294
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
294 points (98.7% liked)
Privacy
50072 readers
758 users here now
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.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
more evidence that we really should be finding more effective ways to fight back. nazis like karp and thiel are already openly saying they want to enforce control and fascism globally. this is only going to get worse.
what would get people en masse into open alternatives? massive smear campaigns? massive ddos campaigns? is their own enshitification and endless profit seeking the key to bring people over?
we need our heads together, this is gonna be another front in the class war and we cannot let them build 1984 unchallenged in front of our eyes.
Simple tutorials.
I know that a decent chunk of the privacy/Linux folk have that same "I had to suffer and you should too" boomer mindset, and that's like 80% of the reason I haven't stopped using Google and Microsoft.
I'm not a software dev, but I do have a job and a life and shit. There is only so much time I can spend trying to figure that shit out before I decide it's not worth it.
I've been using Linux for 20 years. I need a lot of help and I've never had any people be dicks about it or seen anyone else do it to others.
You know that XKCD comic about the assumpitions of experts? Thats what you sound like.
You may not be an expert in your eyes but compared to that commenter, you are, and when you speak to actual experts to find help you are already able to use the language that opens the door to that help. While to others its akin to searching for something when you don't have the key words or phrase that will lead to the appropriate results and you just get nothing.
This person wants things like an info-graphic to help them get to where youbare or somewhere close.
the internet is full of them already though. lemmy frontpage is sometimes full of them.
You're not wrong.
But I'd like to point out that I said "I'm struggling to find a decent tutorial that works for me" and your response was "skill issue lol".
Do you actually want people to switch to linux and graphene, or do you wanna laugh at incompetent normies?
you are taking offense for something i didn't say.
what i mean is in a world with tech controlled by oligarchs who actively make it as hard as possible to get rid of them, you will have to somewhat know what you are doing. i see no way around this, but hope one exists.
furthermore, i can't guess the unique way a given individual uses computers or their needs, and few people will ever tell me when they hit a snag. you are even one step further than most people who choose not to care.
as for me, keeping tech "private" is a chore and i do know it's even worse for newbies but we also have a life and a demanding job.
Once again, I agree. Perhaps my previous phrasing was a bit harsh, I'm not taking offense. In my judo practice, there's this idea of "stupid uke", an opponent who intentionally acts like dead weight. Living training dummy for learning new moves or perfecting your form.
I am, to some extent, playing stupid uke right now.
Accessibility to normies is a common problem I see in smaller projects, even minor stuff like videogames. I'm thinking of a specific example right now, where the (small) dev team is clearly very talented...and very much falling into the expertise trap. Basically need to learn an entire programming language to play the game, which is not marketed as that kind of game.
I recognize that I'm ahead of the curve in this sense, and I will figure it out one day, probably very soon. I just want to point out that accessibility will be a major factor, and that this is something that privacy-focused software will have to reckon with sooner rather than later.
here's a good real world scenario you might already know:
phones with the oem operating system spy on you, and the ultimate way to get rid of it is changing the os. how do we make it accessible if the manufacturers are making the process intentionally obtuse and difficult, and more than that, different for every device out there? how do we make sure every model (and counting) is supported when they make every phone a little different requiring many specialized volunteer work hours on each?
you just hit my main point here. if people in general understood why this is a problem as much as you do, they would care enough to look for the stuff we already managed to put out there and act on it, just like you are.
it's not that simple though is it? people seem to think there are more pros than cons for buying into their shtick and that privacy is meaningless. they are the ones to ultimately hand over their data to apps they know are spying on them because they do so openly at this point.
this can be changed, because it was changed into this in the first place by the powers that be, question is how.
Honestly tutorials and documentation are a major positive for Linux over Windows in my experience. The handful of "just works" Linux distros are a great entry point because 1) they do often just work for basic needs, and 2) they often have forums with new users asking newb questions that you might also have, i.e. they are likely speaking a language you might understand (unlike relative gibberish you might read on Arch forums). When I have Windows issues, I've most often landed on a Microsoft forum with some bot asking if I've turned it off and on again, and never reaching a resolution.
I do agree that toxic Linux users/commentors are a problem for the community, and I don't subscribe to the notion that the new generation has to experience 'pain' that I did. But there's also no getting around the discomfort of having to learn something new, even when it works 100% as intended. You will have to put time and effort into it, and you will have frustrations. Personally, I've crested the hill where I have less frustrations on Linux than Windows, and I'm glad I put that time in because I've got a lot of years left in me to enjoy the lower stress and greater freedom.
Thank you yes please. I just want to know how to use Wine or whatever so I can use some of my Windows programs on my Linux machine. Especially my games from Steam and GOG. But also want to continue to rip my bluray and dvds. Also be able to get my Audiobook from Audible to MP3. I have Windows program that does that but no Linux one.
Enshitification has done enough to get me off Reddit, I personally think very simple entry level tutorials on how to best personally disconnect from the surveillance apparatus, myself I am not computer savvy at all whatsoever so I have a long road ahead of me, too. I’m young but still old school, I like printing zines and putting them out into the world physically, maybe something easily printable telling people
What the problem is
How to solve it themselves
How to help others become aware subsequently help them.
Of course, online messaging will work too, just needs to be very very wide spread.
i agree with awareness helping and i agree with the value of letting enshitification frustrate people out of big tech, but the state of technology right now is such that sometimes these solutions are impractical to make so easy for non-tech inclined people to effortlessly do.
Straight up making these programs easier for tech illiterate people like me is probably the only solution. I am already very interested in this stuff but the learning curve is so huge I never bothered. When I was like 13 I got all into computer science then immediately was shoved out by my lack of intelligence in the subject and how confusing it is. I shouldn’t have to be tech inclined to play video games on a computer. Actually that is one of the reasons I stopped playing games for 10+ years and eventually just bought a console that’s 200% easier than any computer
the big thing stopping that is the deliberate effort the companies put into making the process as painful as possible.
we do try to make it as easy as we can despite how a vocal minority of toxic users act, but i don't really see a way around their roadblocks. they make all of the hardware after all and they dictate how some of this stuff works.