A must-read for policymakers around the world. Provide a level playing field to all companies. Empower the user, not the MNC’s.
Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online services
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Regulation of internet based services and marketing platforms (like Google/Android) surely is one of the great tasks of our time. We will see if the EU administration is up to the challenge (but then: who else would be)?
I wonder if we will once see a time when the extensive, outrageous data grabbing that now is regarded normal with smartphone usage will be prohibited by law and thus banished. I for one would rather pay for solid services instead of beeing lured into the strip-tease booth by “free” services all the time… But this probably is not yet on the schedule?
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Nice link, shame the first line includes the phrase below, its almost like admitting defeat.
99% of my time online does not involve these 3 companies.
It’s very easy for me to imagine using the internet without them.
The only one I ever have to use, and it’s only occassionally, is g captcha on some sites.
Whether we use these companies or not is our individual choice, and its easy to avoid them:
- Stop using facebook.
- Use an alternative search engine, and use no script in your browser to block g
- Use alternative online shops - support ones based in your country/locality if possible
These companies are huge because people are uninformed and or lazy.
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In other words : if you say ANYTHING other than the government-driven covid narrative you will dissapear from the internet.
that’s easier said than done in some circumstances. for example, back when I was in the university, all the info about future tests, test results, postponed classes and such has been posted through a Facebook group. right now, whenever there’s an online training necessary for my line of work, all the discussion goes on in a private Facebook group. people from my line of work post about job openings at, you guessed it, a private Facebook group. the group chat at my work place, where we exchange information about our schedules, information form our boss etc. uses Whatsapp - a few people even attempted to move it to Signal last year and we almost succeeded, but even though I personally explained to some people how Facebook tracks everything it can, people just didn’t care. so sure, I can choose to stop using Facebook and its products completely, but then I lose the access to all the necessary information for me to keep my job.
given how the pandemic of misinformation has made the COVID pandemic much worse than it could have been, I don’t have an issue with limiting the reach of people who are spreading harmful content that isn’t backed by science and costs people their lives.
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I think it is inherent to the www today that every action a user takes is (or at least could be) subject to tracking and more or less sophisticated profiling. But we are also tracked heaviliy by our bank when paying online or by card, and by our shops when using their bonus system, and so on. Of course do advertising companies like Google need those data to create and sell their products, and so they are constantly in the marked for such data…
I would like to have an internet where there is as much data collected about me as if I were using my computer offline (this seems to be what many people still think today). Or, if this is not possible due to the nature of the service, I want to be told in intellegible, meaningful terms *) and use it without any tracking and profiling apart from the pure necessity.
Edit: *) I am sick of privacy statements like “We may or may not share your profile data with our international partners, so that they can improve their busines too”…
Totally agree with respect to the Covid case. However, “suppressing lies” is a difficult , double-edged endeavor. You really need to watch out to whom you hand over the power to decide what is true…
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oh, I absolutely agree with that.
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Actually, and to be honest, no one really “disappears” from the internet, at least not as long as you are able to keep your web hosting package or your wordpress account alive - however, you might get stuck in some “blind spot”, if Google “customizes” it’s search algorythms to avoid your keywords.
But the “mainstream” (or governmental narrative) also seems to work on another level. If you e.g. say that covid-19 vaccination did not meet the expectations / promises and probably even delays the passing of the covid pandemia, then a few months ago you would hardly been taken serious and probably never made it to the “front page”. Mainstream is not all about Facebook and Google. It is also about mass media in general, and about lobbyist’s and back room conservation, and about who is making the most profit e.g. out of the covid-19 pandemia. At the moment, a handful of pharmaceutical companies making billions of dollars every month, and the mainstream media and most health politicians are acting as if they directly profit from selling as much vaccine as possible, no matter the cost or actual benefit.
There has been money transfered from public budgets into a few private hands in a magnitude unseen since WW II (if not even more…). The ten richest people doubled their wealth since 2020. One would have good reasons to be concerned…
This, of course, will not be adressed by new EU regulations under way. Not yet anyway…
Edit: Other than it may seem this is not especially about Covid-19 conspiracy theories. The situation just serve as an example to illustrate that there are more issues at stake than a few dubious accounts or groups at Instagramm or Facebook…
MNC Multinational Corporations. A company with branches across multiple nations or countries.
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Amazon is not only an online shop, it is AWS (Amazon Web Service) which is a pack of tools for web developers.
That’s by the mean of these tools they allow the data grabbing.
Amazon is also the first provider of servers in the world, for every application, every website…
Hope the European digital identity and the EU- digital wallet will work on free mobile OS’s as /e/, because not all of the different systems of the different EU countries do.
That would be a major change. Because in my country these identification and payment apps only work on Apple&Google, and Google&Apple only.
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