this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
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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.

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Yes im aware that my search engine choice is not the best option.

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[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I'd add criteria, e.g.

  • GDPR compliant
  • no link with advertising companies
  • free software or open source
  • self-hostable
  • security audit

etc and overall have a reasonable default option but not hide that there are alternative. We want everybody to move away but if everybody moves to Proton as a suite and they enshitify then we are (nearly) back to square one. So I think showing that good alternatives exist is great. Helping people who already use an alternative others, maybe even better one for THEIR criteria also exist, is even better.

I'd also add a Github (or better CodeBerg or self-hosted Gitea) link at the bottom to https://github.com/ente-io/privacypack with the license (MIT) visible.

[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

As for GDPR, California has something similar, so that also might be good. California still falls under the federal CLOUD Act and their like, though.

If advertising companies (or really, stuff with an incentive to hunger for data) are a concern, I would not recommend the search engine Startpage. Other than that, its policies are afaik fairly decent.

For software, I think it being OSS or at least fully audited by an independent, transparent security auditor, is crucial. You want to avoid shell companies and such whose ultimate ownership is unclear. Or CEOs with questionable histories.

Self-hostability is a good one, though not everyone has the expertise required.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

Not everyone car for the same things nor has the same abilities indeed, that's why I'm thinking of optional filters. I also want to clarify the process is important to keep in mind, namely if somebody just started to move away from BigTech or surveillance capitalism or whatever is problematic for them, it's not the same as somebody else who dedicated their live to that a decade ago. So IMHO the hope is that people can add more and more filters whenever they feel comfortable they have the available resources to do so. It's a journey for each of us, on different paths at difference paces.