Internet freedom

published on
latest edit:

Table of contents

Premise #

This awesome and revolutionary tool which goes by the Internet is so powerful that in certain ways it is becoming a threat to the freedom of its users, who, in exchange for services, indifferently hand over their data, therefore giving up personal independence and liberty.

Essentially, I interpret internet freedom as the joint concern for two overlapping macro-themes:

  • privacy and security of digital tools
  • decentralization and de-monopolization regarding both hardware and software development
I wish I had both the time and the knowledge to write some in-depth articles about the topics mentioned above, but I am still studying and trying to better tackle the problems of the internet and their roots, in order to form a well-grounded opinion. For this reason, content of this page is pretty random and schematic.



Time #

Digital awareness is time consuming.
The only excuse I accept from people refusing to inform themselves about how we are being sucked into a worryingly inescapable and uncontrollable ecosystem is that they don’t have time.

I get it. I “wasted” hours, days, reading articles and watching videos concerning the internet, its functioning and its governance. I wish this matter could be simpler and more clear, but understanding internet monopoly both requires a fair amount of technical knowledge and it is a subtle matter.



Choose the alternative #

Just complaining, waiting for things to get better, believing that a conscious use is enough to keep clear from big tech negative impact is simply bullshit.

To change something and to make things better we need to switch to healthier, more ethical, often even cooler alternatives.

Quit and switch
Most of the times, the best thing to do is to [[Delete an account|just delete it]]
  • Quit Social Media ✅
  • [[Quit Google]] ✅
  • [[Quit Spotify]]: it is hard to live without it.
  • Quit Flickr and [[Piwigo Switch to Piwigo]] ✅ 2020.12.23 - 2021.01.18
  • [[Quit listing]]
  • [[Quit Mailchimp]] (even if I almost never used it)
  • [[Switch to LineageOS]]
  • [[Quit Netflix]]
  • [[Switch to Darktable]]
  • [[Quit IMDb]]
  • [[Switch to Linux]]
  • [[Signal Switch to Signal]]



Quitting #

Services to clean up data and guiding you through deletion

  • JustDeleteMe, direct, up-to-date links to delete your accounts
  • DeleteMe: pay a company to keep your data off data brokers websites
  • Vanish: guide to delete main online services’ accounts
  • DeseatMe: find accounts linked to your Google or Outlook email, and choose which ones to delete and which ones to keep



Roadmap #

Road to internet freedom
  1. ✅ Quit Social Media
  2. 🏗 [[Quit and switch]]
  3. Check policies, usage terms, privacy conditions of all the tools and services in use
  4. ✅ [[RSSify]]
  5. 🏗 Start using [[Indie Web]]
  6. ✅ 2020.12.20 Delete unused accounts and subscriptions
  7. ✅ 2020.12.20 Use AnonAddy addresses everywhere
  8. Reduce the passive digital footprint
  9. ✅ 2021.01.01[[Missing Knowledge Learn]] and improve PGP keys management
  10. 🏗 Set a private DNS as a system-wide encrypted DNS
  11. ✅ Install and configure [[Server self-hosted appster]]


further steps #

These are further improvements which are not likely to be achieved in the near future.

  1. pi-hole, a network-wide ad-blocking system
  2. Switching back from iOS to a [[Quit Google deGoogled]] Android phone
  3. Switching from MacOS to Linux



Resources #

Random links about privacy online

🏗 WIP section 🛠

This section should contain a beautifull graph displaying the relations among this note and all of the others on tommi.space. Unfortunately, showing it requires great coding skills and I am still working on it.

Share

Commenti