Privacy Guides
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
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On that note, lets federate with threads! (I‘m gonna rub this in for the rest of eternity)
I mean, how braindead does someone have to be to not see that meta is the devil.
Fedipact for the win! :)
They could be "snooping" on the fediverse anyway by starting an instance and federating.
They could and anyone things that they’re not already doing that is high. But thats not the concern of the fedipact. We just dont want them here as in their posts, their culture and their behavior.
Which is batty. I want lemmy to grow, to have niche communities open up etc. Gatekeeping people because "we don't take kindly to your type" is plain stupid.
Whatever „batty“ means.
Your argument is falsely equating our „we dont accept authoritarian systems here“ to „we dont accept people“ which is thinly veiled gaslighting.
No, the issue is "we don't accept people from facebook". It doesn't matter what their opinion is - facebook bad.
Brother, it's not the people. It's the corporation. If the people want to join a non Meta instance they would be welcomed with open arms
Okay, but they want to join a meta instance. That's what they know. Instantly defederating away from them "because corporation" is simply fearmongering in a system that's resistant to "bad corp" taking over.
And now, on top of astroturfing, you're straight up lying in bold face.
How am I lying? Are people who use meta and threads not wanting to use their instance? Then what is this all about?
Also, using big words towards someone who says "don't act like scared children". If anything, people who are doomsayers are the astroturfing ones, repeating the same talking points that don't really make any sense
You‘re doing it again. Please stop putting words in my mouth.
We dont accept facebook here, period.
Which is the exact same thing I said - you don't care about the people, you just go "facebook bad" and ban it
No my friend. You're highly manipulative and aggressive. You might want to talk to someone about this. Its not healthy. I'm out. Blocked.
Getting called out and just running like a baby because it's 100% what you said.
The company that has been complicit with multiple ethnic cleansing campaigns, election manipulation schemes, and attempted to suppress their own research showing that their platform harms children? Yeah. They're pretty ethically bankrupt and anyone with something resembling scruples should want nothing to do with them. The users are welcome to join an existing instance or create their own. The company needs to be blocked.
Yeah, no. The issue is we don’t want corpos using the EEE standard as they have with mostly everything internet wise.
If people want to use Lemmy, make a fucking account, join an instance, and WOW look at that, we grew!
Who is "we"? This is a slippery slope talking point and nothing more. Fediverse was made with redundancy in mind, so nobodys instance is the "main" one by design. Being scared of someone comming in and being part of the various communities doesn't mean that the fediverse would somehow get absorbed, destroyed or whatever have you.
We, as in the people who have seen this shit before, and refuse to fall for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
There's some reading for you to do, so that you understand the risks involved with letting some asshat company, who does not give a flying fuck about you, have even more leverage on the internet than they already do.
What are you gaining by astroturfing here? Are you being paid by the hour, or just being used as a free bootlicker?
What do you gain by being shitty? What do you gain by complaining about threads? Maybe I'm simply someone who doesn't look at lemmy through rose colored glasses thinking it is some wonderful place with no issues at all and I would rather not gatekeep new users?
We've already had this debate and we don't care that you don't like it. If you want to be on Threads, go be on fucking Threads. Not all of us want Lemmy to grow at all.
Why would you not want it to grow. I would have never cared about my online privacy if I didn't stumble upon a Lemmy thread on reddit and join. I would have never ditched windows for Linux without Lemmy. I would not have done a lot of things without Lemmy. Saying you don't want it to grow is dumb if something does not grow it will die. If you don't want to see there content then block them. You should not be able to decide what others see.
Sounds like Lemmy did just just fine at the size it already is.
That and there is organic growth and a 100x entity entering your space and calling it „growth“. Its delusional. Its literally the gauls and the romans.
Well, not literally the Gauls and the Romans... 🗡️ 🗡️
Zuck thinks of himself as a Caesar so.....
Et tu, Brutus
That's like saying you want your country club to grow by letting crackheads, ex-convicts and hooligans have a membership card.
I want Lemmy to grow too but not at any cost. I'd rather have quality than quantity quite frankly.
I agree and disagree. Crackheads and ex convicts are humans, meta is not human.
Its like letting the invading army of nazi germany in because „they’re human“. Meta is by definition a psychopathic authoritarian with an enormous force of „somewhat harmless“ people who will flood the servers and by their sheer number have the power to change anything they want.
Eternal September is inevitable. It's not like the good communities will stop existing.
I saw many good Reddit subs then into garbage as the site grew.
At least the Fediverse should be resistant to enshittification because greed isn't the driving force behind it.
Same.
I used TOR to log in to my FB account after years, just to see how my normie friends and family might be doing. They barely posted anything. It was just reposted ads.
My experience was also:
Numerous unblockable "suggested for you" pages were all thot-videos that would get me fired if I worked in an office.
FB marketplace, rife with scams.
The company has been caught doing everything from enabling genocides to collecting data on children to making "shadow profiles" for people without accounts, to influencing elections.
A single clicked link can hijack your account, evidenced by how many relatives send me private messages about a "friend that just got them a bunch of money."
Yeah I'm more than happy having Lemmy have a basic intelligence barrier to entry, and making sure Meta suffocates if they try to zombify our platform with their accessibility + indoctrination strategy, like they have with entire countries.
Having a massive illiterate army that will do whatever you influence them to is nothing to sneeze at. (See: TikTok mobilizing their user base in the name of "free speech")
If any living breathing person wants to come hang out with us on Lemmy / Mastodon / Pixelfed / etc... using any instance? I'm happy to walk them through it. There's no "gatekeeping" any more than being required to read is gatekeeping the rest of society.
It's been said the Fediverse feels like "the old internet"...exactly, when it was about expression, and anonymous handles, and not corporate and nation-state interests trying to mind control and profit off of alarmingly detailed profiles of the entire human population. Keep the board rooms out of our bedrooms.
Implying that lemmy is somehow better than other social media networks is equally silly. It's not. It's basically the exact same thing reddit is, with less people on it.
I'm looking at a computer, and I have no clue who any of you are. There's nothing inherently social about anonymous message boards no matter what the revisionist clowns say.
It is a social network. Just because you don't know someone personally doesn't mean you aren't interacting with them socially. Asking someone for directions to somewhere is socializing - you won't meet the other person ever, but you made a connection, talked to someone. In extension, people who post more in certain communities will be recognized by many people visiting those communities. It doesn't matter who is behind the nickname - you are talking to them, a living human being.
Consider not disparaging people who use drugs or those who are finished served their time in jail. Drug use is innate across the human species, and ex convicts should be fully integrated with the community as full citizens.
Murder as well, doesn't make it a good thing. Drugs are for losers.
Lovely to see how crazy long that list was!
Quite simply: "Feda is always betta without meta"
There's no doubt they have an ulterior motive. The way they're federating right now is very one-sided and basically tells people they can just post on Threads and get the best of both worlds as they reach both audiences.
However, I see no harm from this to the dedicated Mastodon users who boycott or avoid Meta. They now get to follow Threads accounts without sharing their phone number or other personal information with Meta.
The data collection argument is weak, since everything you post on Mastodon is already public.
Great! Going back to an abusive ex but they dont get your phone number this time. But its going to be different this time! I actually had a mother like this. Classic self delusion.
Yeah, not in the fedipact world. We are not going to facilitate this. It is technically impossible for most servers, opens us up to all kinds of exploitation (not data collection but definitely ad display, EEE and the effect of making people used to inflated feeds and likely to switch in case of defederation).
The fun thing is that some people are ignorant enough to think that humans actually have the ability to not follow ads and dark patterns. If that were the case, we wouldnt have an 800 billion $ ad business. Now all the ad companies have to do is make people believe that only the weak get influenced by ads. Like people going against restrictions for corporations. Its dunning kruger in full effect.
Also, we dont have many instance admins generally in the comments. Never having hosted an instance and tended to users needs but being very opinionated about admin decisions is like the people knowing how to coach a football team better than the actual coach. I advise anyone who knows better to host their own instance. Because underappreciating others' struggle and effort is massively disrespectful imo.
Are you really comparing following a video game page, a media outlet, favorite musician or actor to an abusive ex? Are you on Twitter or any of Meta's platforms? If not, how do you get the updates exclusive to social media? What if it's a website that has no RSS feed?
I dont know if you're deliberately ignoring the fact that I am talking about the service provider, not the actions you take on the platform. meta is on record for abusing human rights and facilitating all kinds of crimes against humanity. The comparison is spot on imo.
Edit: I was on most social media until a couple years ago. Some stuff I had to use for my job. So I very much understand the mechanics. I dont know what you mean by updates exclusive to social media. I dont need updates or news and if something goes down, someone will make a post about it on lemmy, mastodon, matrix or peertube.
That's fair, but I don't think the same is true for most people. There is still a lot missing from the Fediverse in terms of prompt or important updates, especially if related to a matter outside the mainstream. I truly wish everyone had a presence on the Fedi platforms, but that's just not the reality when even some of the biggest ideological opponents of Musk or Zuckerberg still actively use their platforms, even if their views or practices threaten their very existence.
At the end of the day, the reason even Privacy Guides recommends all the alternative frontends for sites like YouTube is to allow people to stay in the loop without having to share anything with those platforms that collect and sell data. With Nitter dead and Threads being the next big thing after Twitter, the federation could work as a viable frontend and potentially more.
I‘m not most people, tbf. My autistic brain is wired differently. But the fact that you get thebimportant stuff on the fedi remains imo. FOMO isnt a thing for peeps beyond a certain age and with a certain mindset I believe.
And the only way imo to get „everyone“ to join the fedi is using it, improving it and talking about it. Most people dont contribute to it since they are oblivious to the possibilities. You can write code, open issues, translate, build tools, design stuff, whatever your skillset or just donate. Sadly, most people are more comfortable with a small, underfunded groups of devs who constantly get shit on doing the work while they sit on their high horse and discuss what „should be done“.
I host an instance, write code, donate, open issues, build tools, post and discuss and advocate.
Btw you‘re equating necessity with demand which is a fallacy. If I recommend metadone in case you‘re a heroin addict doesnt mean everyone should use it. Its exactly this short, low hanging fruit thinking that makes people think dealing with meta will surely be fine.
That pink background, ugh.
#6F89B4
goes much easier on the eyes and still keeps both black and white fonts perfectly legibleI agree, the background isnt too great. The idea though is gold.