Break free from Google by giving your money to Google!

After how much time? I was banned because of using third party client, I did the kyc process at the time because I wanted to delete the account but still I could not access…

It’s been years for me and they didn’t delete it yet.

That’s something to do while we still can, Instagram doesn’t let me delete my own account :/ Tried reaching the support multiple times, I’ve been completely ignored

Oh well all of this explains why I sometimes get instagram ADS which are relevant to me on my work phone even if I looked for stuff on my PC browser or smartphone (all using adblocks, deegogled android, private DNS, tracker blockers, private browsers and other preventive measures).

I didn’t realize they could literally track you probabilistically or they could tie different devices to you…

So essentially if I use my amazon account on the same PC (or on a device tied to me) that I use for looking at “cat food” I am screwed and they will know I have a cat and amazon will start advertising cat stuff to me?

I did know they tracked you, but I thought it had to be a consistent set of datas: accounts, unprotected browsing, keeping cookies for a long time etc etc… I didn’t know they could probabilistically try to catch you nor that they could so reliably tie devices togheter… I would like to know more about what they can actually do and what are preventive measures that actually works…

For example: can they (and how) get over tracker blockers? VPNs? Proxies? Private DNS? Degoogled devices/Linux?

What I’ve got to do if I want to be on the internet preserving my privacy? Should I literally stop using the internet? Should I use devices on which I do not login on a normal account ever and just use my self hosted stuff or the federated web?

And what about all the data they already have on me, it will be their’s forever??

This is getting ridiculous, we need new solutions, the internet as we now know it is completely screwed.

How can they tie it to me tho? Or use it against me? Especially if behind ddg “proxy”

What do you mean by “shadow profile”?

I have been thinking about it for quite a long time, my dream is a linux e ink minimal smartphone, i think it would be the right mix between convenience, freedom and minimalism

At least if you just do phone calls the attack surface is reduced… They can scan your calls maybe, but not your entire chat history with all of your contacts and give it to an AI which could profile you based on that + you are not scanned on everything else you do on your phone / locked into proprietary ecosystems.

The ideal would just be using a Linux platform and using something like xmpp, but who are you gonna convince to use it? People use what they are used to use, if it’s not popular messaging apps is phone calls… And now it seems a more private alternative…

OK I’m getting a flip phone

Xmpp, IRC, Matrix, all great decentralized alternatives, but good luck convincing people in contacting you on Xmpp…

This problem is a problem because it’s a social tendency, not because we don’t have alternatives… Very sadly…

Honestly, with Fdroid and many other open source projects at risk after Google’s last madness, I wouldn’t take anything Android anymore (nor Apple of course).

My next phone will either be a dumbphone or a Linux phone.

I think I’m probably slowly transitioning to “the ghost” but more as a matter of digital minimalism than for privacy lmao

I think people should really read books like digital minimalism by cal Newport, stolen focus, surveillance capitalism, your brain on porn ecc to understand how social medias (but the internet in general) IS DESIGNED to be addictive, and what are the addictive traits.

Lemmy is definitely better but still holds some concepts from addictive social medias (not because of developers fault, I think they just tried mimicking popular socials, since these are born as “alternatives”). Infinite scrolling and upvotes are just two examples.

Some frontends do a great job leaving power to the user in that, like eternity, but I think a lot more consciousness should be raised on the topic and, at least in the open source / federated community there should be some guidelines on how to design social medias just as useful tools while minimizing distractions/useless/addictive parts.

It’s great to be decentralized, it’s great to avoid ads, profilation and targetization, but we can do better in designing really new and useful tools starting from certain principles.