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this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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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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This is exactly what i just did. No regrets. Foss everything, no mainstream social media. I love it
The Fediverse is not perfect, but it actually blew my mind a bit how much it lowered my blood pressure to not see the constant ragebait, and the calm of not being exposed and monitored at all times. I still have Snapchat just for one person, and WhatsApp which is Meta but still E2EE. Other than that, I'm all in on FOSS privacy approved apps and man does it feel great.
Here it's us, real people rage-baiting you on employer time!
Ah yes, organic rage bait instead of Ai swirls fancy wine
You guys have employers?
Shitposting from under the bridge in the Canadian winter sucks so wage labour it is.
I made the switch to Linux and Lemmy right around the same time. Once I was free of it all it was like relaxing a muscle I didn't know had been tense for decades. Android is next... Just as soon as I figure out jellyfin....
Jellyfin is the shit. Lemme know if you have questions.
No questions in particular as of yet. Still assembling hardware. I'm going for a server built on a NAS
This will be the hardest thing you will do in your life that you will never regret.
I love how encouraging the self hosted community is.
Dude, it's super awesome, but telling you it's easy could potentially push you away from doing it, plus transparency is always the best policy. Additionally, it's not that it's hard, really, it does have a learning curve, and it's difficulty will mostly be determined by how much you like challenges. The best part is that too many of us have already tried, failed, tried again, and succeeded, so you can always lean on us.
I strongly recommend TrueNAS Scale. It's built on Debian, and has full docker implementation.
sadly it was announced that TrueNAS is becoming closed source Closed Source TrueNAS
TrueNAS Scale's Docker implementation is currently really mediocre - it's implemented as an app store style experience - and deploying/managing containers via the CLI isn't officially supported although it works fine. They do have a more generic container management implementation in beta at the moment.
Jellyfin truly is the shit. Now if only I could somehow hook it into authentik and traefik for sso without pulling all my hair out.. 🤪
I got a cloudflare tunnel going. Easy peasy.
I also just switched to Linux! Well dual booting Windows for now but only for gaming really, and until I figure out if Ardour is good enough for me for music production. But still: Microsoft has nothing except my game saves now, no tax documents or web history, etc.
What distro did you go with?
I'm also looking into making a home server to ditch streaming services and so I dont need 250 GB of music on my. phone. Got to be able to afford the RAM though...
Mint. I'm not a "tech genius" and it was presented as an easy intro to Linux. I feel no need to distro hop, getting by just fine with my little minty penguin thank you very much!
Mint is pretty legit. Their Cinnamon desktop is looking a lot prettier these days too.
I landed on Fedora KDE because I need gaming features like VRR, and still wanted features like Secure Boot & a distro with a lot of users and documentation.
do you know what to replace android with?
GrapheneOS :)
isnt that still android
Yes. It is hardened a lot though, easily the most secure and private. Ubuntu Touch is maybe more private because Linux but it's barely functional. iOS in lockdown mode is decent, better than stock Android.
checkout Gelato for jellyfin if you are low on disk space
It really goes to show no little of the abuse we suffer is inherently the Internet's fault. Lemmy feels like the reddit I knew and loved of 15 years ago. Sure there's some assholes I argue with but that's the normal amount of shittieness not the turbocorpo abuse
A lot of it is hitting critical mass too. Reddit used to be tech enthusiasts and stem students the same way Fediverse is currently. Now any town idiot yahoo from the sticks will angrily yell at you on Reddit for no reason.
But yeah the algorithm is a lot stronger than it would seem.
Some are trying though. Some one tried to be a smart ass saying that us lemmyngs where cool with piratage when it is for random people but not when it is for facebook so we should be ashamed. He got his ass handed by multiple people. Good time. Not even an insult was thrown <3 it was civilized, I love you guys.
When I first joined Reddit, it was so similar to Lemmy in its principles. Relatively progressive, open source, tons of interesting people having real convos about the nerdiest stuff and talking about the world. It was real, and the fediverse has absolutely nailed recreating that sense of community. What a beautiful safe haven we have
it's refreshing to see real internet community
As far as you are told. There is no verification that is true.
But there is a nearly continuous stream of occurrences where Meta is caught lying.
They have had some third party audits. It is not totally convincing to me as being trustworthy, but I see it as more of an acceptable necessary evil. Better than Discord, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, probably even SMS. My wife's whole family uses just WhatsApp, and so do some businesses even in her country. Believe me though, anyone I can get on Signal, Matrix, Session, etc, I do.
There have been third party audits, but the conclusions have been that you can't know if it's implemented correctly or at all. Nature of closed source. Because you can't know where the keys are.
I get the doing business in their country. That is so difficult to overcome. I will not do it. Foot down on that one, and it does make it hard. My wife's family does the same as you mentioned. I just tell them they are literally paying for fascism. They don't care. Or you can pick from many of the ills of Meta products (energy use, AI, misinformation, or even simply making someone a billionaire by contributing nothing to society).
Makes it hard.
I'm working on it and avoid it when I can as I mentioned. The only reason I mentioned it is that it's one of the last vestiges of apps I don't fully trust. I treat it like SMS or email, I don't send anything I don't expect could be audited by the government with the right subpoenas.
But sometimes I'm in a weird position. If I need to order food in my wife's country, I am not going to be able to contact the restaurant without WhatsApp. Then I, as a white American who doesn't know them, am going to explain to the delivery guy the reasons why they shouldn't support American fascism, in their native language that I am not 100% fluent in?
It isn't American fascism of course. It's everywhere.
But I get it, I find myself in the same boat traveling and visiting family. It really is pervasive. So in your scenario you can't just go pick it up yourself?
I know there are other ones though: Everything in some places works like this where they want to do a call back - deliveries, doctors appointments, services. WhatsApp has almost, if not completely, replaced the phone, so even getting a local sim doesnt help.
I simply refuse to play along. I wont do it. Somehow we seem to work it out.
It is actually verified e2ee. However, they do keep a 'spare key' for every single user and chat, you know, in case they need to help you, the good guys at Meta.
Why use WhatsApp instead of Signal? I don't go near WhatsApp because of Meta, so I genuinely know very little about it.
because in some countries it's been the default means of communication for over a decade, which means a network effect.
I don't, I use Signal whenever I can. WhatsApp is for businesses that use it, and the people who refuse to go to Signal, or can't figure it out. Like my mother in law tried but got confused and so far have been unsuccessful troubleshooting why long distance. But I still need to talk to her.
E2EE but with a caveat that they can do on device detection of unencrypted messages and flag content back to mothership
What messages would be unencrypted in this scenario if it is E2EE? I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
The what's app is encrypted to get to your phone so transmission is protected, however to view your message it is unencrypted (obvious) and at that stage WhatsApp will parse it for key stuff such as Child Sexual stuff, or other threats they have determined they look for, that then triggers a data send back to the mother ship. The problem with this is if the Government wants to silence a political opponent or journalist they can go to Meta and request a search other than CSAM. So end to end encryption via any META product is a joke
haha, the "lowered my bloodpressure" bit is sooo relatable :)
I just did this too, except I bought a refurbished Pixel, so I paid someone else $100 for Google to fuck off lol.