When I was 16, I went down this rabbit hole of privacy focused content. I was already into the Linux content space, so clearly it was adjacent. i realized just the extent of how much data these big tech corporations take from you, when you use their services. At the time, i used mostly Google services. Search for searches, Chrome for browsing, Keep for notes, Authenticator for MFA, the list just goes on. I, being newly inducted into the Guild of the Tux, figured it was only right to fight against this. I started my crusade. Replaced most Big Tech apps with open-source alternatives. Moved my email to Proton Mail. Replaced Windows with Linux. Moved to Firefox, then Librewolf. All the privacy conscious things you could think of. Sure, it wasn’t that convenient, but at least my data was being private, and i was supporting the open-source movement, right?
That was 4 years ago. Today, I still use Proton, Firefox, Zed, Duckduckgo, and most of the open source apps that I was using. But I’m 20 with a job now. I use Teams, Office 365, Cursor. I use Instagram which advertises Nike shoes to me even if i simply think about them. These days I don’t really lean into the whole “privacy” aspect of apps, unless its too egregious. Between then and now, something changed.
“i don’t care anymore”
“You got a job now bruh, that’s whats changed”, you may retort. I mean, yes, that’s a part of it, but that’s not all of it. I learnt a few months ago that there’s a term for what i was feeling. privacy fatigue, it’s called. A fatigue, from chasing privacy. “Huh, strange.” you may wonder. But think about it for a second.
All tech companies have a common selling point, which is that they make everything “convenient” for the end users. Why carry around your files, just store them on Dropbox, and access them everywhere. A mail server? Never heard of her, just create an account on Gmail. Don’t remember your passwords, just use 1Password and store them on the cloud. Buying and renting movies? You could just stream every movie you want over the internet with Netflix. you don’t even need to create an account on most websites and apps anymore, just sign in with google, that’ll do it. You don’t even need to THINK anymore, AI will do it for you.
It’s this “convenience”, that keeps you locked into their product. Now you have a lot of files that you need access to, so you need to pay a monthly subscription to Dropbox to keep them. Your mail folder size is bigger than 15 gigabytes? Gotta pay for more storage now buddy. “Oh we no longer have this movie, since we lost the license to it, so now you need to subscribe to Amazon Prime/Hulu/Disney+/Paramount/Peacock/whatever niche streaming platform has it”. Need more think time? Pay for a Claude Pro subscription. Oops, we’re no longer free, you gotta pay us. and if not, well, you’re always free to leave. Oh, you’re using our product? Well don’t mind us, we’re just sharing your usage data to the highest bidder so that they can show you “personalized advertisements”. As someone once said, “if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product being sold”.
i hate this
So, what is the solution? Well, you reject this convenience, of course. You move to platforms that respect you as a customer. You switch to Linux. You move to Proton Mail. You move your storage to Proton Drive. You move to Bitwarden to store your passwords. Move off of Twitter and Instagram and go to federated platforms like Mastodon. Move to Peertube instead of Youtube. You turn to, ahem, the high seas to watch and stream content. You run open weight AI models on your local hardware. Sure, you lose the nice-to-haves. Now you need to create usernames and passwords for every site you log into (that’s soooo 2014). You can’t access a lot of content on mainstream platforms. Plus, the open weight models need beefy hardware to run. But hey, at least you can feel good by the fact that you’re living privately.
But oops, you realise your internet traffic is being monitored, and regular-ass websites can be blocked from you depending on where you live (don’t forget the websites on the high seas). So now you replace your ISP-provided DNS with 1.1.1.1 or Adguard, you use NordVPN to mask your location, you use Tor to browse anonymously. You run a Pi-Hole on your router to block telemetry. You’re safe (or that’s what you think).
And then you realize that a lot of what you do is still tied to cloud platforms, and can be taken away from you at any point. So you go on a rampage. You turn local. You buy old parts and drives to build a home server running Proxmox. You run your own Nextcloud instance with self-hosted alternatives to your apps. You run a NAS that hosts all your files. You run a Jellyfin server to host your (definitely legally obtained) entertainment media. You host a local instance of Vaultwarden to manage your passwords. You run a reverse proxy to access your local server over the internet. Finally, you’re private.
But wait, you use Android. Not just any Android, a Pixel, running a Google-skinned version of Android. You go crazy. You wipe your device, you install GrapheneOS. You run privacy focused apps. You keep all data local to the device/synced to your home server. You refuse to use mainstream Big Tech social media because you know how bad it gets. You don’t even touch the public internet without 2 layers of content blockers and filters. You realize online transactions can be tracked, so you pay exclusively in cash and crypto (when you really want to pay online). Your friends probably think you’re a weirdo now (if they didn’t already), but how could they understand? They’re normies, you’re enlightened, and you know the truth of the world now.
And then. And then, you discover Intel Management Engine. or, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls it, a backdoor into your computer, that runs even when your motherboard is powered off. oh boy. you sell off your personal devices. You buy a used Thinkpad and install coreboot (an open source firmware) and modify it to disable the Intel Management Engine. You replace your smartphone with one running Ubuntu Touch. You sell your Corolla with a pre-2010s pickup truck with zero connection to the internet. At this point, you probably don’t even exist in normal mainstream society anymore.
And then one day, you crack. You realize, that no matter what you do, no matter how deep you fall down this rabbit hole, the truth is that surveillance architecture is built into every piece of the modern tech landscape. You lose your damn mind. You pack a bag with all your belongings. You carry a doomsday computer - a device inside a Faraday cage, filled with every Wikipedia article, every source of knowledge, downloaded. You take your truck, pack your belongings, and head into the mountains. You travel to the woods. You build a house for yourselves. You fish in the lake, teaching yourself everything using your resources. You are completely cut off from mainstream society, a hermit in the truest sense of the word. But at least, at least you cannot be tracked. You are, free. At last.
And then you get caught on a trail cam wandering the forest, and get posted on Instagram Reels for millions of people to laugh at.
what do i do?
I’m not the person to tell you what to do. As long as you live in this world, you WILL be surveilled. Does all this sound like the ramblings of a schizophrenic person? Yeah, somewhat. but that’s exactly what I’m trying to explain. At some point, you feel that it doesn’t matter. That its okay. That you don’t need to go down this path. “Eh, so what? They know enough about me anyways.” EXACTLY. THEY SHOULDN’T. You are not meant to be “fatigued” by what should be a basic human right, the right to be private. “Oh, i don’t have anything to hide”. Who decides that? The government decides what is and isn’t inflammatory. This definition is liable to change as governments change. It’s a shame that we need to jump through so many hoops, so many inconveniences, and risk being soft-ostracized from the mainstream community, all to preserve some shred of privacy.
I currently still use Proton Mail, Duckduckgo, and most other alternatives. I think of myself to be pretty well into the privacy aspect of things, until May of this year when my phone broke. It got water damaged, and wouldn’t turn on. I bought a new phone, and signed into it with my Google account, thinking that I’d have lost most of my passkeys and MFA keys and all. I set up my phone and ended up on the home screen. My old wallpaper, my installed apps. Everything was there. I opened my MFA app. All my keys, still there. Signed into my Bitwarden. My passwords, saved. The only things I lost were a bunch of photos and videos (since i stopped photo sync with my home server in March). The only things I lost were those I was managing myself. The open-source apps i downloaded from F-Droid. Those didn’t make the move, since they don’t get “backed up” like Play Store apps do. I had to manually remember and download the apps I had gotten from F-Droid. I tried to move as far as I could from Google, but in the end it saved my ass. I still wonder how it would’ve been if I had turned off the device sync option in my Google account settings. That’s why I emphasize, the “convenience” aspect of it all. And this is one of the reasons I cannot go the “privacy” route as much as I would like.
I can’t move to Signal, every person i talk to is on WhatsApp. I can’t move to Mastodon, everyone and their grandmother is on Twitter and Instagram. YouTube is the only meaningful video sharing platform in the world, I cannot move away. It’s a spectrum, where one end gives you the most access and the least privacy, and the other gives you the most privacy but leaves you cut off from society. As the true centrist that I am, i don’t know what to tell you, but to find a spot on that spectrum that gives you the best of both worlds. Its unfortunate that such architecture is built into the very core of the services you use.
All so that you can be recommended Nike shoes when you think of them.