When I announced I would be closing my communities earlier this year, a curious thing happened: a surprising number of regulars replied w...

When I announced I would be closing my communities earlier this year, a curious thing happened: a surprising number of regulars replied with some variation of “I think this is my exit.” While some were specifically talking about Matrix, claiming that mine was the only room they were really active in and therefore they saw no point to having a Matrix account anymore, at least one specifically announced they would be quitting privacy entirely, save for a few basic techniques like using a password manager and being mindful of what to post online. While I didn’t expect the number of people responding that way, I was expecting that response from one or two people. If you check any given privacy forum – especially the ones with a heavy overlap of mainstream users such as Reddit – you’ll find no shortage of people asking “is all this work worth it?” and/or announcing that they’re giving up privacy because it’s too much work. So what gives? Is privacy worth the work?

  • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
    41·
    7 months ago

    I will take the liberty of quoting a portion of my computing guide https://lemmy.ml/post/511377 :

    IDENTIFY PRETEND EXPERTS AND DRAMA QUEENS ON INTERNET

    There are a lot of pretend experts these days. Some do it in the name of security, some do it on YouTube, some do it for drumming up hype purposes. Everything has a pretend expert these days, but I will restrict myself to the computing domain.

    In the case of security, there are many people that ignore privacy and anonymity implications, telemetry implications, and act apologetic for corporate closed source software. This is generally done for Western Big Tech, especialy Google, Apple, Microsoft and so on. Most of them are generally either hopeless people, employed on behalf of companies for marketing, or secretly have shareholder stakes with these public companies. RUN FROM THEM! Run as far as you can. These people never have your security interests as a priority.

    There are a lot of technology YouTube channels that try to capitalise and bank off of prominent and big software, and “recommend” it to people by reading the marketing sheet or website pages. Usually, they lack substance or are going to make a 2147483647th video about a topic, rinse and repeat. Unless something is FLOSS, if something comes from the corporate lovers, take it with a bag of salt, not just a grain.

    It is not just corporate lovers, though, that have cults. There are some projects that are FLOSS but have toxic or propagandistic cults behind them. One of them has some wonderful recent examples, related to FlorisBoard or Bromite (Chromium-based web browser). One of them is largely known for scammy crypto currency and creating a harmful network effect by giving sponsorships to tech YouTube channels.

    • refalo@programming.dev
      111·
      7 months ago

      harmful network effect

      that’s a funny way to say marketing.

      I think most FOSS zealots simply despise capitalism in general, they want everyone else to be poor like them. Kinda like socialism.

      • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
        5·
        7 months ago

        Poor is a strong word. It is not about being poor, but rather the inability for corporates to have a lack of the same constraints that FOSS zealots have. Money is just one of the key constraints.

        Harmful network effect is not mere marketing, but propaganda aimed to make people deploy surveillance tools on themselves.

      • Doods@infosec.pub
        3·
        7 months ago

        I think most FOSS zealots simply despise capitalism in general

        No, my ideal economic system is capitalist in nature, I just don’t trust western powers (the enemy) with my data. I say western powers, but that includes Russia and China and other things.

      • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        7 months ago

        I think most FOSS zealots simply despise capitalism in general, they want everyone else to be poor like them. Kinda like socialism.

        One well known exception to your comment is Linus Torvalds. He didn’t mind moving to the USA to make some good money after being a student who could afford a whopping 386! And unlike some people believe, the GPL does not restrict a programmer to make money.

        • refalo@programming.dev
          2·
          7 months ago

          Indeed, his views are not quite as extreme as RMS for example, Linus specifically did not want to require GPLv3 which is probably sacrilege to Stallman.