This is exactly the same argument we had with the loss of anonymity brought about by social media participation, primarily of Facebook. Now more and more of the digital space connects with the real world and other people end up giving out info about you. Then we had cameras and microphone put in every smart device and people bought those eagerly just so they could play with the equivalent of the latest dog face filter, putting them everywhere so you get spied on all over the place.

The average person is walking civilization into a nightmare and individuals who notice can do nothing about it. People will not let responsibility ruin their recess. They're children handing control of everything in their lives over to psychopaths who are re-enslaving all of us. Lemmings off a fucking cliff bought off with a series of damned toys.

Dude, I can't even demand my health care insurance cover anesthesia for a procedure. Demanding anything from the government or a corporation is absolutely pointless at the moment.

I can control if I use Linux or not. I can't control my government being ~~bribed~~ lobbied by big tech that shits on consumer rights. I know what can reasonably change. Also the therapist and doctor offices are bad examples, because they have strong legal defenses through HIPAA.

I'm still pissed the email I had managed to keep junk free for years was leaked because my insurance company had a breach.

Does your company/school provide employee/student Microsoft 365 licences? Ask your Windows-using colleague to check that "Optional Connected Experiences" are enabled and tell the IT team that they are likely allowing genAI training on internal documents (Microsoft seems to have reserved the right to do that and never denied the allegations). Yes, they can disable this organization-wide and will likely contact Microsoft over this, and if enough of us do this they'll know they crossed a line.

If your company's IT team does not respond, you'll have another argument getting your peers over to LibreOffice.

But does your medical clinic do? Does your therapist do? Does your family member...

Surprisingly, yes. Though they're not happy with it, for various reasons. But it was refreshing to rant to my therapist about snap, apt and systemd and have them truly understand me.

got 'Hogwarts Legacy' for $17 on a sale ($60 normally) and after starting it up I got put on a shader caching screen for literally 10 minutes It instantly put me on a screen that forced me to go to some 3rd party website to enter my email and IRL location for them to delete my data if they had it, BUT IT DIDN'T EVEN WORK. It showed an error message!!

Then it gave me literally 15 customizeable items I don't care about then after literally 20 minutes of playtime IT CRASHED.

I hate to say this, but PRIVACY IS DEAD... Atleast online... Unless, you are an IT expert and been using VPNs since 2001.

On a side note, I don't discuss anything with gmail users that I don't want indexed and stored in Google's dossier of me.

i use linux and don’t have family or friends or get any kind of medical care ☺️ checkmate

Until there is serious consequences to data breaches and criminal charges it doesn't matter. It's been a free for all for a long time the best we can do is simply keep using products or services that respect your privacy and discourage or not use services.

Don't forget with the Recall feature, you may be on Linux and are using a secure communication application, but if who you are talking to is on windows your conversation can be scraped.

privacy is scary stuff if you think. it's like, i care so i dont share my phone number with facebook, but someone out there may have my number/address/name on their contact list and chances are big that they have no problem sharing with zuck. so i'll still end up on zuck's database.

What drives me nuts about this subject is rarely spoken about.

No single company can properly compensate all of their users for the damages caused by mishandling their personal data.

In fact the damages may even be too great for the government to properly compensate said users.

But does your medical clinic do?

No, they don't, and it pisses me off. Every time I see it, I think, Well, there goes my medical privacy.

But where else can I go? There's only one health company in town, and they bought all the doctor's offices.

Who can I complain to? The doctors and nurses are visibly frustrated with Windows every time I see them use it. If they can't change it, how could I?

Demand it from who? With what power or leverage?

Not to be defeatist, but I'm just a guy. Nobody's gonna listen to my demands. I'm surprised privacy notifications say anything other than "You don't have any" with two buttons that both say "OK". All I can do is selfhost as much as possible and decline to use tons of applications or services that underpin modern societal functions or social activities. So I do. But it sucks ass and I don't have any power to change any of it.

Pretty sure we all know that. I've been using Linux full time for about 8 years now. I'm also EXTREMELY aware that I can't change what OS an organization runs. It's a systemic problem.

As a home user the OS thing is preference, some prefer Windows, some Mac, some Linux, etc.

Your post however raises a good point, and it certainly makes me form an opinion in a greater context. Thanks for making me think about this, genuinely - it's good to have opinions challenged.

"does your medical clinic do"

Bring back grammar nazis

No, you need to demand that government organizations use Linux or other open source systems as well, there is no other way.

You can require Microsoft to comply with rules, it won't. It doesn't care, it wants money, and more money, and that is it. It's been like that since it's inception. The same goes for all other tech companies

You know what brand doesn't careuch about money and will respect your privacy?

Open source software. Linux. Firefox (eh, mostly) with plugins, mariadb, etc...

I think people who say "I don't care, I use Linux" are really saying "You should use Linux to stop this."