I have always been curious about this. Did you get them to use other services or did they stubbornly refuse and you just accepted it? I am talking using Chrome, using Windows, using social media like Tiktok or Facebook or Instagram, etc. Bonus points if you have kids because that is even more work in the privacy realm
I don't try and push my weird opinions on my wife lmao. She knows how I feel and understands and does what she wants and that's okay. My advice is to communicate and respect each other even if you don't agree and don't be a controlling dork.
I got my SO to use a password manager.
She got sick of pihole and my firewall blocking her Facebook memes, so she has her own segregated WiFi network, then she's less of an attack vector for me.
Aslong as she uses 2fa on her main accounts and has a password manager I'm happier than most.
can I... hear her argument? I just wanna know what fallacy has concocted here lol. not trying to be insulting to your wifi or anything, just bantering a little bit, I've come across some that believe adblocking is piracy though, and I'm curious.
Some people like targeted advertising because they enjoy being shown things that are potentially relevant to their interests.
My wife sends me products she finds interesting and they all contain the facebook tracker at the end. It is a scientific fact that women are better consumers, hence ads are mostly created for them. My wife hates ads while watching videos, but taps on them during scrolling all the time. Fortunately I haven't been asked to get her off pi-hole. It is tricky with ads, as you think that they are offering a solution for something, but in many cases they are establishing a desire you did not have before.
that's crazy to me idk. merely seeing an ad annoys me enough to stop whatever I was doing. my inner contrarian avoids any product I've seen advertised.
It annoys me as well and I rather not visit any website that refuses my visit because of my adblocker. However, ads work with your unconscious and unfortunately, they work on everyone, that's why the best is to avoid them.
My spouse is almost the opposite of me in the privacy/FOSS realm.
They use TikTok and other social media, don't mind ads, use Windows, love Chrome and their Macbook, etc.
We've talked about privacy and FOSS a lot. They have the "I don't care if China/corpos/NSA mine my data, I have nothing to hide." Plus they like targeted ads and algorithmic content suggestions.
We have a lot of mutual respect for each other and I don't force my views on them, and they know I won't use certain apps. I gently suggest FOSS apps to them and sometimes they use them, sometimes not.
They also don't object to watching shows and movies with me that I "aquire totally legally" because I don't use streaming services.
I have told them that any children we have, I want to raise with a "FOSS first" philosophy, and they are cool with that.
Ultimately, I want my kids to have the choice of what software they use, FOSS or not. But for my part, they will know that I will only support the FOSS stuff, if they want to go proprietary, that's on them.
I've also discussed with my partner that they're welcome to use Facebook but I strongly object to putting photos of children on there until they're old enough to make their own decisions.
I've pointed out that posting publicly is purely for vanity reasons unless they've made a conscious decision to have exclusively friends and family. In other words, you don't need to please people who don't matter.
I'd they're compassionate, have them watch The Social Dilemma
I've been surprised by the number of people who dont care about privacy but deleted their Facebook accounts after seeing that film
I highly doubt that this will work in my case, as my wife only watches romcoms, but I'll give it a try.
It's a bigger sacrifice for her to come to my side on these issues, or even just meet me in the middle, then it is for me to do the opposite. Also, at the beginning of our relationship I was nowhere near as privacy-conscious as I am now, so I feel it is very unfair for me to turn around years into a relationship and start making demands of the other person. At the same time, she is respectful of my individual choices and doesn't mock them even though she doesn't see the value in them herself (which is the same for many aspects of our lives). We come from significantly different backgrounds and have very different perspectives on a whole range of things (politics, religion, lifestyle, etc), but we both see beyond those superficial differences to the person at the core. That's what we fell in love with, not all the other stuff which we are repeatedly told is so very important in our increasingly polarised society.
Please detail the arcane wizardry which allowed you to achieve the respectful of your choices part you described, because it is the only way your story differs from my own situation.
It's hard to say why we are like that with each other. Sometimes I think the fact that we faced so many unusual and difficult challenges early on in our relationship has made us less susceptible to these relatively normal problems that every couple experiences. Even the first few months (which are carefree for most couples) were filled with big commitments and sacrifices for us, so compared to that stuff everything else is so minor that it barely registers as an issue. Also, I think she is an unusually kind person and I am an unusually laid-back person and that is a combination that rarely leads to conflict.
I'm sorry I can't be more helpful, but it's not really something we actively worked at. Are you saying that you and your partner are also from opposite worlds but haven't found a way to reconcile some of your differences?
Yes, I think that's fairly accurate.
It's really that, while I've respected her choice to not participate in any of the practices/protocols I've recommended, she doesn't see my own involvement in them as anything more than a waste of time. Even more so, she's said she worries about the way it might change me into a paranoid person (conspiracy theorist).
Which feels a little disrespectful of the beliefs I've chosen. Like being told you're worshipping the wrong god, by your partner.
What good is your privacy of those closest to you can be used to track you.
In short. I won't force them, my spouse, to use privacy apps if she does not want it. I've accepted that absolute privacy in my case is impossible. So I use privacy apps because I like them not because I don't want to be tracked. Heck, even my credit card tracks me, a service i cannot continue living without.
Got the wife a grapheneOS pixel, she likes it and the adblock as well. But can't let go of Facebook , Spotify ,WhatsApp etc. Small steps
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An agressive DNS and packet inspection based adblocker (to block CNAME cloaking attempts to bypass blocklists and share cookies when blocked), and teaching my SO how to bypass it to play her mobile games, or load websites that are blocked unintentionally.
Despite being a Chrome user, she shows an interest in Firefox due to the effectiveness of its addons, pop-up blocking, and our steamlinks actually shows the Netflix/APV stream when watching from Firefox, whereas Chrome shows a black screen.
TikTok and Instagram are accessed very, very sparingly in the household.
My parents on the other hand, keep trying to convince me to come back onto WhatsApp, which is a hard no for me personally. Ever since it stopped working on one of my devices a while back, I haven't exactly missed it, and I don't want Facebook-owned apps on my mobile anymore out of principle.
I imagine it being quite difficult to explain the many, many reasons to them behind my reasoning for caring about who stores my personal data, tracks my personal activity for purposes that don't benefit myself, and what apps go on my device.
My girlfriend has allowed me get her bitwarden so she can at least have complex passwords but thats about as far as I’m gonna get I believe.
IME something like Signal is an easy sell since it's simple and works well. For all the fair criticism about relying on phone numbers it makes the onboarding easy. For other things compartmentalising helps, e.g., "okay we'll collaborate using this cloud file storage but I personally will be accessing it through the browser while keeping most of my files in a SyncThing over here". While I self-host certain things I don't volunteer to do that for family/friends because it will be too frustrating for everyone if/when I let them down.
In this kind of situation there's a fine line between someone who maximises their privacy through tech decisions and someone who makes their "correct" tech choices their self identity. If you drift into the latter, being asked to compromise can feel like an attack, leading to overreacting and coming across as insecure and annoying. Not to psychoanalyse anyone in particular but sometimes I think people need a reminder.
First of all, I try to offer her alternative and better ways of doing things. I selfhost a number of services that we both use and she also knows that she can come to me for advice and technical help.
I also got her a hardware key that is used together with a software password manager, to keep her passwords safe.
We also have a rule when it comes to social media. If she wants to post a picture of me, she needs to ask permission first.
Part of relationships is accepting people. They behave the way they do because they have values and preferences and don't always align with ours. Respect that. Make your case, but respect that they may not come to the same conclusions you do.
