It is an absolute nightmare, but you can gain some privacy back with ublock origin, an adblocking DNS on your phone, Firefox, a VPN, and ditching all things google/meta. As I type this out, I am reminded how much effort it takes to claw back your privacy...yeah OP, I'm with you, the modern internet is a profit-at-all-cost cesspool that can eat a moldy potato!

There's actually a lot to look forward to. In fact you're talking on one of those reasons right now.

e2ee is only a recent thing which is significantly more private. You can have an entirely private FOSS operating system that has parity with Windows for free.

The privacy and FOSS ecosystems are thriving more then ever. There are more VPN providers then ever before, and Tor gets better and better.

We have decentralized social media like the fedi which gives complete freedom against corporate control.

We have all sorts of amazing FOSS tools out there. We even have an AI that can be run completely locally and with custom unfiltered models that is very close to competitive with ChatGPT, and also free.

None of these things even existed like 10 years ago, or were in their infancy. They're all competitive to modern corporate alternatives. Privacy alternatives are by far in the best state they've ever been, and they'll just continue to improve as the community grows larger.

We can own all these tools and self host. In fact we've never been able to "own" anywhere near as much as we can today.

Be more optimistic friend.

Government will continue to do surveillance but they can be constrained by the legal system. Corpos will build ai to sell you bullshit off whatever data they can get on you but you can block their ads and leave their platforms. Encryption is math and can’t be stopped by a law. UK law makers won’t be able to enforce their law even if it’s passed.

It’s cheaper than ever to run your own server, and will continue to get cheaper. Manage your own digital footprint and work towards decentralizing the web. Don’t worry so much about other people, they’ll come around eventually.

What happened to the ethos of the original internet cultures that were so dominant. It's like large swaths of that generation grew up and sold out to become the oppressors. And the other portion are being crushed by that system.

The EU is very much hit and miss. I do appreciate them putting Google, Meta, and Apple in their place, and some on the legislation regarding smart phones they have passed. But ultimately they want to have all your data for "security".

Still, I think the situation in the US is a bit worse.

This is absolutely not a “this is fine” comment

But the US “intelligence agencies” have been spying on the US and the world for 2 decades now pretty openly. Yes it’s worse that other countries are joining or ramping up spying, but we shouldn’t delude ourselves into believing this is a new development. The evil fuckos who up at the 3 letter agencies and equivalents around the world know where true power resides and they know methods of controlling people. The fact that France is doing this stuff should be a sign to the French (and everyone) that the government fears the people. A government which fears the people demanding that it serve the people is no longer legitimate. If the French ripped apart their shit from the root it would be justified… as an outsider. They’ve done the proper procedure of ask, then demand… now force. But Americans got out shit to sort out which tbh is incredibly more fucked up so I will leave the French alone in that respect

I also recently noticed that everything get's more and more hostile towards the user. I observed so many apps and Websites that have hidden some big features behind a paywall recently - as if they don't already make enough money with data collection and selling. First they make you comfortable with these QoL Stuff and then they steal it away, holding it in front of your face and want you to pay for it now, something that was free for years. It's filthy..

Yeah, it's incredibly hard to be optimistic about how things are going. Tech used to be one of those things that made me excited about things to come and look forward to the future, but now (with rich AI tech bros ripping off artists and creatives, proof of work harming the environment, people owning and controlling less and less, etc.) it just feels like so many things are pushing us in a bad direction.

On the bright side, things like Linux, FOSS and the Fediverse are examples of good tech, and at least the potential for a future where the people have some agency and ownership over the digital world. I hope that we can continue to grow software in an open and community-based direction, if only so that the niche of geeks who care about computers and the internet can have some way of fighting back against ever-growing tech conglomerates.

I’m concerned about when governments get ahold of usable quantum computers.

We’ll always be one step ahead of the bad guys. Fortunately we have places like this where like-minded people can gather who understand the dangers.

AI has entered the chat

There are ways around it if you are willing to put in the work and deal with incoveniences.

For example, never use native Android or iOS, flash a custom ROM, never install proprietary apps, just that cuts a lot out. Only use cash for all stores and services, never carry payment cards with you, that wipes out financial tracking. Never give real info to stores. Use email aliases so different people have a different address. Don't use Windows on computer if the prgrams you use are not exclusive to Windows.

Those can be the beginner steps to how to be almost invisible in society. One thing I've done is try to push people onto SimpleX chat app for messaging so I can have a different random ID with each person I message so there's no contact info to share. Even people I know in person, we hang out together, I try to get them on SimpleX in place of Signal.

I genuinely believe that this is nothing new. Governments have just learned in the last few years that most of their citizenry don't give a shit about privacy. They're just making it official, so it can be penalized if you openly try to do something about it. I think...

I feel the same doomerism that it just won't be legally possible to own your servers, and it will be that only corpos are trusted by the big governments to operate platforms. I feel like we are in a battle right now and they won't win in the end. I also think it's helpful to watch the various big platforms implode recently, it signals to congress that maybe we can do a better job than facebook. I also feel decentralization is key honestly, if I host my instance in some place that does not really care about these anti encryption laws there is not a ton another nation can do about it, and if it's decentralized it becomes even harder

I suspect to get downvotes into oblivion for this, but there's nothing wrong with the concept of C2PA.

It's basically just Git commit signing, but for images. An organization (user) signs image data (a commit) with their public key, and other users can check that the image provenance (chain of signed commits) exists and the signing key is known to be owned by the organization (the signer's public key is trusted). It does signing of images created using multiple assets (merge commits), too.

All of this is opt-in, and you need a private key. No private key, no signing. You can also strip the provenance by just copying the raw pixels and saving it as a new image (copying the worktree and deleting .git).

A scummy manufacturer could automatically generate keys on a per-user basis and sign the images to "track" the creator, but C2PA doesn't make it any easier than just throwing a field in the EXIF or automatically uploading photos to some government-owned server.

It truly sucks. but seeing decentralized/open-source projects - Lemmy, I2P/TOR, Linux, etc. warms my heart. It helps me see there’s truth out there and pushes me forward down this path.

New place for people created
|
V
Almost no moderation, real freedom
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V
It becomes mainstream
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V
Corporations take over
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V
Make as much profit as possible
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V
The place loses its initial charm

That's the cycle more or less. You can apply it to internet or to other things. You can look at the privacy aspect, at the freedom or any other.

The internet was taken over by gigant corporations and had it's former soul sucked out of it.

VR Chat is still a place without that much moderation or corporate control. I wouldn't say it's mainstream but facebook already tried taking over that space.

You can even find this in real places like America.
People who could get there were free, could start a new life. Then the USA became just another country with (not a corporation but) a government there to "moderate" people and spy on them and eventually become a global superpower.

That's all i had to say. I know it's slightly off topic but i really think its important. This is the video that made me think about all of this https://youtu.be/4PHT-zBxKQQ

I feel like I've explored very deep edges of sound alternatives. I've tried replacing my phone with consumer friendly alternatives and they just weren't as good unless you can get a fair phone in the US which is hit or miss. The Internet itself lending itself to subscription based models is because servers and data storage costs money.

I hate to say it, but even if you remove power through solar investments and using lightweight servers you still have ISP to pay. Everyone's got bills and overhead, because nothing is free.

My advice is to ground your logic in that everything requires resources to run and rejoice in community wins like Lemmy or mastodon or Graphene OS. It's not all bad. Find the good in the bad and move towards what works for you personally. I've been off of windows for like a year now and I think that alone is impressive despite Xbox for example costing an arm and a leg.