It can be a bit annoying sometimes, but there are solutions for almost anything, like alternative clients and frontends. I also think it’s important to remember that this is not an all-or-nothing situation. Every little bit of privacy you can preserve helps, even if you still have to use their services sometimes.

If your example is mostly about chat then Beeper might be a good option for you. The messages on FB and IG would still go through Meta, but at least you don’t have to install their apps.

It’s a hill I’ll die on.

Ive refused to use anything FB since it first launched and I wasn’t permitted to use it anyway (not that I cared).

I’ve never once been to FB intentionally. I’ve accidentally clicked a link, then closed the tab as soon as I realized.

I was sent an FB link the other day. Replied that all FB domains are blocked on my networks and devices.

Sometimes doing what you believe in comes with costs. Oh well. My life is for me, and if someone can’t be bothered to look outside their bubble, put in a tiny bit of effort, then I guess I’m not worth it in their eyes. Message received.

I even have friends who’ve complained how shitty SMS is for 20 years. I’ve offered multiple solutions, and they simply refuse to change. OK, not my problem when you message me and I don’t get it because SMS sucks and you refuse to solve the problem.

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I’ve found most to either be a) you are flagged as malicious by their system and routed thru their process to prove you are human; some you can end up locked into, b) they gate content or services. Mostly the latter but the former is becoming prominent with all the fuss about AI. I imagine they are training protection models on us.

Mostly it’s just convenience you lose, having to always add a protective layer (like temp emails, etc.) while everyone is good to go. Managing all that can be a chore too. Or seem like one.

Understandable thought process imo. I‘m in the opposite boat.

For years I didnt care about data privacy and the amount of phishing attacks and spam mails skyrocketed.

I had all the social media accounts, connected to each other for convenience. Bit tech cloud managed my pictures and everything else. Stuff started vanishing off of my favorite streaming services.

Then I started to migrate away from big tech and started my own home server. Ripped all my old dvds on there so I dont have to put them in the player. I disabled my facebook account, twitter, instagram, you name it.

Now I can chat with people on my Linux phone (postmarketOS), watch videos on my peertube instance, write this comment over my lemmy instance, etc. Is it easy? No. But its doable.

I do still have whatsapp but i dont use the app and have bridged the 2.5 people that dont have matrix to it. Same for signal and discord. I only use matrix and a couple people switched because matrix can help them use one app only.

Now comes the hard part: is this end user ready? No, not at all. Stuff can break like every half a year and some people are just tech illiterate and will have constant problems because they have no patience.

I cant promise you that it works for everyone. But it should work for the 80% or so who are able to follow a basic video tutorial on how to cross sync new devices in matrix for example.

Oh and the whiners will also have a bad time. If you need „perfect“ and „polished“, apps wont always be up to your standards and you should embrace big tech. They make it perfect for you you give them your data. Thats their way of saying thanks /s

Addition: The general idea for those who can tinker should also be to not only use but contribute. Either financially or otherwise. The software is dependent on it.

Stop trying to join them. Make a reason for them to join you.

I saddens me that it feels like the multi-billion dollar data harvesting companies are winning, but I no longer know if this is a hill that I’m willing to die on.

It is a very sad thing indeed :(

What are your thoughts on what we have to give up in our lives just to stay in control of our personal information?

I guess it depends whether you want to be reachable 24/7 on mobile or not.

With Signal and with things like WhatsApp and for that matter Telegram a phone number is only required to sign up. And you do not have to restrict yourself to one phone number.

Actually that is not correct because contacts syncing is another thing. If you are willing to have a private life without Meta and a second life which includes Meta Zuck it is technically possible. Buy a cheap smartphone with another SIM card for signing up and for syncing contacts and then link it to desktop apps that you can check a few times a day to check in with your friends via the Meta Zuck channels. The cheap smartphone can stay off unless you need to sync contacts.

I may loose some answers in searches since I only use DDG

I often do not read articles or information from websites if the gdpr popup isn’t solvable in a click but the site ask to click on a thousand toggles

Where I am at the moment, the lack of FB marketplace sucks

A lot of cultural info goes through Instagram here, so I have to be a bit proactive if I want to know what’s happening

I use signal or text when possible, but work is impossible without whatsapp

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I get where you’re coming from and I have often felt the same. However recently I have been listening to a podcast called Your Undivided Attention which has given me a bit of optimism about the future. It’s not specifically about digital privacy, but that is one of the areas they are aiming to improve through their advocacy for a more sustainable and ethical business model within the tech industry (as opposed to the surveillance capitalism we live with now).

It’s really easy to feel like the fight for digital privacy is just an impossible one for people like us to win, because the tech industry has so many more resources at their disposal than us. So this podcast gives me a little more hope because it’s an example of people from within that industry acknowledging that there is a problem and working together to brainstorm and advocate for solutions. It helps me to know that there are really smart and creative people out there who are on my side and dedicating their lives to finding solutions to the problems the tech industry is causing.

It’s easy, use a VPN and as many fake data as you can, also you can use an AI generated profile pic, if you need a phone number you can use a virtual number like TextNow app.

Do you want to try an app that you’ve never heard of to stay in contact with me?” every time I meet someone new.

email

Honestly, it sucks. I’ve been increasingly falling back on regular SMS, because a lot of people seem to prefer cutting me off to the slight effort of a different communication medium. I was thinking that everyone has a phone, but there’s a lot of resistance to using it in my age group.

The cost of extreme privacy is your mental health and human relations. As rough as it sounds, you have to make a compromise, because you will not be an Edward Snowden in your life. What you can be, however, is an individual with a private life that beats out 95% people at having better privacy.

While I do not want to recommend it for privacy reasons, having just WhatsApp is good enough to strike that balance, to keep that one outlet open to society. I ended up doing that, since I realised barely a few people came to install Signal for me, even though I have a lot of leverage. They would instantly prefer normal calls and SMS over the usual WhatsApp, which is way worse for message content privacy and security. I did that experiment announcing reducing and even stopping WhatsApp usage, firewalling it and opening it weekly to check messages, and did gain a lot of leverage, but life became harder and stressed.

If you feel like you want to talk more, you can, whenever I will get time online. I can help you with threat modelling.

Nobody I know refuses to use email or SMS. They might find it odd but usually don’t even bother asking. There are equivalent outside of Meta for everything I know, from ads (e.g CraigsList) to events (e.g neighborhood public calendar) so I understand the feeling but I’d argue, just like people who use Amazon for everything, it takes little trying to find viable alternatives and weeks or even days later you’ll forgot what Meta even was.