That’s a decent start, but you need a browser that’s resistant to fingerprinting through some plugins and something like ublock origin that will block all embedded content. At some point, it may require you to use a phone number, and at that point you may have a problem. If you avoid that, one of the biggest threats are the facebook and related meta content placed on other pages around the internet. The pixel is one aspect, but almost any facebook content can still track you across sites. These are easily blocked with a decent adblocker and probably privacybadger too.

I know lots of folks will disagree, but I’d care less about Facebook tracking you as they mostly only care about serving you ads and making content suggestions to keep you on the platform to view more ads. Facebook has never served me a relevant ad, and even with a lot of use still can’t recommend things I’m interested in. Data leaks and sharing is a concern, but that’s a concern with every site. I think when it comes to privacy, there’s far bigger concerns.

What standard means of seeking information did you lose? You can still visit a library or ask a friend?

I don’t think people remember what using search was like before google. All of the problems you mentioned weren’t even possible 25 years ago.

On other search engines you had to know specialized query languages.

This is all possible because google collects this data from users. They’ve been doing it forever, and it does have some value.

pi-hole or some variant can definitely help in some situations. For example, if you care about your computer OS or your TV phoning home, it may block some of those (with the right list).

It may also block some ads on other devices too, but many places are working around this by tunneling the ad data through their servers.

It depends on what you’re trying to do. What exactly are you concerned about?

Most ‘adblocking’ is only in a desktop browser unless you use solutions like pi-hole or some alternative. Pi hole can help block some apps, services, and other devices on your home network from doing certain types of communicating in addition to blocking certain ad-related connections.

I mean yes, but this has been true for nearly 20 years at this point. Some of this comes back as useful features for everyone. Spam filtering, grammar checking, predictive text, maps route planning, face detection for all sorts of things. The same is true for many modern cars too, security cameras, etc. It all has to be trained on something and to collect more edge cases to improve.

If you care, you avoid their services.

When I see the monero.town domain, I know it’s gonna be garbage.

That really sucks that it’s so expensive.

It’s a scifi story about a girl who gets hired to track down who has been posting video clips online. The book’s like 20 years old now, but was his first one set in the present instead of being in the not-so-distant future. It’s a fun read.

Oh wow, that’s expensive. Is it always that expensive or just because of the time of year?

The most recent fiction book I read was pattern recognition which was fun.

Nice! I’ve never been there either but had a friend who lived there for a few years. Well, maybe you’ll get to visit soon and use your Portuguese.

That’s awesome! Are you learning for some travel or just to learn?

Same mate. read. You?

Yeah, that’s definitely what’s going on here.

lol. I just turned your words back onto you, and that’s it. I don’t feel inferior at all, because I know who I’m chatting with now and why you don’t get it.

lol. That’s the weirdest mind-warping logic that you need to use to make that statement make sense.

I don’t watch television in the US. However, everything being political was true when I lived in Europe for years. Many smart Europeans have written about this for centuries, but I’m guessing you haven’t read their work.

That part is clear. You’re presumably concerned about privacy based on your participation here, but not about the people responsible for making privacy an issue of concern in the first place. You’ve artificially constrained politics to “voting”, but voting is only a tiny portion of politics, and when it comes to non-government entities one that’s not useful. Using software or a platform is inherently political, and when someone is profiting from that and working to chip away your rights it becomes important.

Why waste your time on lemmy/kbin or the fediverse? Reddit/X/Threads are free-as-in-beer so you don’t pay for them, there’s more content, and you don’t pay for them. You can skip all of the ads with adblockers and have a great time.

You sure about that?

Given that the US has almost zero privacy legislation, the politics of the owner/maker often hints at decisions that eventually make it into the software. Many of the reasons to avoid chrome and chromium are similar to this, though not about a specific person but about the values that google holds in fucking over standards. We see this reflected in some of the decisions of say social media platforms (even “free-as-in-beer” ones) and many companies.

In many cases, you’re still giving them money and/or power to continue fucking up open standards.