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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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
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How do we replace YouTube? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi, my post is focusing specifically on YouTube since I observed the following categories have less intrusive solutions or privacy focused solutions, even if they are paid:

Operating Systems (Linux, for example)
Instant Messaging (Element, for example)
Community Messaging (Revolt, for example)
E-Mail (Proton, for example)
Office (libreoffice, for example)
Password Managers (Bitwarden, for example)

However, how do we distribute videos and watch them without data collection? I am NOT asking how do I use a privacy-focused front-end for YouTube, by the way, I am aware they exist.

I am wondering how we obtain a FOSS solution to something super critical such as YouTube. It is critical since it contains a lot of educational content (I'd wager more than any other platform), and arguably the most informative platform, despite having to filter through a lot of trash. During COVID, we even saw lecturers from universities upload their content on YouTube and telling students to watch those lectures. (I have first-hand experience with this at a respectable university).

I refuse to accept that there is nothing we can do about it.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Trusting law-abiding corporations to protect your privacy is fundamentally a bad idea, and as such, promoting Proton as a private alternative to Google

You can't trust anyone, that's true. But self-hosting your own 100% bulletproof MailCow server on 1984 VPS, which you pay for in Monero won't make you any more private, because emails you send still end up on Gmail inboxes.
It's simply unneccesary for normal user with not so high threat model. And if you're a political activist, then why even using email instead of normal privacy communication solutions like SimpleX, Session or Briar?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

But self-hosting your own 100% bulletproof MailCow server on 1984 VPS, which you pay for in Monero won’t make you any more private, because emails you send still end up on Gmail inboxes.

How does sending mail to gmail affect my privacy? If I'm sending encrypted mail to gmail, only that one mail is compromised once decrypted on gmail's servers. Any mail sent to any other server is fine. Do you only send mail to gmail users or something?

It’s simply unneccesary for normal user with not so high threat model. And if you’re a political activist, then why even using email instead of normal privacy communication solutions like SimpleX, Session or Matrix?

smtp is no better or worse than xmpp, irc or whatever else if you have end to end encryption. Proton decided to lie in their privacy policy that they don't log IPs, which ended up fucking this activist because they started logging after a sneaky targeted court order, and then edited their privacy policy after the fact like the slimeballs they are.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

If I'm sending encrypted mail to gmail, only that one mail is compromised once decrypted on gmail's servers.

What? How? Most private email providers only support encryption like Proton to Proton or Tuta to Tuta. Emails sended to anything else stay unencrypted. And there's no way you're going to use this stupid password protection everytime, because if you do, then why would you even use email?

Do you only send mail to gmail users or something?

Almost everyone uses Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo or whatever. Unfortunately, not everyone are privacy concious like you and me.

smtp is no better or worse than xmpp, irc or whatever else if you have end to end encryption.

No, it's not. Emails should not be used by political activists to communicate. Even the best email providers like Proton or Tuta can't give you 100% protection and this activist arrest is the perfect example.
Email is the obsolete protocol, that should only be used to register on random websites and get authorization codes. For everything else you should use secure messaging apps.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

If e2e encryption is too hard, you can always mail encrypted tarballs or something. Either way, what led to the arrest was Proton secretly storing IP addresses against their privacy policy because of a court order, it has nothing to do with mail or smtp.