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Ask HN: Privacy vs. benefits of social media etc.
Where do you draw the line between wanting privacy/anonymity and wanting to reap the benefits of social media, dating sites etc?
- brudgers 9y ago{caveat: I don't use dating sites} Mostly, I try to minimize advertizer tracking. Social media get bespoke identities using Chromium (not Chrome). General browsing uses Firefox that wipes history and cookies on restart and "shopping" type browsing uses a 'private' window from that. It doesn't eliminate cross site tracking but it seems to bring it down to a less obnoxious level. All with the caveat that I assume that nothing that happens on the internet (or tor) is private or anonymous against a modestly funded mildly determined actor. The benefit of social media is that it makes the maintenance of loose social connections easier. No holiday cards, no email, no maintaining a written address book. When I wonder what someone I know is doing, I can just look. That includes across political divides and strained family relationships...i.e. connections with complicated meat space dynamics. Good luck.
- PaulHoule 9y agoPrivacy is not the only tradeoff. Facebook seems to be about as good for your mental health as smoking cigarettes is for your lungs.