In some of the music communities I’m in the content creators are already telling their userbase to go follow them on threads. They’re all talking about some kind of beef between Elon and Mark and the possibility of a boxing match… Mark was right to call the people he’s leaching off of fucking idiots.
I care. I’m just increasingly convinced it’s too fucking late.
People have a lot going on in their lives.
First of all most people, not just the average person, simply do not grasp what privacy is exactly - especially in the US, where the view on privacy is skewed by its obsolete constitution.
I mean, just the fact that anyone would think if you personally don’t mind sharing personal affairs or being public, then privacy isn’t much of a concern proves the lack of understanding of that principle. It’s like saying, I’m not religious so neither the lack of freedom of religion or the separation of church and state would have any impact on me.
The most important function of the human right to privacy is not the thwarting of interference with one’s property or dignity, it’s the maintenance of the control and power an individual has over their own self - and by extension that of a people.
A simple example: If I give you my phone number, I give away some control over myself because you now have to power to use that property however it fits you. That may mean to just keep in touch with me, to save the number in your contact list that is accessible to ChatGPT, Tiktok or some malware on your phone, or share it with someone who wants to dig up some dirt on me.
The key point is not whether any of the possibilities affect or matter to you but whether you would have any say in how that information is obtained, handled, kept, etc. The effect of the resulting consequences may appear only gradually and sometimes take years but those in control ultimately shape politics, the economy, culture, society. This is also one of the reasons why the US is run by so many monopolies and oligopolies in their respective market segments.
.de and undertones of capitalism critique? hello mein freund
That wasn’t the intention, however. I was referring to matters of power as seen from the perspective of human rights - without any heed to the structure of any nation’s economy.
I stopped using Facebook 10 years ago, but I’m loathed to actually delete my account because every once in a while, a long lost friend or relative contacts me there. It would be a shame to lose touch with people. Ultimately I care about that more than privacy. It’s the same with Whatsapp. I’ve made a concerted effort to convince my immediate family to try XMPP, Delta Chat and Signal, but they just won’t install another app unless everyone they know is using it. I find it a bit frustrating, but that’s reality. So I have to keep using Whatsapp.
We can always keep a never in 10 years updated profile active for family and stuff. The biggest danger is for active users after all: they’re the most vulnerable to targeted media manipulation.
By being present in their lives (while giving up as few data as possible to big corporations) they can have by their side someone with good advices on privacy, manufactured consent, rights violations and adjacent topics. Alienating ourselves from them isn’t really beneficial in the long run.
I use WhatsApp as well for the people I keep in touch with, and have an active Instagram account where I use only the chat feature. It’s enough to keep up with the people in my life.
For whoever is even more privacy concerned, it’s possible to run those apps in sandboxed mode through some apps.
I use WhatsApp as well for the people I keep in touch with
And everyone in your address book not using WhatsApp should come by once in a while and slap you for selling their numbers for your convenience… You are right… keeping a basically inactive Facebook profile is harmless in comparison.
I live in Germany and everyone here uses WhatsApp. If you decide to uninstall it, you’re cut off from 95% of your friends, family and your coworkers.
It’s not an option to not use it, sadly. From what I understand, it’s like iMessage in the USA. Extreme monopoly and very hard to break out of it.
I live in Germany
Same here… and most of my contact list (and I) dropped WhatsApp when Meta bought them or a year later when the eavesdropping and phoning home to Meta was publically discussed in the media. The remaining minority is able to use another alternative on top of WhatsApp (that’s one of the reason I like to remond them that they provide Meta with data from the people opting out…). That was also nearly a decade ago (2014/2015), so pretending that you need to use WhatsApp in 2023 is indeed a choice.
pretending that you need to use WhatsApp in 2023 is indeed a choice
It’s not as easy as you make it sound. Between 2015 and 2022, Whatsapp’s marketshare has increased a lot in Germany. So it might’ve been comparatively easy to drop it 8 years ago. It’s not anymore.
Maybe I’d be able to convince a lot of my friends to install another app just for me. But it would be hard to do and involve a lot of arguing on my end. I’m not a missionary and I choose to spend my lifetime for other, more important things.
Or maybe you would realize that a lot of people think the same but are also convinced to be alone and unable to change anything… Just like it happened for me back then the moment the first few made the effort to change. We will never know.
