Back in the day when I started to drive a car, the police were in the beginning phase of using radars to detect the speed you were driving. What followed was the radar detectors so that you would know if you were in the vicinity of the radar.
Well, over the years there has been this back and forth of new radars or detectors as the signals kept getting upgraded. So I recall asking my late father at the time what this is all about. He told me not to worry about it .. that the best way to beat the system was to simply drive the speed limit.
This way there is no reason for the radar or the detector, because we are following the laws or the rules. But, there is something in us as humans that is competitive, or something. Today you might compare this to digital communications, and privacy and security with search engines, browsers, and email.
Enter the Vivaldi browser: “In a world where what we read online is being monitored, stored, and sold to advertisers, Vivaldi Feed Reader is a breath of fresh air. Skip the algorithms and create a private news feed of the latest content from your favorite sources.”
Short of the long, “We are PAYING, with our data, to use these services. But we still consider them to be free, which makes us very lenient on them when we get poor value.”
The only way it seems to stay out from under the radar is to stay off the platforms as much as possible, at least for now. Privacy and security is not something you should have to pay for on the free internet.
+1
I wholeheartedly agree. I have a Facebook account, and have used it in the past, but for a number of years it has sat largely dormant. I have never used the other “social” media services and steer clear of “free” programs/apps/services that exploit their users. I’d rather donate to a good project or service, or pay for the commercial version of a piece of software – or even view contextual (non-tracking) ads to “pay” for a service. This is how independent TV and radio has worked successfully for decades. It’s a fallacy that payment with your data is required to get “free” things on the internet, and it shouldn’t be acceptable or normal to just shrug your shoulders and say that “there’s no such thing as privacy online”, even if that’s the current situation. These companies would quickly find more ethical revenue streams if people voted with their feet.