Talking to normies about privacy:

Everyone says this kind of stuff about any and every social issue. It drives me insane, do people not realize that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy? If everyone I heard say "there's no point fighting it" got together and fought it, they'd easily win.

I see this a lot in discussions about climate change lately: country X is polluting just as much or more than us so we shouldn't do anything. This argument makes no sense.
I'm genuinely curious, who exactly do you think will do the fighting?

Cuz I can tell you who will be the first pushed forward, and that's young men and women. I can't speak for women so I won't. However, not sure if you've noticed, but we've got several generations of young men that have been taught that they are literally everything that's wrong with everything and are treated like it. What exactly would those young men be fighting for?

Of course they're defeatist. They have been trained to be.
- Stop licking Andrew Tates balls.
  
  They give you bad breath and stupid ideas
  
  I hate Andrew Tate, that changes nothing about what I've said.
- Took me a long time to break out of the programming. I feel you.
  
  It helps to understand that the phrase "you have value; you are worthy" is objectively true. It's not a matter of opinion. It is a fact. You are a sentient person, therefore you matter. You are deserving of dignity, respect, and love. Anyone who says otherwise is just wrong. It's like saying 2+2=5. They're just not correct.
  
  We need to address this on a societal level. And not via right wing douchebros.

There is a 3rd argument which I think is a bit more valid in "I value the service I receive in exchange for my personal data"

Using the internet without an adblocker, noscript, and whatever else is really nasty. But even if you aren't on these platforms, marketers are still building profiles on you. Honestly we need data privacy legislation and some real talk about marketing and the costs of using the internet as a society.

That argument pisses me off.

“I don’t mind so fuck you.”

If you want to use those services, that’s your business. But I don’t use those services; they still keep my data.
- But I don’t use those services; they still keep my data.
  
  Exactly why we need data privacy laws. Sadly there are "profiles" out there for all of us, whether you chose to be tracked or not. Personally I think that any kind of sharing of personal data with marketers should be illegal nor should it be legal for any entity to purchase personal data without a signed consent form from the person in question.
  
  That'd probably end "free" services and our credit score system in the United States but honestly that kind of data collection is equivalent to stalking and unethical.
  
  I would opt in to a credit score system, as long as I'm aware of exactly what they use to generate that score.
  
  On the other hand, I would not opt in to having an advertising profile just to be allowed to access many websites. If that means I have to pay to use them, so be it.
It's funny, because people who defend DRM also use this argument. They are happy with the service, so they don't mind losing freedom. They can't understand that they could have both.

Maybe you can help me out.

I see lots of folks here who are programmers or have a ton of knowledge on ways to get around the big 5 to maintain privacy, but as a layman with only so much time in the day, it's hard to avoid taking the path of least resistance when using the Internet.

I am a musician with a public profile on Instagram, and many of my friends who are also artists use TikTok or YouTube to get their exposure. It's kind of a necessity if you want to simply book a gig at a venue (they will ask for your social media handles to see how many followers you have to determine if it's even worth having you on).

As artists we are also not flush with cash to pay for all the privacy software or VPNs. On top of that, so much of our information is already out there, I'm not sure how we'd even start reeling it back in.

you don't have to go all in at once, mate. you can start by getting most important things in your control: your browser and search engine.
if you like the interface of Google chrome and can't part away with it: use brave. else highly recommended to use Firefox.
if you just like Google search results, use startpage, else use duckduckgo or brave search.

these two things alone would make a meaningful difference.

then for neutering most of third party tracking: use a private DNS(I'd suggest nextdns). it's just a "add a URL and forget about it'. it'll stop the tracking significantly.

then you can continue by replacing other inconsequential stuff like Google notes(use Joplin), Google assistant(don't use any of this "smart" crap), Google fit(just exercise regularly. you don't need to micromanage it).

then next step would be to start making some tough decisions: replace the keylogger that is Google keyboard with it's open source equivalent heliboard.

then eventually you can go hardcore and use Facebook and other crap on browser only.

so, all in all, even if you do only the first two(or just first) step, you're already 50% there.

let me know in case you got any questions. and happy journey.
- Quick question why are you so sure that startpage, duckduckgo or brave are not tracking your data ? As far as I'm concerned they need to make money too there is no such thing as free shit. Also even if they are more private and don't track your date if the search is not giving the results you want/need it's not really a good search engine, I'm saying this as a few years back I tried duckduckgo and it was so bad at that point at giving results I wanted/needed that even bing was doing a better job.
  
  because they don't serve you targeted ads. duckduckgo's(and startpage's) business model is keyword-based ads, for which they are getting plenty of revenue.
  brave has other paid offerings like search without ads(premium), brave VPN, their own shitcoin(BAT) and so on.
  
  as for the search results, I'm a software developer. most of the time I know what I am searching for, and I don't want my search engine to go on overdrive and interpret it as something else. for me, duckduckgo is perfect. google, on the other hand, is worse for me for this and other reasons.
  and there shouldn't be much difference between duckduckgo and bing(sans account) since duckduckgo sources the results from bing.
  
  I don't know when did you last try duckduckgo, but I've been using it since 2015 and I've rarely been disappointed. in case i am missing on something, it's just a !sp away(duckduckgo bangs).
You're in a career that demands exposure, so you're going to have to have two different personas - the public one and the private one.

I'm also a layman. Unfortunately, privacy is complicated nowadays so it does require a lot of research.

I would start here: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/
https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

Not really a programmer, learned a lot with this list. I run a lot on old laptops and in the background of my desktop. Super useful skill and you can basically get 99% of software you need free with it. I save so much compared to subscription services, though I do pay for Proton cuz self hosting email is too much.
You are in Sam Gold's world. Eventually social media will be no different than not using credit cards, being part of a grid, census (intermittent camps were established based on census data, so I'm not hyperbolizing here), yada yada yada.

How to get out of it? Everyone who tries has their own gives and gets. Good luck to you, friend!
That's the thing you don't . Once on the internet always on the internet is a real thing just try not to post anything from now and also if you do want to keep using insta a vpn is basically worthless as they will be "suspicious" and want more info like phone number (if you haven't given it to them aldready ) don't know about tiktok tho.

Yeah, like people say 'I already use windows/google search/whatever, so it does not matter if i switch email provider/ whatever'.

What?? I so hate this mentality: 'If you cant eliminate / change it fully, then why bother?' Bruh, small steps can go such a long way man...

I'm definitely not without sin, I still use some services I know damn well don't give a shit about my privacy.

But I'm using a lot less of those than I did 5 or 10 years ago, So it might be small steps but it's steps in the right direction and I intend to keep going that way.
- Yeah same. I still use youtube for example, but not gmail, google search or windows. These three are huge, in gathering info.

I'll never give up. I'll shove my 256-bit AES encrypted USB stick so far up the glowy asses they start vomiting shit and USB drives. I still use YouTube and shit tho. I try and convert people. I've been successful getting quite a few people on Signal. The problem is that if there isn't interoperability and everyone's friends aren't on it some forget to even check the app or don't get notifications. If you leave message contents in notifications you're fucked anyway. Lol I feel their pain, but I wish I could get people to care before bad things happen. I mean, bad things have happened. We just gotta keep it up.

Haha they'll be scratching their heads what I could possibly say worse in private. Also, violence is only okay if it is defensive. Till then grab your routers and learn some cough ethical hacking skills.
- Btw this is brought to you by Minecraft

No, no, if you want me to punch a baby tell me all about "appropriate ads", and how sometimes you see ads that genuinely interest you, and that you're happy for Google to use your browsing habits in this way.

Might be defeatist, but it's still an up hill battle. It's a lot of effort to stay off the grid while still having access to a lot of modern technology.

I'm not about to start using multiple phones, swapping them in and out of faraday cages, never connecting to the net through anything besides proxy chains, and keeping my pc on an external hard drive. The list goes on and on for what you'd have to do to really truly have privacy. It's a lot of work.

There is a point in fighting it and privacy is not dead lol

The NSA knows absolutely anything about absolutely anyone it wants to know.

Do you use a cellphone? Use a smart TV? Roku? Android play? Apple anything?

I mean...the question now is what specifically do you want to protect and from whom?

I'm not judging the want, just pointing out the reality of the want.