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Cutting off friends under surveillance capitalism (Google, MS) (links.hackliberty.org)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://links.hackliberty.org/post/582272

I have lots of old friends who I only maintained sparse contact with. When I let my personal email address die (the address they would all have records of), I did not bother to update them with a new address.

They are all on the platform of some surveillance capitalist (e.g. Google or Microsoft). Google & Microsoft both refuse connections from self-hosted residential servers. And even if they didn’t, I am not willing to feed those surveillance advertisers who obviously don’t limit their surveillance to their users but also inherently everyone who makes contract with their users. I cannot support that or partake in pawning myself to subsidize someone else’s service.

I just wonder if anyone else has taken this step.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I only saw this post today for some reason.

First of all I'd like to say that what you're trying to do is admirable from the perspective of someone who also refuses to use Big Tech platforms as much as possible. I find the reactions on the sub you cross-posted this to to be exactly what you would expect from the average person, honestly.

In my view, many people aren't prepared to firmly hold their position regarding technology use, especially if it means sacrificing convenience for privacy. However, my opinion is that you can maintain connections with such individuals in real life; and in general if they're not willing to take the effort to engage with you in the way that you prefer, then perhaps they're just not worth your time in my opinion.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I find the reactions on the sub you cross-posted this to to be exactly what you would expect from the average person, honestly.

Yes, apparently so. I selected [email protected] because it’s on an instance that’s conducive to privacy. But because it’s federated with Cloudflare instances, there’s a flood of uninformed/non-serious normies from CF instances following that community instead of just watching [email protected].

This inspired an enhancement request for #Lemmy and #Kbin.

In my view, many people aren’t prepared to firmly hold their position regarding technology use, especially if it means sacrificing convenience for privacy. However, my opinion is that you can maintain connections with such individuals in real life; and in general if they’re not willing to take the effort to engage with you in the way that you prefer, then perhaps they’re just not worth your time in my opinion.

Indeed. If someone cannot be bothered to create an account on protonmail or install an e2ee app, or the like, then their bond to me is too weak to justify anyway.

But to be clear, the case at hand involves people who are distant & mostly out of touch, phone numbers have changed, so the real life connections have died off and there’s only email. Many of them should figure I would object to Google/MS but I never sent out a msg giving my requirements (as that move in itself requires a Google & MS dependency). They are probably on FB as well but I certainly am not. Ideally there would be a decentralized platform perhaps specifically for the purpose of people reconnecting.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

the case at hand involves people who are distant & mostly out of touch, phone numbers have changed, so the real life connections have died off and there’s only email

In that case would it not perhaps be practical to create a separate email address on pm to use just to email those friends and let them know how they can reach you? Maybe even setup a separate matrix account, or even better a separate simplex chat identity, then give them your "real" identity/username once they've contacted you, so that google and microsoft can't easily connect you to what you actually use.

It's obviously far from ideal, and I expect a lot of your friends to not bother because they might see it as needlessly complicated, but maybe it's worth a try?

Ideally there would be a decentralized platform perhaps specifically for the purpose of people reconnecting.

that would be great, yeah