I am fucking scared of the mass surveilence nightmare direction that the internet and the world as a whole is going towards… C2PA, france hacking itself into citizen phones, the UK anti encryption law, EU’s chat control, etc. Im also sick of and hate the “you will own nothing and be happy” mentality that corpos try to push. I dont wanna know how the world will look like in 5-10 years.
There’s actually a lot to look forward to. In fact you’re talking on one of those reasons right now.
e2ee is only a recent thing which is significantly more private. You can have an entirely private FOSS operating system that has parity with Windows for free.
The privacy and FOSS ecosystems are thriving more then ever. There are more VPN providers then ever before, and Tor gets better and better.
We have decentralized social media like the fedi which gives complete freedom against corporate control.
We have all sorts of amazing FOSS tools out there. We even have an AI that can be run completely locally and with custom unfiltered models that is very close to competitive with ChatGPT, and also free.
None of these things even existed like 10 years ago, or were in their infancy. They’re all competitive to modern corporate alternatives. Privacy alternatives are by far in the best state they’ve ever been, and they’ll just continue to improve as the community grows larger.
We can own all these tools and self host. In fact we’ve never been able to “own” anywhere near as much as we can today.
Thank you for the Hopium
Thanks for providing a positive perspective! It’s really important we don’t lose sight of the good things.
aaand there’s intel management engine and amd platform security procesor which undermine your foss efforts on most platforms
AMD (for that matter, any other processor manufacturer) isn’t off the hook either - eg. see “Platform Security Processor”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processor
They’ve been locking processors to individual motherboards and eliminating second-hand resale value for “enterprise” hardware in the name of “security” too: https://www.servethehome.com/amd-psb-vendor-locks-epyc-cpus-for-enhanced-security-at-a-cost/
If that was our only problem and most people would be using FLOSS software I’d be happy. Intel ME is bad but you can have a “good enough” usage of tech today.
Why do people want to be doomers over literally nothing. There’s so much good that you’re just ignoring.
Intel can read RAM directly and other parameters using their built in security systems on certain chips. Maybe do more research first to understand why that is distressing. There are some projects for open source CPUs on-going.
I’ve looked into this extensively but see zero actual real world effects other then being a boogyman to hardcore FOSS nerds
Idk what you’re talking about, it’s been done plenty of times?
Plus we dont even really know what new “Security” tech their cooking up nowadays. Especially with in-house chips like Apple M chips.
Meltdown Redux: Intel Flaw Lets Hackers Siphon Secrets from Millions of PCs
I feel like the management engine card is sneakily changing the threat model in the middle of the conversation.
Is it bad? Yes. Is it a big source of security holes? Absolutely.
Is it a way that Facebook is going to profile you to try and sell you to advertisers? Or a reason why you can’t ditch Windows? No.
What does ditching windows have to do with security chips? OS sits above the hardware so that does not make sense. Any linux distro is just as susceptible as it stands.
No ones worried about social media companies messing with your hardware (not yet). That’s off-topic. Besides, legally nothing stops Intel or AMD from just selling the harvested data to Fb or whoever so that point is kind of moot too.
Actually news just broke as I was writing this and guess what. Now there is a bug allowing browser exploitation of the CPU using… Javascript! What a time to be alive…
This is why we need RISC-V.
Even phones have security chips in them these days.
Fun fact: Intel introduced the Management Engine right around the time they joined the NSA’s PRISM program.
What is this local ChatGPT alternative you are talking about?
I also recently noticed that everything get’s more and more hostile towards the user. I observed so many apps and Websites that have hidden some big features behind a paywall recently - as if they don’t already make enough money with data collection and selling. First they make you comfortable with these QoL Stuff and then they steal it away, holding it in front of your face and want you to pay for it now, something that was free for years. It’s filthy…
I bought a lifetime license for the Spark email app. I even sent them some extra money when I learned their engineers are in the UK. Then they pushed out an update that removed the feature that caused me to buy their app in the first place, locked half of the other features behind a subscription, and said that since it’s an “update”, the previous lifetime subscriptions don’t count. Mother fuckers! Fuck the Spark team. I uninstalled it, gave them a 1 star review, and installed Fair Email. It’s a better app in most ways, is completely free, and is privacy focused. The only thing is that it’s missing the one feature I paid for, which was to be able to long press an email, tap “search for all emails by sender”, and then bulk action them. It was really useful for bulk deleting all Amazon confirmations and stuff like that.
I’ve had a couple pieces of software revoke my lifetime licenses when they switched to fully subscription (even though they swore lifetime license holders would be grandfathered). I get needing to make money to pay your software engineers to keep pushing out updates but man I hate this subscription hell we live in now
Software engineers have always needed to be paid, and companies got along just fine without subscription services. Bill Gates was the richest man in the world for the majority of my lifetime without a subscription service. The greed these days is immeasurable and needs to stop. It’s ruining everything! I just noticed today that they’re using the information band of the HD radio waves to push text ads to the car stereo while songs are playing now, instead of delivering song info like they said they’d do when they captured those public frequencies.
It is an absolute nightmare, but you can gain some privacy back with ublock origin, an adblocking DNS on your phone, Firefox, a VPN, and ditching all things google/meta. As I type this out, I am reminded how much effort it takes to claw back your privacy…yeah OP, I’m with you, the modern internet is a profit-at-all-cost cesspool that can eat a moldy potato!
It’s sad, 10-15 years ago it was as simple as Adblock :/
Now it’s nearly unavoidable and/or requires quite a few changes to your native device to make it more secure
Yeah, for all of Jobs’ “vision” cell phones were really just a way to profit of of free information.
Ditching google is the most difficult part, especially when iPhone is so locked down :(
I’ve primarily been an iphone user over the years and was recently hand me downed an older pixel. Using grapheneOS and firefox, I was surprised to see there were only about a dozen extensions available, good ones, but not all of them like I’d assumed. Then I discovered chrome on android has zero, is that right? I cannot believe that there are so many people that use a mobile browser without an adblocker. On iOS safari, I have dozens of incredible extensions (basically countless through the app store) that make the internet useable again. I’m happy to see safari opening up.
What?! I was under the impression that ad blocking is still impossible in iOS. What extensions do you use? I didn’t see uBlock origin in there.
Vinegar - $2 - Adblock for youtube, PiP, and enables background audio. In tandem with sponsorblock is absolutely stellar (in safari only, not the youtube app).
SponsorBlock - $3 - Removes sponsor segments from youtube videos (in safari only, not the youtube app).
Adguard - $12 maybe $6, their pricing is weird - Safari wide adblock. Also has a element picker that can remove headers, banners, etc to declutter, just like ublock origin on desktop.
TweaksforTwitter - $10? I think it got pulled down from the US app store. - De-shitifies Twitter.
StoptheMadness - $10 - So god damn much.
Hush - Free - Removes cookie banners and trackers.
Noir - $3 - Safari night mode for sites that don’t play along with system dark mode.
Rekt - $1 - Removes many “open in our app” banners and redirects amp links.
Sink for Reddit - Free - Removes reddit ads and ‘open in app’ banner.
Banish - $3 - Another option that removes many “open in our app” banners.
Userscripts - Free - Loads whatever custom 3rd party javascript of your choosing into sites.
A lot of these have redundant features, so something like StoptheMadness and Adguard might consolidate a lot of the others. I get that this looks like death by $3, but these are just what I’ve gathered over the years. I’d only recommend Adguard at a minimum, vinegar and sponsorblock if you don’t already have premium, and the others if they mean anything to you. Again these are all safari features so nothing that will change anything system wide or in other apps like youtube.
Edit: Also, StopTheMadness was unique in that it had a Mac version that included the firefox and chrome extensions. After unpacking the app bundle, I just copied the firefox folder and moved it to my windows computer. Works all the same. That dev is awesome and though no one likes paying for shit, I have no problem supporting regular people undoing the bullshit that is the modern internet.
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You can put Google-free Android forks on your phone or tablet. My phone is LinageOS with minimal Google footprint and my tablet has no gapps at all.
I use Gmail, Tasks, Drive and Calendar for the sake of convenience, since I could self-host all of these.
Do banking apps work?
Of course they work. Though if you’re rooted, you just need to install/flash a module named “Magiskhide” which will basically hide the apps your want from your root, as a lot of banking apps consider a rooted device not secure enough… (even if it completely is but whatever)
I’ve been looking into custom roms but for a bit but it will take a while before I feel confident enough to try it. I want to try it but I’m afraid that I will get locked out certain services like banks or ms365 for work. I’ll look into this Magishide tool.
(sorry for the late reply) Custom ROMs are something else and are in no way necessary for rooting the phone. You can totally root your phone with Magisk while staying on your manufacturer’s ROM, or flash (install) a custom ROM without rooting the phone and not being locked from anything your Android phone can already do. But you won’t have full access to your phone if you don’t root and will eventually need at least some degree of power over it, which is why most people root their phone too. But custom ROMs alone are also great, you can check if there are good ones (or if there are any) on xda-developers by searching your phone on it. But be careful and follow the instruction to the letter: you won’t be able to blame anybody for bricking your phone (look for hard brick and soft brick) as all authors clearly state they’re in no way responsible if you fuck up something and your phone doesn’t work anymore. The best thing to do as a beginner is to search deeply on the internet for days if not weeks in order to feel more confident and more importantly understand what is a ROM, what is a recovery (TWRP being the main one), a bootloader, etc, so you know what you’re going to do.
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I feel the same doomerism that it just won’t be legally possible to own your servers, and it will be that only corpos are trusted by the big governments to operate platforms. I feel like we are in a battle right now and they won’t win in the end. I also think it’s helpful to watch the various big platforms implode recently, it signals to congress that maybe we can do a better job than facebook. I also feel decentralization is key honestly, if I host my instance in some place that does not really care about these anti encryption laws there is not a ton another nation can do about it, and if it’s decentralized it becomes even harder
Combine this with laboratories learning how to literally control pathogens and we could have the distophia of the future
Be more optimistic friend.
Government will continue to do surveillance but they can be constrained by the legal system. Corpos will build ai to sell you bullshit off whatever data they can get on you but you can block their ads and leave their platforms. Encryption is math and can’t be stopped by a law. UK law makers won’t be able to enforce their law even if it’s passed.
It’s cheaper than ever to run your own server, and will continue to get cheaper. Manage your own digital footprint and work towards decentralizing the web. Don’t worry so much about other people, they’ll come around eventually.
This is being made increasingly difficult every day, with huge corporations openly discussing the advantages of killing the open internet as it is today: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/README.md
The endgame seems to be to turn you into a mindless, agency-less zombie slave to these corps with your input being ads delivered to your (sub)conscious, and your output being you mindlessly doing whatever the ad wanted you to do. This is as much psychological – and social – divide-and-rule as it is technologically damaging, so even if you don’t know (or want) to run your own server, you will end up being affected, fractured and sharded against your own community all the same.
A sample case in point: It is getting more and more difficult to run your own servers when you are forbidden to spend your own money from your own electronic devices to pay for goods and services without being surveilled (and pounded by ads).
Most payment apps rely on device attestation “security”, that requires your mobile device be “compliant” to someone else’s rules, standards and endgames, to the effect that if you want to change your own bought-and-owned device in a way your ad-masters disapprove, you will be prevented from making payments from your device – and more significantly thereby, from participating in your community, economy and society unless you bend over to one of many private corporations that want you just as bent and broken as the rest of the people they already have.
This is pure, unadulterated evil at your doorstep, ringing your doorbell.
I know I probably sound far more pessimistic and hopeless than things actually are, but that is better than being asleep at the wheel. I do not wish to rob you of your optimism (I am actually happy that we still have it), but unless we see our world for what it really is today, it will be far more difficult to know and drive what it may become in the future.
Here is another example of how hard some people have worked to turn your own devices against you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo
Thanks for the video link. Very interesting. This is how all computers will be built eventually. So seize the means of computation until we can…
What happened to the ethos of the original internet cultures that were so dominant. It’s like large swaths of that generation grew up and sold out to become the oppressors. And the other portion are being crushed by that system.
Only a small % of people were on the internet then it grew and grew and the new people flocked to new spaces and didn’t like the old internet culture because it was quite elitist and toxic.
You say elitist as if it was a bad thing. As to toxic, 1990s online communities has no comparison with casual baseline hostility everywhere today that is just off the charts. In fact, Lemmy already has enough of it for me to start disliking commenting. This is what almost drove me offline in the last few years.
I’m not sure still care enough to run my own instance and enforce stricter standards. It’s all so much work and ultimatively futile.
This is such a surreal comment I feel like we have two completely different experiences. I found the old internet to be full of flame wars and hostility, which at the time I had no issue with and definitely participated. Today’s internet is overly an nice hugbox. The stuff I used to say in 2002 would probably land me in jail today.
I think the end of net neutrality hastened there older internet’s demise. now corps are free to monetize as much as they like.
Yup. When net neutrality died it let a few corporate overlords rise up and kill off much of the old free web. What much of us grew up on was a much fewer, wilder web. One you could still dream on and where you could still think damned near any new thing could come from anyone. Now, you pretty much have to already have $.
Wait, what do you mean Net Neutrality died? I thought they lost signing the bill to end it?
When was the last time you accessed a http website (not https)? Basically any schmuck in his basement could cobble one up. Nowadays you have to rent a server from some cloud service which goes against the whole net neutrality concept.
People just stopped bothering when their browser screams at them for accessing an unsafe website. That’s where net neutrality died IMO.
Wait, I don’t get this. Https certs are trivial to acquire and keep up-to-date with Let’s Encrypt. You can deploy a server like Caddy that will handle most of it for you. I’m a schmuck whose own website is self-hosted and I put an nginx rule to redirect http to https, because I don’t think anyone along the path between your computer and my website deserves to eavesdrop on the conversation.
It truly sucks. but seeing decentralized/open-source projects - Lemmy, I2P/TOR, Linux, etc. warms my heart. It helps me see there’s truth out there and pushes me forward down this path.
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I love how vrchat is so much of a freak show (and I love it for that) that corpos are too scared to even acknowledge its existence. Dunno if you’ve noticed, but whenever a company talks about “the metaverse” they tend to mention all the mainstream social programs except vrchat, despite vrchat being one of the largest. Vrchat seems like it’s too gay, trans, furry, weaboo, autistic and neurodivergent for corporations to be able to apply their normal methods of sanitation and control to it.
The EU is very much hit and miss. I do appreciate them putting Google, Meta, and Apple in their place, and some on the legislation regarding smart phones they have passed. But ultimately they want to have all your data for “security”.
Still, I think the situation in the US is a bit worse.
EU policy is so hit and miss because the EU Parliament mostly has our backs, and is introducing good legislation protecting consumers of corpo overreach (like the roaming directive). The EU Commission on the other hand has only the interest of the EU countries’ governments in mind, which makes many of its proposals rather shitty of the common citizen. Also tells you a lot about what the actual national governments stand for, when somebody else is doing more for the citizens than they are.
thank you for that brief explanation, didn’t really know the difference between the two branches(is that what they call em?)
That explanation doesn’t really go into any detail.
The EU Parliament is made up of elected MEPs from each member state (EU countries). They vote on EU citizens’ behalf for the regulations that the EU imposes. Typically, these regulations are basically the EU saying “member states need to make a law about this within these confines” and then it’s up to each member state to flesh out their own version of the law internally.
The European Commission is made up of lawyers. They are not elected, instead they are selected by the government of each member state. The EC lawyers write the rules that the EU Parliement MEPs vote on. The idea being, you want talented professionals in this role, rather than someone who is merely popular - they need to write robust rules that can withstand challenge and suit the entire EU. However it depends on member state governments correctly selecting for this position.
People knowledgeable in law write the laws, then democratically elected representatives vote on them.
So I don’t think /u/Queztacoatl@feddit.de really had it right in their statement of how it functions. The EU Parliament doesn’t introduce any laws, the EC writes directives that the EU Parliament vote into force, then member states write laws within the bounds of the directives.
However they may be right that members of the EC can be more politically motivated, given that they are appointed to their position by the government of their home country, rather than by the people of their home country.
That’s a more detailed explanation thanks. The OP explanation was helpful for someone who hasn’t really looked into how it functions.
Is there some sort of judiciary at the EU level or is the robustness of laws tested in national contexts?
There are definitely EU courts, one of the reasons the UK left was to get out from under the EU courts. All member states have to implement laws that fit within the EU directives, if these laws don’t match or aren’t enforced then a citizen may end up escalating their claim to the EU courts, after exhausting their national courts. The nation then has to follow the EU court’s ruling.
Saying that I can’t think of any example where the EU court didn’t bring forward a fair ruling that the UK had to adhere to. There certainly was plenty of shit stirred up by the government about it, but when you looked into the claims they fell flat.
Yes, they are unfortunately not as opposed to surveillance by governments as they are by that of megacorporations. While I appreciate that they are trying to keep the likes of Google and Meta in check, I also very much dislike the several attempts to enforce data retention and essentially encryption bans.
That the Data Retention Directive was eventually annulled by the Court of Justice of the European Union gives me some hope that the legal system within EU can withstand these attempts, but maybe I am being too naive? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
It’s like governments and corporations are competing at control over information flows. In EU bureaucracy wins more often, and in US corpo lobbyists win more often.
Can’t say I find this competition healthy…
it’ll look either
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more like where the vikings live
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more like where Americans die
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I feel like I’ve explored very deep edges of sound alternatives. I’ve tried replacing my phone with consumer friendly alternatives and they just weren’t as good unless you can get a fair phone in the US which is hit or miss. The Internet itself lending itself to subscription based models is because servers and data storage costs money.
I hate to say it, but even if you remove power through solar investments and using lightweight servers you still have ISP to pay. Everyone’s got bills and overhead, because nothing is free.
My advice is to ground your logic in that everything requires resources to run and rejoice in community wins like Lemmy or mastodon or Graphene OS. It’s not all bad. Find the good in the bad and move towards what works for you personally. I’ve been off of windows for like a year now and I think that alone is impressive despite Xbox for example costing an arm and a leg.
The internet as we knew it was based on something that doesn’t exist anymore.
Back in the '90s the internet was a million small companies all posturing and juggling for position. The great late capitalism push means that everybody needs to make 20% more every year which is completely possible to do when you’re tiny.
The advertising fire hose back then was enough to expand small companies year-over-year. The return on investments from some well placed static ads, and then later on YouTube ads was more than enough to oil the gears of commerce.
Now the only thing that’s left are the mega corporations, They can’t sustainably expand at 20% per year, but they sure do like to buy up those tiny corporations.
Advertising is no longer sufficient, so subscriptions are going to creep in. At some point subscriptions will no longer be sufficient.
Nothing was ever free, we were the product. In the current economic situation we’re no longer as profitable a product. Interest rates exist again venture capital is drying up.
At some point everything we use that’s not private community funded is going to end up being paid for by both a subscription and advertising
I was honestly kind of hoping more web 3 peer-to-peer stuff would be the final answer but all those projects seems to be fizzling out.
Yeah agreed. I’m working on a solution but it’s going to cost the consumer. According to Zuckerberg the first sin of the Internet was making everything free. If you’re doing things in the dapp space it’s harder since every person needs a server not just an app in an ideal world.
These monolithic websites have a lot less of an excuse imo since they run on a shared server though.
He’s kind of right in a way. If advertising is your model, you can never get bigger than the collective sum of your advertisers. That’s scales well until you are one of the biggest companies in the world, and then there just aren’t new sources of advertising dollars to build on. You need other monetization channels, and those can frequently be in conflict with the advertising mission.
A subscription based service, in theory, directly converts your specific utility as a good or service into cash flow, rather than the utility of the service for pushing ad impressions.
This is the rub though - so many people think that there is a giant conspiracy to make tech conform to some nefarious capitalism endgame, but in a lot of cases, this shit is legitimately just consumer preference.
Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of kleptocratic fuckery afoot as well, but there are also plenty of examples of consumers wanting something that actual experts think is dumb or unsafe.
There are ways around it if you are willing to put in the work and deal with incoveniences.
For example, never use native Android or iOS, flash a custom ROM, never install proprietary apps, just that cuts a lot out. Only use cash for all stores and services, never carry payment cards with you, that wipes out financial tracking. Never give real info to stores. Use email aliases so different people have a different address. Don’t use Windows on computer if the prgrams you use are not exclusive to Windows.
Those can be the beginner steps to how to be almost invisible in society. One thing I’ve done is try to push people onto SimpleX chat app for messaging so I can have a different random ID with each person I message so there’s no contact info to share. Even people I know in person, we hang out together, I try to get them on SimpleX in place of Signal.
While I agree with all of that…. One of the biggest issues is employment. For instance through my job I’m forced to use both google and meta services, and I can’t “opt out” or “just don’t install it”. It’s a condition of employment. So of course you can say “just quit your job” but that’s not really viable is it? Over phone apps? And carrying two phones I will never do…… so……
Don’t let your employer use your personal stuff for their needs. If they need you to have a phone for work, then they need to provide that, and you can leave that at work. The same with Alphabet- and Meta-services; that stays on the employers devices, never your own.
I genuinely believe that this is nothing new. Governments have just learned in the last few years that most of their citizenry don’t give a shit about privacy. They’re just making it official, so it can be penalized if you openly try to do something about it. I think…
hacking itself into…
If you will take a friendly criticism meant to be helpful? As the ancient philosophers mentioned, you cannot control the world, only yourself. Language such as this is biased and shows that you lack understanding of the phenomena involved. You hate it bc you fear it, maybe, even while you do not know precisely what it is. Like what exactly can they do with a phone once they have access, what are the limits, what are the supposed benefits even, and most important, what are the ways around it, and yet what hidden costs are associated with circumventing it? You seem to feel that you are trapped, that you lack power - and yes, you are and you do, but also… so very much not at the same time!!!
Like for protesting, simply do not take a phone, and instead bring something like a walkie talkie, or even arrange visual cues such as flags, bandanas, a particular style of hat (red = cops are near, whatever), done, problem solved. Spend some time learning about the things you care about, and separate yourself from the “sheep” mentality that expects everything to be spoon-fed to you 100% of the time.
Or else go the other way and lean into it, realizing that using a mobile device is nothing at all like using something you “own”, and instead you “rent” your time on the cell tower network, so whoever owns & controls that gets the ultimate say in how they want it done. “Engagement media” aka click bait articles never seem to get around to presenting the full picture of what is happening. Like, you do not control that, and never ever will, but ultimately they do take fairly good care of people. People that do not go to protests even have little to fear, unless one springs up around them, and even then all that happens is…what? You still have full control over your device, except they can also ping it, maybe turn on the camera? (Inside your pocket what will they see or hear?)
Either way, you will be happier once you’ve resolved your intention of how you want to live your life. Right now you feel the stress of being on the fence, wanting the best of all worlds, but it will take sacrifice and effort to achieve a fraction of what you want, so defining what that even is can be the first step towards achieving your goals. e.g., coming here rather than Reddit should have helped:-). Now, spend time reading to help you define your next actionable step.
It’s weird how I’ve seen several of these kinds of comments on lemmy recently. They’re responding to a post that’s pointing out an obvious social/political/economic problem by reducing it to the poster having some kind of personal mental health issue or accusng them of being stupid because they don’t know enough about the issue to have a degree in it.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen them anywhere else. Maybe they just always got buried on reddit, idk. But it’s an interesting redirection that’s a) super unproductive, and b) trying really hard to take focus off a very real social issue. “Your late stage capitalist country quickly descending into fascism? Have you considered Wellbutrin?”
Your comment falls prey to a binary fallacy, aka false dilemma. It is possible for both to be true at the same time. The immediate issue is that OP feels bad. The is indicated by the very first words in the very first sentence, as well as the start of pretty much every single sentence after it:
I am fucking scared of the … nightmare … Im also sick of and hate the … I dont wanna know how…
So instead of assuming that I had not heard any of this from OP, and was responding to part (the major aspect imho) of what they said, you instead flew off on a tangent, assumed that I had missed all the emotional language entirely, and redirected (ironically, exactly what you accused me of, it is amazing how often that occurs) into how I somehow do not believe that privacy violations so much as exist anywhere in the world… really? I suggest that you reexamine your premise. But do as you please, ofc.
For the record, I never used words remotely close to “stupid” (in my mind I was envisioning things like “take charge of your destiny!”), I never suggested that OP take drugs to escape/deal with the pressures of life, nor did I offer thoughts of suicide, I never accused them of personal health problems, nor did I mitigate the seriousness of the situation, etc. Instead, I offered practical solutions for REAL-WORLD issues, and advice on how OP can reclaim their sanity.
Maybe you simply blocked anyone that ever disagreed with you on Reddit? Or else your mod did that for you in all of your “safe spaces”. Feel free to block me too btw - I think we would both benefit from that actually, if this is how conversations with you would go in the future.:-)
My view of this conversation, fwiw:
OP: Lions exist and keep eating people!
Me: Have you thought about carrying a gun with you whenever you go out into the jungle… or just do not go there anymore?
You: Stop bullying OP, you big poopy-pants meanie!!:-(
(Also, speaking of redirecting the conversation, I see that you offered no advice to OP of your own so… yes actually, it is odd, weird even, how I have seen several of these kinds of comments on lemmy recently, responding to a post that talks about real issues with severe social/political/economic ramifications by reducing the commenter to having somehow ignored the OP and being extremely unproductive in their response, while simultaneously offering nothing productive of their own, thus taking the issue off on that weird tangent - I really wish people would stop doing that, you know what I mean!?)
Its not downplaying the problem it’s offering a philoshopical solution to the anguish.
Op will destroy himself before he destroys the system. So he shouldn’t expect to destroy the system. Take a step back and realize what you can change and what you can’t.
When I got interested in privacy it was genuinely overwhelming it felt like I had to upend my entire life which seemed impossible. So I stepped back and thought about what I could change. I started making small changes here and then doing only what I was comfortable with. After a year I’m almost off Google services and I’ve migrated off all big tech platforms except discord. I’m securing my home network and reeling in my email and cc usage online.
The world seems scary but I can feel myself getting away from the things I don’t like. I can sleep knowing I’m doing what I can.
