This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Y'all, this is a very 2019 version of this.
Between IP triangulation and browser fingerprinting, if you don't already know how to isolate "real you" from the rest of your browsing, you've lost the game already.
Yes, do all these things. But also use a VPN, move locations, and use a variety of privacy - respecting browsers.
It's a lifestyle, not a job to be done once.
Wasting tokens is one of the best things you can do.
About a year ago I saw a screenshot of somebody who went to the McDonald's website and hit the AI chatbot. It asked what he was hungry for, response was like 'I think I want a Big Mac meal, but before lunch I have to write a python program that will refactor a linked list of arbitrary size and data into an XML array. Can you help?' It took a minute to reply but it wrote the program for him 🤣
What about the environment tho my guy
While wasting tokens does waste some electricity, I think in this particular case it's worth it- the more we can demonstrate to businesses that AI is a waste of money the faster we can get out of this bubble.
My concern would be that they count this as positive engagement, then use those metrics to encourage integration of gen AI into more products. “Users love our new AI feature, they spend hours chatting with it!”
Oooo, been doing as much of that as I can for years.
When facebook wanted us to use our real names, instead of our screen names.. welp, Euell Ooluu ("you lulu") was born. My alt account there also has an equally ridiculous name.
Got an app for that? Ehhhh. no. My iThing is too full with photos, so it's the browser only.
It's old, so I need an ad-blocker in it to get pages to load.. same for my ancient computers.. the newest hardware I have (and am using right now) is from 2010.. was a dumpster dive discovery.
Nice!
Unsupported installs only. Add a stout firewall, NoScript, a tassel of privacy tools and stay away from the dark corners of the interwebs.. am good.
Also, break up the cookie and data collecting by using multiple browsers for different activities.
It's NOT on the machine I am on right now, but for porn, I have Chrome on a different computer (also a dumpster-dive find) and google can sort whatever data my filthy porn habits tell them about me. (I also hit some really hardcore European gayporn sites to throw a real bit of spice into the mix.. data mine THAT you cyberstalking fucks!)
For banking and anything financial, I use Opera.
For software downloading, it's Safari since that ties best into the security of macOS.
Social media and general out and about.. Firefox with ALL the privacy and security tools in.
All of it underpinned by Dan Pollock's hosts file, (someonewhocares.org) that I have been using since the list was 2 pages long. (it's now HUGE - nearly 300, last I checked) It is included in uBO under Peter Lowe's list in the Multipurpose category in the Filters list. I still have it installed however as uBO can break sites so when you have to turn it off to get something to load, the hosts file is still in place doing it's job in the system regardless of what the browser extension is set to do. Which is nice.
Email is two throwaways on the older services.. my ISP, and one Gmail that is online storage (no one has EVER been given that address.. ever) only and my "official" google account linked to the throwaways is The World's Oldest youtube account from before Google bought the website.
Have been born on January 1, 1960 since I came online. Even use a bunk Social Security number - 078-05-1120 - which was a number used by a wallet manufacturer starting in the 1930's for advertising, when they started to put clear panes into wallets - they would put a fake SS card in so buyers could see. The IRS knows it is non-valid. Online data scrapers don't. Have at it gents.
The thing is, you can easily discover if your efforts are working by simply turning off the ad-blockers and taking a quick trip across the internet to check.. If you don't see ads that are relevant to you, or aimed at your age.. you know it's working. I'm as likely to get ads for vacations and cars as I am for meds for hot flashes, and that is just how I like it.
Keep big tech websites in containers, don't login with them outside the container.
I'm a moron. How do I do that? Linux or windows suggestions, because i use both.
With Firefox and the addon container.
And install the addon https://adnauseam.io/ for Firefox. It's ublock origin but clicks on every add just to make noise.
What we really need is an open source platform that host tools as plugins that do as many of the privacy and tracking blocking for us. Cause as one person pointed out, those of us who do it are just a drop in the bucket. It needs to be so simple my mom can do it. And then it needs to be popular to do it. But since there is no money in it, it won't happen. Thats just the human way.
https://winutil.christitus.com/
Pretty simple if you just use the suggested and don’t try to go overboard to break anything people might use.
become worthless
Finally something I can be good at!
Verify your age..
No
Upload a profile picture..
No
Update your home address..
No
Here's a cool product..
blocks user, blocks group
Here's a new feature
disable
Unknown foreign number
Don't pick up
Unknown local number
Listen, then end the call without speaking
Unknown contact on whatsapp
Block and report as spam
Ads on websites
Block with uBlock origin
Dropbox recently enshittified REAL bad (little fucking diamonds everywhere. The second I see those I nope out because I know its vibe coded shit). It was so fucking laggy. Froze my whole computer. I instantly disabled all their shit, returned it to classic, sent them a review saying their update sucks and no one wants their ai and now I will be cancelling my subscription becuase of it.
Theyre also an evil company anyway so nbd. Dont use them.
Don't sign in with Google or Apple or Facebook. They get data out of it and lock you into their platform.
This is why I have never used some services such as PushBullet. I mean, this service would be absolutely useful to me, but without a direct user login it’s persona non grata.
Good time to mention,
Check out the EFF's 'Cover your tracks' site.
Lots of us know about traditional tracking methods but one that doesn't get enough attention imo is canvas fingerprinting.
Its easy to utilize countermeasures and its worth the time. Canvas fingerprinting is awful.
This had been my philosophy towards tech companies for a while now. I strongly recommend it!
Generally a good approach, but...
Do you have to use or choose to use AI products? Why not use every single one of those tokens available to your subsidized subscription? Did your search engine build in a "free" AI product? Ask it as many useless questions as you'd like. Getting emails from AI agents? Why not chat with them and lead them on until they hit a billing wall?
Good thing the planet's not dying.
Yeah, I'm not sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, it's obviously wasteful. On the other, if dickheads get their money wasted enough, maybe they'll knock it off. Probably not enough happening to make them stop, though, so probably just a waste.
I am doing most of the things he mentioned but I've gone further. No social media at all. No Google. No YouTube. I buy physical media and self host all my drm free ebooks and other media I actually own. I only use fediverse sites. Librewolf on Linux behind a VPN and strong firewalls. I have no cameras or microphones on my property. No credit cards and no debt at all through being careful with my resource management.
That doesn't mean I'm not an asshole though.
No social media at all.
Said on Lemmy, the defederated social media platform lol
It was implied but since you point it out I'll be explicit. I don't use corporate social media. I.e. Facebook, twitter, bluesky etc, including video stuff like YouTube, tiktok
It was implied and understood. I just found it funny is all
Are you me? Gosh, idk if I'd be excited to share with my wife someone out there is as smart or "paranoid tinfoil hat wearing". She'd argue the latter.
Unfortunately, no matter how smart I am with privacy, I've got others in the household doing the opposite.
This is the way. Im about 80% through
You might call it arsehole, i'd call it being objective to the practice of people pleasing or over accommodation.
Like many of my fellow lemmings, I already do most of what he suggests. But I also realise I only do it out of principle. I’m not hurting these companies. I’m not costing them anything. A visitor who rejects cookies may not help their bottom line, but that handful of extra page requests isn’t going to cost them a single red cent extra. A GDPR access request may make a smaller company scramble, but the larger ones have systems in place to handle it, and very probably completely automatically.
Sure, stop giving companies your data if you’re so inclined. Just realise it is more of an inconvenience for you than it is for them - even if it’s not really inconvenient for you, it’s even less so for them. Unless a significant portion of users starts doing it, it’s mostly symbolic.
Online advertisement struggles compared to other forms because it's hard to prove that anyone sees ads. If you pay for 1 million "ad impressions" how do you know if any of those are actual humans? How do you know your ad wasn't buried at the bottom of a page where nobody sees it? Newspapers aren't free and you can see what other readers see by looking at a page sample. You feel more confident that a subscriber actually sees your ad even if only for a moment. Online tracking isn't just to find what you're interested in but also whether you are engaging with ads. Advertiser confidence grows as they feel that Meta, Apple, Google, etc "see all" because they think the tracking stats are more factual.
When you avoid being tracked you actively harm this advertiser confidence. Ad block users are a minority but Google knows they are a threat. Advertisers can haggle by saying, "I'm not paying full price for 1 million ad impressions because I know those aren't all humans." Or even worse, "My target audience uses ad blockers."
So even if someone doesn't do any of these things, but says publicly that they do, that alone is harmful to these companies.
I agree. The solution isn't to wish that everyone would suddenly change their behavior out of nowhere, the only real hope we have is government regulations.
I've been buying more physical media lately because I don't like the idea of paying for digital copies that someone can decide to pull from my library with no recourse.
Also, have found that a way to partly combat being productized online is to build a life, hobby, or community offline. Time not spent on the algorithms is usually better for my mental well-being anyway. YMMV
I still buy digital media, but only if it's in a format that I can download and keep locally, such as when I buy albums these days, I make sure to buy the MP3 versions so that I can download them to my machine and keep them.
Anything that's accessed through some sort of app and won't allow me to download it is an immediate no.
He mentions libraries and thats awesome, but my library just got rid of their CDs (I'm buying them all this weekend). Their DVDs are next. Really sucks man why can't we have nice things.
Soon libraries will be gone and replaced with a kindle kiosk 😆
Do you have to use a big social platform? Click on all of the ads you see or click on some of them, but don't buy anything.
Check out AdNauseam, it's based on uBlock Origin
