That’s a glowing recommendation of Signal. And a good reminder to donate. I’m doing it right now.

Celebrity/billionaire worship. Just no. It means their values are wildly erratic.

Originally I thought I could, but no. Because when I listen to the music, I’m giving that artist money, attention, and power.

That results in giving them a bigger platform to spew their bigoted opinions/actions is counterintuitive to my goals. I would rather not.

This would only be meaningful if it wasn’t collected in the first place.

Yes I’m sure, after all they’ve never given us reason not to trust them.

I’ve bought every single generation of an Apple Watch, and I returned it every time.

I wanted to love it so much, but I couldn’t.

It’s just a glorified notification system.

Anytime I got a notification on it, or wanted to use it for something, it was faster and far more convenient to just pull out my phone and do whatever I needed to.

The only thing I found it good for was controlling music from a distance, but that’s not an important use case for me and definitely not worth the price tag, plus the recurring data plan. It’s a money and attention hog, just like any other smartphone.

That network wasn’t built overnight either, though. The same way it was built little by little over time, it can also be dismantled.

I understand the chokehold of network effects. I really do. But what’s the alternative?

Whose fault is it though? I get that collective will is hard, but you as an individual have the power to move, organize, mobilize, whatever you want.

The company doesn’t value you? Move. Why are you giving this company free labor?

For the “prestige” of being a (“anonymous”) reddit mod? Give me a break. There’s better things to do and be prouder of in life.

Stop giving this company time, money, and attention. And tell others to do the same. Otherwise, you’re digging your own (and everyone else’s) hole.

Yes, it’s unfair, but it’s an unfair system. So let’s all do our part. And let’s also organize and mobilize on that. Can’t be done by continuing to feed it.

What’s even scarier is that takeout is probably only the data they want you to see, or are legally obliged to share.

I would be willing to wager they have lots more on you that you’re not even aware of.

I couldn’t agree more. We shouldn’t need to be somewhere else to receive announcements (especially such important ones).

Not to mention Discord’s horrible record of privacy and security. I don’t have an account and will never make one, and I’m sure many others in the fediverse will agree.

I actually just tested out the account making process, and I got asked for my phone number. No. Way.

We’re here because we care about a decentralized, open network. Aside from its confusing and busy UX, it’s not even indexable. Discord is literally a black hole for information and terrible for everyone except for Discord itself, who is doing who knows what with all of our data.

Discord is everything the fediverse stands against.

Can we just dismiss Google in general?

Wait, what? A shitty Google product? Plagued by ads and spyware? No way!

As others have pointed out here, use Aurora Store or F-Droid.

I think about this every day, but I keep coming back to this: they do care. It’s just that they don’t always know they care, or to what extent. The big problem is that there’s virtually no way to visualize the harm in using privacy-invading products and services. Everything that goes on in the background of our phones, we’d never tolerate in real life.

If you could visually see every time there’s a background process, an app activating the mic, the sensors, the location, accessing your messages, etc., we’d be in a better position.

There’s no way we’d tolerate the IRL equivalents of what goes on digitally—at the browser level, at the app level, perhaps even at the OS level.

It’s usually visual cues that set off change. Think about it this way: 9/11 killed ~3000 people and we got the USA PATRIOT Act virtually overnight. COVID-19 happened and killed ~1.1 million people in the US alone. But because COVID wasn’t as “visual” and as “graphic” as 9/11, there was less urgency to do something about it.

Burn it all down

Power Delete Suite still works AFAIK: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite

In addition to uninstalling the client (RIF), you should poison your Reddit posts, and then delete your account.

There’s no way to build, let alone restore, trust with that kind of business model. All behavior manipulation companies need to die. Their mere existence is unethical.