Rule #1: don’t read an article entitled “How Do I Protect My Privacy If I’m Seeking an Abortion?” on the internet with your own computer or cellphone. Borrow someone else’s - preferably a man’s so you don’t end up potentially compromising another woman later - or go to the public library.

That’s the catch: you can’t not use Google at all if you’re online at all, because Google has managed to insert itself into every little corner of the internet.

And that’s how the surveillance trap has quietly snapped shut on all of us without most of us noticing anything.

George Orwell had it wrong: the surveillance isn’t conducted directly by a tyrannical dictatorship but subtly, indirectly by the private sector in cahoots with the government. And the date he predicted was 40 years off. Other than that, he was right: we live in a full-blown dystopia now.

People coming here to rant about Reddit isn’t activity.

Removed by mod

I use a calyxos device to share VPN, as of a few months ago.

Hotspot & Tethering

• Allow clients to use VPNs

Oh wow I totally missed that. It works great! Genius!

Thank you for that. Suddenly it makes repurposing one of my old cellphones a very simple and viable proposition.

(and I’m posting this from my laptop connected to the hotspot connected to the Calyx VPN 🙂)

get a older cell phone. Put lineage OS on it, or calyxos… share your VPN over hotspot, these are the only two ROMs that I’m aware of that allow you to do that

That’s what I thought too. So I tried it on my CalyxOS phone and… it doesn’t work: the hotspot doesn’t route through the VPN. And from what I read, it’s by design.

I have an old Nokia 4.2 running LineageOS. I might try that one.

end-to-end VPN

Incidentally, do you know if the GL.iNet devices can act as a VPN server too?

At this point, I think China is well known for infiltrating local businesses and forcing them to sell networking gear with trojans.

The US is better known for surveilling people indirectly by exploiting corporate surveillance data collected by big tech monopolies doing their bidding for them and by directly “tapping the line”. I don’t think US officials asking US companies to compromise their products and keep quiet about it would fly in the US. At least not yet. But I wouldn’t put it past them either.

To be honest, of all three, I’d rather purchase something made in Europe, even for a premium.

Hmm… Touché.

There are others that aren’t Chinese but nothing anywhere near the price bracket you’ll get from GL.Inet

Can you give me some pointers to non-Chinese equivalents of those GL.iNet routers? I’m quite ready to suck up the extra cost.

the TikTok of the fediverse

Gee just what the Fediverse needed…

Not really. It would only require the new user on the new instance to be able to “own” posts and comments made by the old user on the old instance.

For example, the old user account could transfers its posting and commenting history to the new account (and the new account would be asked to accept the transfer of course).

When it’s done, whoever visits the new account, will see posts and comments made from the old account up until the transfer, and the old account’s posting and commenting history would be blank.

Then If the old account were to continue posting afterwards for some odd reason, it would build a new posting and commenting history from that point on. Or the transfer could become effective only after the old account is deleted permanently.

I don’t know exactly how any of this is implemented, but it would definitely not require monkeying with the actual past posts and comments.

I don’t think there is an account migration tool yet.

I am in the same boat: I want to move out of SDF but I can’t really because I want to keep the community I moderate and my account’s posting history. I mean I could certainly create a new account and pass the moderating rights from the old to the new, but I’d still be starting from scratch posting-history-wise.

So I’m holding off until account migration is finally a thing.

Not really. Only shaked my head in disbelief.

Have you ever seen a TikTok video? Why on Earth do we want that on the Fediverse? Not everything that exists deserves to be copied.

You know, I have to say you’re right.

At this point, unless you have been living under a giant rock, there are simple, hard facts you can’t possibly not know about Donald Trump that should be unacceptable to anyone regardless of political leanings. It’s simply impossible to ignore them.

Therefore logic dictates that whoever votes for Trump today must agree with the Nazi stuff, the Trump Purge, shooting protesters in the legs, hanging vice-presidents or locking up former speakers of the house. I mean LITERALLY agree - because he LITERALLY said those things. Even MAGA people shouldn’t agree with those things: making America great again implies not destroying America!

Meaning roughly half of this country agrees with those things. If that’s not fucked up to the n-th degree, I don’t know what is.

Well yeah, I look at All too, to make sure I’m not missing out on something interesting. But I must do that every month or so.

That escalated quickly

That’s too much credit to the poster.

I’d say it went down the sewer quickly, rather.

Ah right okay.

I only look at the ones I subscribed to myself. Different approach I guess.

Forgive me if I’m a bit of a thicky, but why is there a need to block communities? Doesn’t simply ignoring them work?

I trust Google a LOT less than I trust Apple

I have zero trust in both. So if I have to choose a dystopian surveillance device, even a stock one, I’ll choose the one that lets me sideload apps anyday, even if the experience is less polished.

And of course, I run a deGoogled OS so the point is moot. I use it for work stuff and I have no issues. I feel no need for a regular Google or Apple piece of spyware.

What you call a prison, I call a system where I don’t have to fuck around to make shit work. Everything Just Works.

So, just like I said, you’re happy in your prison. It’s cool, to each his own 🙂 It wasn’t a value judgment. Me, I’d rather cut one of my testicles off than give a cent to Apple - or Google too for that matter - or let either decide what I can or cannot run on MY device.

iOS is more fit for my purpose than Android.

As long as it does what you want, then it’s fine.