this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
11 points (86.7% liked)
Privacy
37159 readers
526 users here now
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.
Some Rules
- 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
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If you want to take your privacy seriously, then stop using these services. It's the service themselves that aren't privacy respecting, not the application in which you use to interface with them...
Well, that's not necessarily true.
Some apps, alongside providing their core functionality, such as messaging, also collect a lot of information from all the permissions they are granted on your device.
Think for example constant location tracking or collecting your contacts, as I believe Facebook Messenger does.
It could be possible to provide a front-end that blocks certain requests or spoofs information.
Of course, that doesn't stop them from collecting information you directly provide to them by using the service, such as profile information, direct messages, interactions etc.
I suppose you could use these services as a skulker which doesn't have an account (or a semi-anonymous one) whilst denying all permissions and providing as little information as possible. It's not wholy black and white.
That said, I do recommend not using these platforms at all if you can. Use alternative platforms that provide similar services. Lemmy vs Reddit is a good example.
It's just not always practical advice for everyone, given that some people have jobs that require social media, or have no other means of contacting some relatives and friends.
thank you a lot
You got it. Seems like a few people disagree with what I said, but for the vast majority of cases what I've said is objectively true. I'm sure you can find an instance or two where it's not, so take it with a grain of salt.
You're wrong on one thing though. A good portion of tracking either takes place in the client or is enabled on the endpoint.