i see the duct tape covering the camera of my work laptop. lol
There’s worse.
They already know everything about me anyways. If I can exchange my data for some free and easy to use service, I’m more than happy to give.
I hate defeatism.
Its not even defeatism, its willingly sacrificing themselves to the machine in hopes it will be merciful!
html websites
These aren't normies. They're children.
This honestly reads like a bad commercial you'd hear on the radio.
When they realized they DO actually have something to hide, they moved the goalposts to now say nothing is private online anyway.
I mean, that is pretty close to the truth. Especially for people whose skill level is at "Firefox sucks at loading HTML sites".
That’s such a weird statement. People who don’t like Firefox at that level don’t know what html is.
The claim to have "nothing to hide" was not just born our of ignorance, but also out of comfort - to not having to do anything about it.
Now that even the last one accepted that they do indeed have something to hide, but in order to justify their own inaction, it's labeled as inevitable: privacy is not real.
They are lying to themselves, because doing otherwise would mean they have to admit being wrong.
The 'nothing to hide' argument seems a lot like that 'first they came for socialists and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist...' quote. Sure you have nothing to hide right now, but what happens when something you weren't hiding becomes a target.
Elon Musk popularised this cope argument a few years ago. It sounds intelligent to people who are incapable of any level of critical thinking or nuance and believe everything in the world is either 100% A or 100% B with no in-between. Sadly, this is a large percentage of the population.
A lot of people have just accepted surviellance for convienience.
People close to me get TSA precheck even though it requires fingerprinting, because "the government already has your fingerprints"
But if they did, why would they need to ask your for them?
Depending on what people do, the government already has their fingerprints.
Personally, I work around schools so I had to get a background check and fingerprinted for that. I also am licensed to handle explosives, both federally and at the state level. I been fingerprinted for that. I've gone through TSA for hazmat endorsement on a commercial driver's license. That needed fingerprints and a background check.
Getting fingerprinted to get through airport security is the least of my privacy concerns.
But my threat model isn't the TSA. They aren't a concern of mine, although I do opt out of their facial recognition.
I am concerned with internet surveillance, corporate surveillance, and communication surveillance.
Sorry for devil's advocate here because I agree with you but hypothetically the answer would be verification. ie., Google already has your password, so why would they need to ask you for it when you log in?
Clear Blue is like this, but they use your iris scan. You have to scan every time to skip the line. But the TSA precheck just fingerprints you once when you sign up IIRC
Is it me or do those comments feel very shill-like?
Yes some subreddit is piviting hard captalism recently, giving up their dignity to defend corporations with their life.
“My prehistoric brain can only think in ‘binary’ and doesn’t understand that development of a successful threat model doesn’t (and often can’t) be perfect, but any incremental change to my behavior and online practices in a way to prevent sensitive information from being shared and potentially utilized by malicious actors is a plus.
Instead of thinking about all of that, I’m going to reduce the whole subject to a nice and neat logical fallacy of ‘online privacy is terrible nowadays, thus it doesn’t matter what I do’ “
"If people say edge is bad they should consider thinking about your windows 11 os lol"
"No, they would never track us. But if they were, it would be a good thing."
Wouldn’t it be better to at least put a modicum of effort in to have some privacy, than to put zero effort in and have none at all?
If everyone started using encrypted messaging software, using devices that are resilient to all but the highest levels of forensics, and stuck to social spaces which prevent bots and alt accounts, hosted on servers in countries their own nation's law enforcement doesn't have access to, it would massively increase the costs of surveillance. Every layer of that increases the price.
When you let surveilling you become profitable and easy, expect it to get worse. More obtrusive. After all, you've displayed compliance up to that point.
Yes, that’s it. As I’ve told friends on several occasions, you know why I encrypt my online life and guard my privacy as if, you know, freedom depended on privacy? Because fuck them, that’s why.
It takes my time and effort, but I just can’t let the bastards win just that little bit more easily. All cops and corps are bastards (ACAB).
"hello i am u/NotBillGates and I agree with this message"
A similar argument I hear is "If they want me, they will find and arrest me no matter my precautions".
Kinda yes... But why are you talking about threat models that include someone deliberately hunting you down? We are not high-ranking dissidents or criminals that they would put effort and money into finding. Our concern is passive surveillance - maybe the collected info doing us a disservice (like being leaked for scammers or sold to an evil ex), maybe even something mundane getting flagged and us being arrested just to serve as an example.
e.g. Period tracking apps being used as evidence when prosecuting people who seek abortions
Gen Alpha doesn't care about privacy online. They need to be guided by their parents to care, e.g. when they buy a laptop, they install some Linux distribution on it before they give it to the child.
The one saying they use copilot for math problems is the worst part. It demonstrates their complete lack of critical thinking.
"i don't have anything to hide" mfs when their passwords get leaked:
"chrome was hogging up my ram" is the dumbest part of all of this lmao, this person's decisionmaking is completely driven by placebo and it's hilarious
If it wasnt beaten by this, it comes a very close 2nd: "Firefox is trash at loading HTML websites".
You can tell that fucker spends their time gibbering techno waffle bollcoks to old people!
Why? It's because they never arrived at their current behavior by a systematic progression of logical steps. Most of the behaviors we exhibit aren't that way. We just offer a post-hoc explanation/justification. They use edge, so they defend their action with any argument assertion they can think of.
It's also (sort of) because they want to tip the proverbial scale towards their current use. Change takes effort and can be irritating. They have their list of positives about edge (faster, easier, etc.), and they downplay the negatives such as privacy.
"Normies"? We don't need more tribalism.
Do you remember when it was commonly advised to use fake names and birthdays on online forms, and when "spyware" was a term?
Is that the same as the misnomer or fallacy that privacy is dead?
They genuinely do not care anymore. We lost, just like the cypherpunks lost.
The op in that post is 14 years old at most. Just look at how that shot is tailored.