Ilandar

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

What are you referring to? I searched for this and the results were just the CMG story. That wasn't even proof that the technology existed, let alone was being used.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

You focused on the wrong part of my comment. The issue isn't that you have Google accounts or use YouTube, it's that you seem to have very little understanding of how much data is being collected about you through these avenues. Instead you focus on some conspiracy theory about phone microphones which is still yet to be proven despite years of technologically illiterate people telling us that "the only way they could have known that is if they were listening to me!!!!". I don't understand how you get to the point of posting in a niche privacy community whilst still being so completely clueless and misinformed.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Person in a privacy community using YouTube and multiple Google accounts thinks the only way they are being tracked is through phone microphones...you can't make this shit up.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago

I agree that this circular echo-chamber effect is problematic, particularly in forums like reddit and Lemmy where early user voting often determines the tone of a discussion. Too many people assume a comment is correct or incorrect based on its score, or the number of similar comments, rather than whether a credible source was provided that supports whatever claim was made. It's particularly bad in privacy and security communities because so many of the people involved have a higher level of base paranoia that makes them vulnerable to conspiracy theories and misinformation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah I think that's a decent comparison. There are of course still hobbyists and enthusiasts today who know a lot about cars despite not being professionals working in a related field, but it does feel like the general understanding among the public has fallen because the cultural phenomenon of a father teaching his son about cars has dissipated. Piracy has always been a niche activity but the core skills and knowledges it requires were taught more to millennials than they were to zoomers. If people have grown up with less education about motor engines or desktop computers then it's not surprising they struggle to expand on that later in life.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Acknowledging differences is not "war".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

No worries, it's not surprising you thought that because there are quite a lot of people out there like OP who spread complete misinformation about browsers they dislike/don't use.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

You can read this reference to closed source in the most charitable way as alluding to the whole motley of things that render it less accessible.

Not when they use the conjunction "so". If they'd used "and", then sure - there could be any number of reasons. Using "so" as a conjunction like that in the sentence gives it an equivalent definition of "therefore", so it's like saying "Vivaldi is closed source, therefore it's harder for users to investigate", which is clearly an inaccurate statement.

In any case, OP has attempted to shift the goalposts many times in some kind of weird gotcha attempt instead of just admitting they were wrong or worded their argument poorly. If people want charitable interpretations of their misleading or inaccurate statements then they should behave in a manner that deserves them. Going full redditor ain't it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago (8 children)

(Vivaldi is closed source, so it’s harder for users to investigate).

Please show me where you explained that Vivaldi's source code is harder to investigate because "users need to download a 2 GB repo" or a "tarball dump".

Is English your first language? Do you understand the definition of "so" in the sentence you typed?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 weeks ago

This was a pretty underwhelming article. Most of it is a pretty uninteresting story about how the site was founded, which isn't really relevant to the headline.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 weeks ago (10 children)

But that's not what you claimed. Direct quote from the article (bold emphasis is mine):

Vivaldi users point out that the built in blocker is noticably worse than uBlock Origin, with some guessing that Vivaldi doesn’t fully support uBlock Origin filterlists (Vivaldi is closed source, so it’s harder for users to investigate).

You clearly implied that the reason Vivaldi's source code regarding ad-blocking is harder for users to investigate is because it's closed source. This is not true.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 weeks ago (15 children)

This article has some misinformation in places. Like it claims Vivaldi's ad-blocker cannot be investigated further because the project is closed source, but the only closed source part of Vivaldi is the UI (approximately 5% of the total code). The ad-blocker C++ code is published along with the other 95% of the browser's code.

 

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.

view more: next ›