Hi, my post is focusing specifically on YouTube since I observed the following categories have less intrusive solutions or privacy focused solutions, even if they are paid:
- Operating Systems (Linux, for example)
- Instant Messaging (Element, for example)
- Community Messaging (Revolt, for example)
- E-Mail (Proton, for example)
- Office (libreoffice, for example)
- Password Managers (Bitwarden, for example)
However, how do we distribute videos and watch them without data collection? I am NOT asking how do I use a privacy-focused front-end for YouTube, by the way, I am aware they exist.
I am wondering how we obtain a FOSS solution to something super critical such as YouTube. It is critical since it contains a lot of educational content (I'd wager more than any other platform), and arguably the most informative platform, despite having to filter through a lot of trash. During COVID, we even saw lecturers from universities upload their content on YouTube and telling students to watch those lectures. (I have first-hand experience with this at a respectable university).
I refuse to accept that there is nothing we can do about it.
Oh I understand it, and I also understand that laws can be wrong and corrupt, and shouldn't always be followed. If you think how law-abiding a corporation is is more important than protecting privacy of activists, maybe that shows your true colors.
Good point! Trusting law-abiding corporations to protect your privacy is fundamentally a bad idea, and as such, promoting Proton as a private alternative to Google (compared to say, self hosting on a bulletproof VPS like buyvm) is harming users and promoting corporate propaganda.
How does sending mail to gmail affect my privacy? If I'm sending encrypted mail to gmail, only that one mail is compromised once decrypted on gmail's servers. Any mail sent to any other server is fine. Do you only send mail to gmail users or something?
smtp is no better or worse than xmpp, irc or whatever else if you have end to end encryption. Proton decided to lie in their privacy policy that they don't log IPs, which ended up fucking this activist because they started logging after a sneaky targeted court order, and then edited their privacy policy after the fact like the slimeballs they are.
If e2e encryption is too hard, you can always mail encrypted tarballs or something. Either way, what led to the arrest was Proton secretly storing IP addresses against their privacy policy because of a court order, it has nothing to do with mail or smtp.