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WhyNotThink's avatar

Hello Radical I. I really like what you say, both here, and on your About Page.

You rightly call to awareness, (what we all know), Big Tech. makes Billions but we pay them nothing.

Your first premise is that we buy what they advertise. (And I do appreciate it when you say, "PERHAPS you think you’re more independent minded than that.") Of course I do think that??? And I don't really buy very much of anything. Even my phones were given to me used, when someone did buy a new one.

Your second premise is that they sell our personal data. My data alone is worthless, but aggregated with many millions of others, it is proving to be worth the price. That takes us back to your first sentence: "Manipulating people is easy."

Actually an Internet advertisement is a computer program, (like buttons are programs too). With it, the platforms go-around their privacy statement, because "how can we be responsible for our advertisers"? They watch what your are reading and writing, monitor your searches, and record all the pages that you access. But "they" are confined to the browser that they were opened on. So the way to foil them is called "browser isolation". I have a half dozen (privacy, like Brave) browsers and each is dedicated to a different task. Big Tech is confined to only one corral. Delete cookies often also.

The question is where do we go from this awareness? I know quite a bit about privacy through experimentation, but most people I know are into heavy denial, even though they have known for a decade that Google collects data. But there are many more subjects that just privacy.

With discussion we can share ideas of how to live life with less intrusions, and still have all the fun that we are entitled to.

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Jim Cummings's avatar

"So, that’s why I have little respect for the professions of lawyers, politicians, journalists, and celebrities. One way or the other, they are selling."

Oh, this whole essay is so quotable. Good one.

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