There is this common narrative I see all the time, implying that we as individuals are empowered to choose and manifest our own destiny, and this comes up often in privacy discussions.
Don’t like Facebook’s privacy nightmares? Just don’t use Facebook!
Don’t like personalized ads? I remember a popular post on reddit saying “if your ad interrupts my YouTube video, I will hate your product”.
Don’t like Google chrome hegemony? Just use Firefox!
And while I agree that we should strive to do that, the battle doesn’t end here. Facebook has shadow accounts for people who never signed up. Google chrome keeps it’s hegemony despite people on the Internet advocating Firefox day and night. And ads continue to be extremely profitable despite you “hating the product” because it interrupted your YouTube video.
Even worse: even if you “hate the product”, you now already know it. You now know they product exists, and possibly whatever they wanted you to know about it. The reality is that these companies own your eyes. They control what shows up on your screen. And even if you hate it, they control what you end up learning.
the reality is that our individual resistance is very far from enough
I am not saying it is completely futile. It is a step in the right direction. But the only effective solution is organized action. We, alone, cannot achieve much. Unless we organize our resistance against privacy violations, we will continue to live through this privacy nightmare.
What about reading an article that has a Facebook share button or independent trackers? Using your credit/debit cards, buying anything online. There’s a million ways to track people’s habits
If you have an adblocker, you can block the Facebook embedded spyware and other trackers. You can use Monero, a privacy-focused crypto currency to anonymously buy a prepaid credit card, and then use that to make your payment.
Can I? Most places don’t accept it, or any cryptocurrency for that matter. It’s just not a viable alternative currently.
The more people use it, the more businesses will accept it. There’s a list of businesses that accept Monero: https://monerica.com/. Maybe Monero is not a viable alternative today, but the situation might change, once we live in a cashless society. Until then, use cash or Monero. You can also anonymously get prepaid credit cards and gift cards at Cake Pay or Coinsbee.