Privacy Guides
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
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I am constantly on YouTube. I have a stable of creators I follow and watching them has replaced the time I would have spent on other streaming services. It’s how I chill.
So I signed up for YouTube Premium and watch it on my TV with no ads. I have no complaints. I get full HD videos, streamers get paid, YouTube gets paid, and everyone is happy.
I mean, that's great and I'm glad you're happy with that but:
This is a privacy forum and that is the opposite of privacy. Every video, like, click, and comment you submit is still used to profile you. There's no opting out.
I love watching YT videos but the actual interface is fucking horrific: I can't filter out the garbage I don't want to watch like Shorts, podcasts, and live videos. This would be very simple for YouTube to ad.
They hijack my search results if the video I'm looking for is not in the top 5 to show me more "suggested" videos.
My home feed, instead of showing content relevant to my interests that I've expressed using likes and subscriptions, is full of garbage clickbait and videos I already watched 1 time 8 years ago, and the same fucking videos that are already in my subscription feed. It's ridiculous how bad they are at this.
If I'm paying for a service I expect to not see ads and YT premium does nothing about in-video ads.
The actual creators are paid a tiny fraction of what YT is, despite providing the vast majority of the value. And YT treats them like garbage anyway.
When there is a competing subscription service that solves these problems and works well, I'll be happy to sign up for that. Until then I'll keep using LibreTube and YT can eat a Weiner.
It is way harder to provide an effective platform for content than it is to deliver actual content, especially as effort/content has close to zero effect on vitality/attention/profitability, while the aspects we want in a platform (especially in regards to privacy) are entirely unprofitable. As someone who uses adblock and generally dislikes the corporate aspect of YouTube I at least has to acknowledge that YouTube has to make money somehow, and that in-video sponsors seems like a win-win for everyone involved, especially when you can skip them pretty much effortlessly.
Normally I wouldn't even comment this shit, but as we are (hopefully) part of a shift to actual community driven platforms (fediverse in general), I think we have to aggressively discuss how to monetize these platforms enough so that they don't actively drain the wallets of the people maintaining them, and this is a very relevant aspect of that discussion.
Hopefully not too ranty, extremely inebriated.