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.

  • Monkey With A Shell
    4•6 months ago

    Long ago I used a system called hushmail that promised a lot of the same as proton. Eventually I set up my own but it still has the problem of having to relay outgoing external mail through another box because of all the restrictions on home based dynamic IPs, so it’s largely relegated to system alerts in house rather than general use.

    It’s a balancing act to be sure. VPNs stop local ISP inspection in exchange for potential viewing by the VPN host. DNS filters can only filter known threats. Things like P2P private nets can be infiltrated by 3rd parties via the ‘6 degrees of separation’ premise or even tracking pixels.

    Making the picture muddy is about the best we can do, but it’s always worth the effort to not be another data point in the profile machine.