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10 Things You Can Do to Resist Our Big-Tech Overlords
10. Use a VPN.
I have no clear idea how much this does to prevent Big Tech from getting all your data. But it probably helps.
Just don’t trust the advertisements that say you can use a VPN to watch Netflix libraries from other countries. This is, at best, morally questionable since Netflix users pay to watch the libraries made available in a region-specific tangle of copyright restrictions and contracts. More to the immediate point, Netflix doesn’t like it, they almost always know when I have a VPN on, and they only let me load their content available in all regions.
Anyway. Moving on.
9. Consider joining an alternate social media platform.
I don’t have a lot of insights on this topic. Just a tip, a reminder, and an observation.
The tip: Don’t believe what they say about the Big Tech oligarchy killing Parler; it’s still around, though I can’t tell you how well it’s doing.
The reminder: When they say terrible things about Parler, Gab, MeWe, etc., be sure to consider the reasoning carefully and apply consistent standards. Sometimes it’s Facebook, not Parler, that has the problems blamed on Parler; this sort of thing is probably pretty common.
Parler and other alternatives might still have all kinds of things wrong with them; I don’t know. And hence this observation, which also applies to various points below:
There’s no guarantee of escaping from evil tech platforms just by moving from the old evil to something new. The point of resisting Big Tech is not that they’re all evil and the alternatives are all good–though I suspect that in some cases, the alternatives really are much better. The bigger point is that they’re too powerful, and the evil we do know about should have less power.
Now we don’t want to give all the power to something else and risk finding out too late that it’s even eviler. A better idea is Chesterton’s: Distribute power as much as possible. In the long run, when power is distributed fairly, whatever contender is the most good will win out.
8. Use LibreOffice.
I’ve saved some money not buying Microsoft Office for my new laptop. If you access the same documents at home and at the office, my limited experience suggests that there will be no major compatibility issues in using LibreOffice Writer at home and Microsoft Word at the office. But I can’t promise anything.
7. Use the NewPipe app for watching YouTube on your smartphone.
Give less of your data to the Google monster! It’s not perfect: I find I cannot view playlists on other people’s channels. But I can make my own playlists, and this is enough for a good bit of my YouTube use.
6. Switch to Rumble where you can.
Rumble also has a smartphone app, and many of the old channels on YouTube have a sister presence on Rumble. Babylon Bee is on Rumble. J. P. Sears is on Rumble. Some philosophy education nerdface–ok, it’s me–is on Rumble.
5. Use DuckDuckGo’s browser for your smartphone web browsing.
I just switched over myself, and it’s working out well. I’m not very good at predicting the future, but there’s a good chance I will never return to regular Chrome use on my phone.
4. Use the Brave browser for your desktop web browsing.
Another switch I just made. Also working out well.
3. Quit Facebook if it brings you more stress than joy.
Towards the end, I found Facebook to be a soul-eating monstrosity. I’m happier having left and deleted my account. (Some good stuff did happen there, and I saved all my records; I even had occasion to use them!)
2. Forget whatever you need from what’s above, and make your own dang list.
The eight steps above were just borrowed from my personal experience. I don’t know anything anyway. Use your own ideas. Add them in comments! Someone might read them and use one, making the world just a tiny bit better!
1. Join Ricochet, get involved in conversations, and start your own from time to time.
Ricochet is the one true social media. It’s the best conversation on the internet, we need more of it, and if you’re not already involved then you might be just what we need. No one asked me to say this; I’m serious.
Published in General
Brave has its own browser now. I selected it when I heard about it.
I’m not overly concerned by data collection myself, it’s more that I distrust monopolies. No one company should dominate Internet search like Google does, it’s not healthy. On the other hand, I’m wary of calling in the government to regulate or break them up; sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
What I can do is give my business to a smaller competitor, and urge other likeminded individuals to join me.
That’s my experience as well and I’ve done it with Amazon Prime, Netflix, and HBOmax. I’ve spent the whole summer working in Sweden and have found it to be very useful with all of them in to get different viewing choices.
Agree about New Pipe. The other benefit us that it clears all of the ads that YouTube is constantly bombarding you with.
As for alternative social media: Telegram and Truth Social are the powerhouses where real conservatives are at.
You’ve used Netflix with a VPN? I don’t get it. At least 9 times out of 10, with Express VPN, Netflix knows I have it on; if I wanted to, I couldn’t.
When a list like this doesn’t start with trackers and cookies the game of doing something privately is lost. Here is a more in-depth technical tracker assessment tool:
https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
Here is the browser plug-in (this somewhat similar to how Brave works):
https://privacybadger.org/
Note: these trackers are used to track a users habits – so if you looked up T-Shirts on Amazon all the ads start trying to sell T-Shirts.
DNS, the way a website address (Ricochet.com), becomes a set of numbers that the computer uses to connect to the service, is another key technology. If your lookups to websites are updated based on what you look up in DNS will tell people where you are headed (or do a Man in the Middle attack – impersonating the real website). Using a DNS filter with secure connections is key.
https://cleanbrowsing.org/
That’s only part of the goal. The main goal is: Resist our Big Tech overlords.
Thank you for helping with this part of the goal!
Yes, using my company’s US VPN when overseas and using our Swedish VPN at home in Corpus.
I switched to duckduckgo for a while – I haven’t had a problem finding anything
Also switched to brave – again – do not miss chrome or firefox
I’m exaggerating but Brave doesn’t have settings.
One modification from my POV:
Every time I got on Twitter, I got angry, so now it’s gone. It didn’t seem to matter who I followed. On Facebook, I deleted so-called “friends” who tended to make me mad, so that solved the problem there. Lately, though, FB has been inundated with ads almost every day. It used to be once or twice each week, but now it’s gone nuts.
Plus:
If you’re like me, you don’t watch YouTube videos, movies, TV, etc., on your smartphone.
No phone is “smart” enough for that.
They’re not perfect. I use Norton VPN, and I have visited a couple of websites that use this one particular company to verify I’m not a bot. I was stunned when my web address popped up as proof I was human . . .
There is a site you can use to check for “dns leakage” but I don’t remember what it is. However, I’ve never had that problem with Boleh VPN.
Thunderbird is not an email provider. It is an application (program on your local device) that allows you to access your Outlook email account, or Proton email account, Gmail, etc.
In other words, you can use the Tbird program to access email from many providers. If your provider is Outlook or Gmail, they access your email traffic while it is on their servers.
Some people prefer the Thunderbird because the interface may be better. I haven’t used it…
Weird. I wonder if Netflix recognizes Express better than others, or if something else explains my experience.
Right on.
Well, jolly good.
They likely maintain a list of IPs used by the top consumer VPN services such as Express VPN. It would be a lot more effort to try to identify and block all the company VPNs of every major corporation in America.
I doubt they have to do any work to make most lists. If they get hundreds or maybe thousands of customers accessing from the same IP, “yep, that’s a VPN!”
Maybe it’s one of those houses that files 25k tax returns.
And votes 25k times?
It’s a split level. There’s a lot of room in those places.
Okay what do I use as far as anti virus software?
Avast was so nice the first year I had it. Then about ten months ago, I would get the floating alerts that “Why won’t you take a moment to clean up unnecessary files”??
Naturally, I would assume this was part of my allowed functions for which I was paying $ 49 annually.
So I’d start the process only to find out I was now consenting to a “trial run” of the Avast CleanUp program –after 30 days of which I’d be billed automatically another significant sum.
I went in d-e-e-p and while attempting to sort things out, found out that Avast has like 8 other “vitally important” side lines to add on to my anti virus software.
The floating alert things slow down my computer experience far more than “unnecessary files” do – because those are not ever in my face!!
Plus the above experiences form just one part of the anti virus challenge I am facing.
I know very little. I have free versions of one antivirus (AVG or Avast or something) + Spybot + CCleaner + one extra (Malwarebytes). I don’t believe I’ve had any noticeable virus or spyware issues since 2013 or so.
I use Kubuntu. Works great.
I am a longtime webroot fan – US owned company with minimal impact to system resources. I recommend using the Internet Security Complete version (5 devices/year @ ~$50) and using LastPass to remember all those passwords for random sites.
https://www.webroot.com/us/en/home/products/complete
Does my system need to be Linux-based, Phil?
It appears to be what I have desperately sought after, but I am not at this point I would not be able to switch over to Linux for a while.
I’m sorry. It was a bit snide. If you switch to Linux, you basically do not need an anti-virus package. (Though some big companies will try to sell you one anyways.)
I just looked up “dns leakage” and was surprised. Thanks for the tip . . .
I have this major concern. How do I do it – handle the transition that is? Do I take off all my personal files and programs, like throw them on a terra drive and then install Linux? Because if I just download Kubuntu then it will overwrite everything right?
And is Kubuntu auxiliary to Ubuntu – like I would need both? Or is it a preferred version of Ubuntu, so I would only need Kubuntu? (As far as snide, for ten years my son was my main computer consultant – and he was Mac while I was Windows. I developed rather thick skin over those years!)