Privacy Guides
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
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Oh huh
Well that might discourage people from voting...
Yeah, I had a mixed reaction to finding that out a while ago, but I'm kind of just rolling with it for now. Votes are just simply NOT private on here, for better or worse. My feeling right now is that it's sort of positive from a community feel perspective, but I'm also avoiding interacting with a lot of subjects I consider more controversial.
Probably we'll end up developing a culture of either lots of alts used simultaneously, short lived accounts with regular name changes, or both as people become more aware of this. Either that or people will just say "Fuck it. You really want to see all the weird porn I like and my political preferences and what not? Don't blame me if you regret looking!" :p
Appreciate the thoughts, it gives me more to think about. I've also been avoiding controversial subject matter and I think I'll avoid it even more now.
I do think the Fediverse needs to improve privacy and ease of use for alts. I've seen a lot of stuff over the years on Reddit that an authoritarian government would love to get their hands on. I guess the fediverse, by design, can't be private? I worry that someone who doesn't know better will get hurt because they don't understand the risks.
All the more reason to join trusted instances with solid admins, and to keep your Lemmy profile separate from your real identity.
A possible workflow right now might be to browse on one account, and post comments from another. Boost on Reddit made that easier, but I don't think the Lemmy one does that yet
The internet is a messy place and I like my privacy
I think people will feel more comfortable voting if it wasn't made public. Same reason we add privacy booths during elections, or put our heads down in class when voting on simple things
I'm not sure I understand
If everyone can see what I upvote, then I'm going to take that into consideration before voting. If it was private, then I wouldn't worry about it and vote whenever I want to.
Overall this might be a good thing because it exposes bad behaviour, such as downvoting the person who disagrees with you.
This might be a problem if, for example, there's a post critical of moderators / admins. You might want to upvote it, but worry about getting banned. If your Lemmy profile can be linked to your real identity, you might worry about real world consequences too.
I just keep my posting habits the same as on reddit. I mostly comment on things instead of making posts myself unless I have a specific question, but I also have never paid much attention to how others might think of me from my statements or votes. If someone tries to message me privately to argue something I just block them if I don’t feel like it.
Ultimately this account is not my personal identity and I couldn’t care less what others think of it. I just state what I think on a subject and if that is upvoted, fine, if not who cares.
Harassment, mostly.
A vote on kbin/lemmy is closer to a retweet than to a vote on reddit in terms of its potential impact on folks. You are publicly saying you support/do not support a post by voting on it (which might be taken as publicly thanking someone with an upvote or publicly saying fuck you with a downvote in some contexts); that can be a workable system, but it's surprising if you're coming from reddit where basically no one but the admins (and whoever they told/sold the data to) actually knows what you voted up/down.
Hell, consider all the drama around "YOU DOWNVOTED ME!!" / "No I didn't!" BS that was so common even when it was just suspected -- now it can be confirmed (again, for better or worse), for kbin users. I was on reddit for a long time and just thinking about that crap makes me feel tired... -.- Downvoting on kbin is potentially picking a fight every time. The end result is that I've basically never downvoted anything except some spam bots. I don't need that shit in my life again -- even for some of the posts that I think really should be downvoted, I'm just ignoring now. (Not getting into it further. Don't ask. I won't respond.)
If your IRL identity is associated with your account (or can be figured out eventually...), upvoting something really spicy could also end up causing you the same kind of drama IRL as retweeting or commenting strongly on the post -- e.g. job loss, loss of business, targeted harassment/violence campaigns, loss of friends/romantic partners, etc...
I really don't need more drama in my life, so I'm a bit more mindful of how I'm voting (for better or worse) and some stuff I probably would've voted on before, I am just leaving alone now.