Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

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Caring less about privacy (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 years ago* (last edited 4 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi, I recently have started caring less about privacy and fell for convenience as I installed and started using Google and Huawei apps and services on my phone.

I am not sure what shifted my mind, I no longer feel like the companies are up to no good and that they spy on me in particular in harmful way. This might be because my mental illness has gotten better, which made me paranoid with some other things too.

Wanted to hear your thoughts regarding this decision and privacy, free software and mass surveillance. Am I being a fool "giving up" ? I know its important that journalists and politicians have privacy, but does it matter to me that I'm no longer sure of.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 years ago* (last edited 4 years ago)

Am I being a fool “giving up” ?

No, definitely not.

You're making a decision, and at the moment you decided to stay relaxed and enjoy those products. While privacy is undoubtedly an important matter, it is no life or death question.

I had a similar problem in the past. I was constantly looking for privacy discussions, was a lot concerned about every single app and product I had installed on my phone or on my computer.

I started being more relaxed when I actually realized I had to use privacy products not because they're private, but because they're inherently better in a lot of ways. Then I tried to switch, slowly but steadily, on FOSS solutions. Those are free to use, free to inspect and free to modify, and they will rarely betray the user. At first it wasn't simple, but I was becoming more and more productive on those new platforms.

In the end, I'm very happy with private products, but of course, because they work very well. Just be balanced and don't be too much stressed on privacy, try to focus on what matters, for example getting things done and productivity.

As a rule of thumb: if a privacy respecting product and a non-respecting product have the same features that you care about, always pick the privacy respecting one.