There is this common narrative I see all the time, implying that we as individuals are empowered to choose and manifest our own destiny, and this comes up often in privacy discussions.
Don't like Facebook's privacy nightmares? Just don't use Facebook!
Don't like personalized ads? I remember a popular post on reddit saying "if your ad interrupts my YouTube video, I will hate your product".
Don't like Google chrome hegemony? Just use Firefox!
And while I agree that we should strive to do that, the battle doesn't end here. Facebook has shadow accounts for people who never signed up. Google chrome keeps it's hegemony despite people on the Internet advocating Firefox day and night. And ads continue to be extremely profitable despite you "hating the product" because it interrupted your YouTube video.
Even worse: even if you "hate the product", you now already know it. You now know they product exists, and possibly whatever they wanted you to know about it. The reality is that these companies own your eyes. They control what shows up on your screen. And even if you hate it, they control what you end up learning.
the reality is that our individual resistance is very far from enough
I am not saying it is completely futile. It is a step in the right direction. But the only effective solution is organized action. We, alone, cannot achieve much. Unless we organize our resistance against privacy violations, we will continue to live through this privacy nightmare.
So go vote, be in unions, call your representative about these matters.
This should be how the message ends.
Unions, sure.
Voting and calling representatives is a futile approach. They're a distraction at best. Unions are an example of what I mean by uniting our efforts and taking action.
Voting and calling representatives is a futile approach. They’re a distraction at best.
That's conservative, pro-corporation propaganda.
Quite the opposite, actually. Corporations love for you to be distracted with the methods that are futile. Don't you ever think about unionizing, striking, protesting, blocking traffic to our stores, boycotting, or any of that. Just do the things that don't hurt our profits!
Corporations love for you to be distracted with the methods that are futile.
That's why saying not to vote is pro-corporation.
Then you'd be wrong, because voting is futile and a distraction, as I already said. Refer to the rest my comment for direct action methods that aren't futile:
unionizing, striking, protesting, blocking traffic to our stores, boycotting
Unionizing and striking are effective, but they'll stop being effective if they become illegal. They're already less effective than they should be, because of legal restrictions.
Protesting is only useful for getting in the news and convincing people to consider certain issues when they vote. They will never directly cause change.
And boycotting is just plain worthless. You'll never get enough people to join a boycott for large corporations to care.
Not only this. Just by existing and living like this around your friends, family, and coworkers and they'll notice and get interested. In the span of a year of just using Linux, firefox, adblockers, password managers, and email aliases I've unintentionally gotten the attention of two of my friends and they've now started on their privacy and security journey. I share privacy articles around to my friends because I think they should be aware that stuff like 23andme can leak your entire genome and could be targeted for a racially motivated attack. Just exist and share it around with people around you and some may catch on.
You're aware of the EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, right? It's one of I'm sure several groups that organizes & strives to push back against malicious action from tech companies, as well as over-encroachment from governments (at times itself coming from tech company lobbying). It's based in the United States though, if memory serves, so others may want to chip in and mention similar groups for their region/nation.
At the same time, services/platforms that don't rely on ads pretty much always welcome donations, e.g. Wikipedia, Internet Archive, Gutenberg, as well your resident Fediverse sites, so also keep those in mind.
have been on the internet since before you could even pay to have a dialup account.
It isn't really that hard.
you are incredibly out of touch with the average person's literacy on these matters.
consumer boycotts aint shit. we need tech workers, some of the people with the least class consciousness and poorest ethics, to refuse to create and maintain surveillance tools.
when i say "boycott everything", i mean everything. nothing short of a secessio plebis type of deal
I agree with you in all your points and I have also look into why people just give up their privacy so easily , most of the time what I have noticed is that they (we all) love convenience. You want a plug and play camera? Buy ring , Need a plug and play router with a nice App? Buy google and Amazon Eero. Need to promote your business? Where is everyone at? Facebook , Twitter and Google. Most regular people give up their privacy for convenience, they don't have time dealing with thousands of option on a PF sense router , no time to create VLAns.
look into why people just give up their privacy so easily ,
because we made it easy to use technology and nobody has time to be an expert in every field.
The would candidates care if people bring up the issue.
If lots of people let their voices be heard, the pols will listen.
You can wait around for the perfect candidate to come along, or you can work to make the change happen.
If voting doesn't matter, why is Trump so mad about automatic voter registration?
You not voting makes Donnie and his friends happy.
Then I'll explain it.
Laws decide what large companies can and can not do to gather data. Politicians decide those laws. Who you vote for decides what policies are enacted. If the current parties aren't working to help you, you might have to go out and search for better candidates.
If you're not American, substitute any pro-Fascist candidate you choose for 'Donald Trump.'
what the fuck world do you live in where that take reflects reality?
*everybody *knows the TSA is bullshit that doesn't help anything and yet nobody would dare suggest getting rid of it despite how deeply unpopular it is. Weed isn't federally legal despite a majority of americans supporting decriminalization in some form. Universal healthcare is also >50% support and they won't legislate it.
there are similar issues and cases in all liberal democracies, you understand nothing about how politics actually work.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/06/politics/marijuana-decriminalization-white-house-joe-biden/index.html
Almost as if voting works.
lol you might want to read past the headline on that one chief
I gave up on voting when I realized the last however many times I did it changed nothing. I want a real solution, not a distraction.
In 1968, a bunch of hippies opened up a 'Dick Gregory for President' office. They had enough money for the first month's rent and phone, and figured that they would make a small impact. Somehow, someone kept paying the office rent and phone for months.
You not voting is exactly what the people you hate want you to do.
which party do i
for if i want antitrust suits brought against tech companies and which party is running candidates who know how to write hello world in any programming language?https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/26/tech/ftc-sues-amazon-antitrust-monopoly-case/index.html
Amazon antitrust lawsuit going on as we speak.
This was clearly spelled out - quite by mistake - by one of the very sumbitches stealing our privacy all the way back in 1999:
https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/
The sumbitches have since learned to work quietly and boil us frogs slowly. But they sure have been busy since 1999.
When I heard Scott McNealy utter that obscene statement back then, I laughed and I remember telling a coworker "That guy is off his goddamn mind". A decade later, I understood that he actually let slip something we should have paid a lot more attention to. But it was already much too late.
We are empowered with our own path in life but we do not have full control of it. And that is ok, it is ok to not be able to control everthing.
