Using the term “normies” paints you as having a superiority complex, which isn’t the best look.
I appreciate you calling out the use of the term “normie”. Communities that frequently use such terms always end up with an unhealthy “us vs them” mentality.
Like I’m not surprised people don’t react well to someone bringing up privacy issues if said person starts the conversation with the mentality of “how do I enlighten this normie?”
Really? I just interpreted the use of normie here as “layperson” or “average user” and thought it was completely harmless.
Have someone refer to you as a normie and lmk if it feels neutral or derogatory.
I can’t imagine normies getting worked up over what some internet nerd calls them
I find it a very confusing term aswell because what does it even define? I always arrive on it being a synonymous to neurotypical outside the autistic context.
It implies them having that complex, thinking they know better than, as another comment pointed out, some nerds.
You know, that kind of people thinking their degree of social anthropology or whatever makes them smarter than you in every area. Because whatever they are doing is important and whatever you are doing is toys for nerds.
I can imagine a social butterfly looking down on nerds. Although I gotta level with you: that sounds like something that would primarily occur in high school to me. Maybe you’re grown and still dealing with that, but either way: using the term normies is not going to help at all, I assure you.
Maybe you’re grown and still dealing with that, but either way: using the term normies is not going to help at all, I assure you.
This seems common sense to you, right?
Well, I, being almost 28, am just starting to realize that you should carefully measure both respect and disrespect, and there may be too little or too much of both.
Maybe not “social butterfly”, I’m just thinking of all the people thinking they now know what is serious in life. A surprising amount don’t have complex hobbies or even deep cultural familiarity with their own profession.
And if that profession is more about talking to people than about conceptualization (many typical office jobs), or maybe it is descriptive, not creative (like many liberal arts degrees), they are going to be dismissive of people who actually make things.
Watching and doing is different, and people watching often think too much of their ability to do stuff, just like with sports or music or cars or warfare or porn.
EDIT: The point was that sometimes it’s better to be honest and use such means to inform people that they don’t know what they are talking about.
Yeah, OP was for sure putting people down with this meme. You’re arguing in bad faith here, putting aside the very obvious for the sake of having an argument.
Good that you’ve both found a way to feel superior to others
Completely unrelated, what are the privacy concerns from discord?
Being a normie isn’t the best look either.
Misanthropy in current times is an indicator of a functioning brain.
I’ve written software you use every day. Apache, NGinx, and a bunch of CNCF projects. I’m just as good as you at tech, likely better, and have a full understanding. I didn’t give a crap.
Opinions like yours are the essence of fedora anti culture that paints a picture of the asshole IT guy.
Anyone that says it’s all great is delusional or trying to exploit a market inefficiency.
There’s quite a leap from “absolutely everything is completely fine” to “I hate all humans”. Both are idiotic sentiments.
‘There’s no point fighting it’ or ‘Privacy is already dead’
The arguments that make my eye twitch, It’s such a defeatist outlook but seems like the most common nowadays.
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’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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I recently got a confused look when I said that I pay for my email provider (3€/mo, but 1€/mo would also work).
Many people don’t realize that operating an email server creates cost and they pay with letting Google/Yahoo/… read and analyze their communication.
How do you get around websites that force you to use whitelisted domains? I had a self hosted email for a while and I was often considered spam.
I’ve never encountered a site which had an allow list of domain names. The hardest thing about self hosting an email server is most home ISPs will block SMTP as it’s a source of spam. Usually this requires business level ISP or an SMTP relay, both which aren’t usually free from what you’re already paying for home internet.
“But why would they care about MY data, I don’t do anything special”
Anyone outside of tech when I even passingly mention privacy
Do YOU have anything to hide??
“Yea my bank information, passwords, personal identity, identity of all my loved ones. But hey, if you hate having security and love being blackmailed and hate everyone who you have ever made contact in your life and wish to make their life hell then you do you and stay far the fuck away from me. We don’t know each other and we never will”
There was some segment somewhere about the fact that the NSA has all your nudes.
What’s the counter to that sentence then?
Every time I try to explain why this is a dumb sentence using the door lock analogy I always get rebuffed by it.
Do you have kids? Where do they go to school? What time are they off? When did you last go to the doctor? What medication do you use? Etc. Etc.
First, when you get into these arguments, always start from the viewpoint that these people do not see any worth in their data. Their convenience is worth way more than any privacy breach. That’s why your goal is usually to convince them that privacy breaches can be a huge innconvenience for them, use their selfishness to advocate for their self-interest.
Quick example, what defines something that needs to be hidden changes constantly with different governments and regulatory bodies. There’s no telling if your current data won’t be illegal or something in the future, causing you problems. That’s why it’s important to have protections for your data to begin with so a future government can’t just unilaterally decide to trample all over your rights.
Basically, see what they care about and try advocating from that viewpoint, not your personal viewpoint. There’s a good chance you’ll have a line of argument.
I find that I have more success convincing people if I put their self-interest first and foremost instead of trying to explain some grand ideology. People want something tangible, not a hazy ideal. It’s only when something affects them that they may change their views.
Ask them about their bank, all their passwords, the contact information of everyone they ever loved, ya know, in case you ever need to use that information against them or without their consent,
keep going till they are properly creeped out and as upset as they should be at anyone but them knowing that information.
I would likely go with would you change clothes with the door open? Would you take a shit in the public? How would it feel if someone took a picture of you naked? This won’t likely work for those who have this kinks though lmao.
All the answers you got show why this conversation goes badly. No one can come up with an actual problem that data collection causes, it’s all silly comparisons to giving people your credit card number or shitting in front of them.
For me, having my data collected is like having CCTV cameras in stores. Yeah, technically someone is filming everything I do. Yeah it would be bad if a private individual was filming me for nefarious reasons. But no one actually uses that data for anything bad, and it doesn’t actually cause any problems.
All that happens is I get more relevant ads.
It’s even people in tech. I work with someone who will gladly take tech claims at face value, and call me a conspiracy theorist on data collection. I said I didn’t want a smart thermostat because it increases our attack surface and he immediately snapped back with “oh China is gonna get us”. Like… No these things have had CVEs already and will again
I think the funniest part of this meme is every company bar Amazon, Discord (both not in market yet), and TikTok (Chinese) were confirmed to be a part of NSA’s PRISM
