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this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Privacy
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
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- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
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I assume you're Gen-Z too! Socializing and Dating without Instagram and Snapchat is impossible! Don't listen to others here shouting "get their email!" "ask them to install Signal!" "ask them to install PixelFed!! "They are not worth your friendship if they don't want to talk to you if you don't have Instagram!". I know the real world ground reality having experienced it earlier, you have no other choice than making an IG and Snap account. Everyone you talk in real life will ask for your "ID" after sometime, which means IG or Snap ID depending on where you live. No "normal person" (as in normie) will install Signal or PixelFed for you. I have studied in 2 separate universities and only knew 3 girls who didn't have Insta or Snap. The foids who spout nonsense here are millennials who have no idea on how Gen-Z interact with each other or individuals who are too far into the privacy-anonymity spectrum. Anyway, you can take the following steps which will preserve your privacy in IG and Snap:
Create IG and Snap accounts using newly created emails.
Use AI generated or heavily AI altered pic as your profile pic in IG. So Meta wouldn't be able to meaningfully use your photo to train their facial recognition systems.
If you decide to post photos on Insta, alter them heavily using AI or Photoshop.
Use ASCII empty characters for your "name" in Insta and Snap. Use random username generators for usernames.
Keep Bio empty, if it doesn't allow you to keep it empty, use ASCII empty characters.
Don't watch or post Insta reels.
Don't like, comment or share in Insta.
Don't watch stories in Snap.
Use open source frontend apps on Android to browse Insta and Snap (I previously used a good app for Insta (I forgot it's name) which allowed you to control which pages to show. Like you can choose to stop displaying reels and feeds section and make it only to display DM's. This is very useful if your only aim on Insta is to use it for messaging. It even had a "Ghost mode" which will allow you privately browse Insta without alerting anyone- it'll keep your online status as "offline" even when you're online and turns off typing indicators for DM's and groupchats and you can videocall anyone without showing them you're online. Like I said, I forgot it's name, I'll link it here if I find it).
"Build a profile"- follow all of your Job/University/School friends. This will make your profile look less suspicious. Remember - It IS suspicious to not have Insta and Snap in this day and age. The fact that you didn't have both of these apps this far itself will make you look suspicious in the first place. So first build a profile.
Some have recommended apps like Insular, Shelter and Island to Isolate apps but let me tell you the truth- they will have no effect. Meta and Snapchat will still track and surveil you.
De-activate account after your purpose is resolved (only on IG) - Deactivate after your work is done. Say like the girl you were talking to has officially become your girlfriend. Don't do this on Snapchat as Snap doesn't have separate deactivate and delete account options. Your Snap account will get "permanently deleted" if you don't re-activate within 6 months.
Using VPN, TOR and other similar proxies will get your account getting flagged by Meta's spam filters and you will have to verify your identity via a real-time video verification (which has got scarily accurate in recent years) or submitting a government provided ID. Which is against what you're trying to achieve. So don't do that.
Good luck!
Am Gen Z, and currently in college. Clearly am on Fediverse, and I was never a fan of using IG (only got it cause my middle school friends made me since COVID was happening) and I have completely deactivated my account as of last winter. I have met several people at my college who don't use Instagram for various reasons, and while my other friend is a little disappointed that she can't message them on insta, at the end of the day, we live and move on.
At my college a lot of clubs use GroupMe (owned by Microsoft unfortunately) and we have an official Discord Hub that a lot of clubs are on also. So there's two different methods of communication that aren't Insta that are common on my campus. Some of my friends do have Signal in fact (even my Instagram loving friend), but because more of them don't we unfortunately don't use Signal, even when I beg my one friend who has it. She says 'it sucks and who uses it", but I've never really had the chance to use it to judge her statement as true or not.
Anyway, yeah, you could do a bunch of crazy shit and make fake accounts on Insta to have superficial conversations with people who won't give you the time of day for having an app, or you could just not. It's not that hard to find better friends/people to hang out with, and if you really make a connection with them then they should be happy with any form of communication you offer. Not all Gen Z are adamant Instagram defenders, some even hate it for various reasons (Suckerberg, being data stalkers, promoting bigotry, promoting mental health disorders, etc.)
Just an anecdote, but every time I try to create an account on Instagram I get automatically banned after account creation before even login-in for the first time.
If I recal they then ask me for a copy of my ID to confirm my name is real (which it isn't).
I have no idea how they know, I've tried literally with different residential IPs, different emails and even on brand new devices. On my Instagram user friend's house.
Maybe it's just ~~bad~~ good luck, who knows. In don't need Instagram anyway, just an interesting fact.
You mean to say unicode empty character (zero width space, probably). ASCII doesn't have one.
https://ibb.co/cKVX0nnP
This comment is all you need to know about this community! c/privacy is filled with millennials, Gen-X and boomers! There are only a handful of Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha here. I was in the same situation as you 2 years ago and asked advice here and the most upvoted comment was "If you can't ask for a girl's number you ain't got game". I deleted my original lemmy account within a few minutes then. The Fediverse was filled with Linux nerds who were at the extreme ends of privacy-anonymity spectrum back then. And nothing seems to have changed much after reading all these comments. My original Fediverse account lasted approx. 1 month 2 weeks. Let's see how much time this run lasts. I already have a lot of complaints regarding the Fediverse. The cons outweigh the pros. I'm not having fun here. It's only a matter of time till I pull the trigger.
You're on the 'privacy' community of an open source and federated alternative social media system designed to avoid corporate control and surveillance capitalism - and you're like "wtf everyone here is very privacy focussed and Linux nerds".
Do you complain about sand at the beach?