Every time I talk about privacy online, the pessimists always come out. "It's impossible to have any online privacy." "They've already collected so much data about you. Why bother?" Is it really well and truly over? Or are there actually good reasons to still care about online privacy in the age of surveillance capitalism? 🌐 My website: https://ericmurphy.xyz 💸 Support the Channel: https://ericmurphy.xyz/donate 🎥 Watch my videos on Odysee: https://odysee.com/@ericnmurphy 0:00 Intro 0:48 It's over 3:08 "You'll never have total privacy online." 5:49 "They've already collected so much data about you." 6:41 Privacy goes mainstream 9:08 Under the influence 9:32 Why pessimism fails

In sharing this video here I’m preaching to the choir, but I do think it indirectly raised a valuable point which probably doesn’t get spoken about enough in privacy communities. That is, in choosing to use even a single product or service that is more privacy-respecting than the equivalent big tech alternative, you are showing that there is a demand for privacy and helping to keep these alternative projects alive so they can continue to improve. Digital privacy is slowly becoming more mainstream and viable because people like you are choosing to fight back instead of giving up.

The example I often think about in my life is email. I used to be a big Google fan back in the early 2010s and the concept of digital privacy wasn’t even on my radar. I loved my Gmail account and thought it was incredible that Google offered me this amazing service completely free of charge. However, as I became increasingly concerned about my digital privacy throughout the 2010s, I started looking for alternatives. In 2020 I opened an account with Proton Mail, which had launched all the way back in 2014. A big part of the reason it was available to me 6 years later as a mature service is because people who were clued into digital privacy way before me chose to support it instead of giving up and going back to Gmail. This is my attitude now towards a lot of privacy-respecting and FOSS projects: I choose to support them so that they have the best chance of surviving and improving to the point that the next wave of new privacy-minded people can consider them a viable alternative and make the switch.

    • @Zerush@lemmy.ml
      -3•6 months ago

      I know very well the difference, when I say that privacy is an illusion in the network. In the same moment when you go online, conecting to sites which are not your owns, they know what you are doing and from which site you came. More people are confused what means browsing in anonymity mode in their browser, they think that with this they are Anonym online, but it’s wrong, because this mode only delete the local storage, for webs which want to profile and track you it’s irrelevant if you are in normal or anonymity mode. All what you post online is públic visible, your mail direction is an unique identification which can be tracked easily in the whole web. Even in this moment a Google Bot is reading your posts in Lemmy and in every other SN and blog, very possible that it even know who you are if you had in the past an account. You are not invisible in the network and because of this there also isn’t a real privacy nor anonymity. Fact.