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I think there's an accessible middle ground for most people. My first suggestion would be to get every account in a password manager like 1Password. In additio

I think there's an accessible middle ground for most people. My first suggestion would be to get every account in a password manager like 1Password. In addition to the obvious security benefits, this creates a record of where all your accounts are. For the average person it'll take time for them to remember everything (and they'll realize ones they forgot) - having a place for it all to get documented is the first step. Once you have that, the next step is to go through every account and close the ones you don't need. After that, go into the ones you do need and modify the settings to disable as much of the tracking as possible. I'd also suggest people sign up for deleteme: https://joindeleteme.com/ https://joindeleteme.com/ since these public data collectors can't be stopped without continued effort and I don't think there will be laws to stop them anytime soon. For more technical users, I'd suggest they get their own domain and use fastmail with aliased emails for each account - but realistically regular people will not do that. There are also advantages to having a public presence online (both professional and personal) - the issue isn't so much that you need to be 100% dark, it's that your public presence should be under your own control. One of the reasons I'm excited about Urbit is because it has the potential to give this control back in a way that could actually work. I think culturally we also need to be more understanding of people making mistakes as the grow up and saying stupid things as they learn, but that's somewhat of an orthogonal issue so I'll leave it there.

ccooffee 5y ago
DeleteMe's privacy policy and terms of service (both at https://joindeleteme.com/legal/ https://joindeleteme.com/legal/ ) don't seem very reasonable for a company that claims to be in the service of privacy. The website asks for all sorts of personal information at signup and stores it all for use later, with no real promises that they won't do something malicious. (Although the privacy policy currently says they won't sell your data right back to Google, they also retain the right to change the policy at any time for any reason...)
- gonehome 5y ago
  Yeah - it's a tradeoff. They need that information to actually carry out the service you're requesting of them (namely going around to all these shitty data brokers and going through their intentionally arduous processes to request removal). In order to do that they need to know the info to query against and remove. I can understand why someone wouldn't want to do that, but of the available options for this kind of thing I thought it was the best one.
nonrandomstring 5y ago
> I think there's an accessible middle ground for most people. It doesn't even need to be a middle ground. Even the least effort is enough. Think about smoking, drinking and other risky behaviour. I make a similar plea and argument in Digital Vegan [1] as is made in the blog post. Like plenty of other thinkers now (Newport, Doctorow, Kingsnorth, Vaidhyanathan, Kardaras, Tufekci, Rushkoff, Lanier, Véliz and Oddell) I framed surveillance capitalism, social media and smartphone addiction as a public health issue. This is now the dominant emerging frame. People who use drugs and alcohol use the same sunk-cost fallacy: "Hey, I've been doing this for years now, what's the point in quitting?" The point is that ANY reduction offers an immediate health benefit. You don't have to become an Olympic athlete to eat a little healthier and exercise a tiny bit more. By the same token, any improvement to your digital lifestyle is worth making - whether that's refusing to give personal data, not participating in the "cashless" society, buying quality, durable digital goods that reduce e-waste, getting a dumb phone or quitting social media... they all count. That's why I think the diet metaphor is very powerful. [1] https://digitalvegan.net https://digitalvegan.net
- deadbeeves 5y ago
  >any improvement to your digital lifestyle is worth making Are they, though? What tangible benefit does one actually get from refusing to give out personal data one doesn't care about?
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    > any improvement to your digital lifestyle is worth making >> Are they, though? Yes >> What tangible benefit does one actually get from refusing to give out personal data one doesn't care about? Being loved and respected, and more successful in life. People who care about themselves are generally better liked and so gain social advantages. Self-care does not mean being selfish. If you treat yourself like someone you are responsible for, others see that you are the kind of person who can care for them too. You should care about every part of your person, including your data, as if it were your literal personal hygiene.

ccooffee 5y ago

DeleteMe's privacy policy and terms of service (both at https://joindeleteme.com/legal/ https://joindeleteme.com/legal/ ) don't seem very reasonable for a company that claims to be in the service of privacy. The website asks for all sorts of personal information at signup and stores it all for use later, with no real promises that they won't do something malicious. (Although the privacy policy currently says they won't sell your data right back to Google, they also retain the right to change the policy at any time for any reason...)

gonehome 5y ago
Yeah - it's a tradeoff. They need that information to actually carry out the service you're requesting of them (namely going around to all these shitty data brokers and going through their intentionally arduous processes to request removal). In order to do that they need to know the info to query against and remove. I can understand why someone wouldn't want to do that, but of the available options for this kind of thing I thought it was the best one.

nonrandomstring 5y ago

> I think there's an accessible middle ground for most people. It doesn't even need to be a middle ground. Even the least effort is enough. Think about smoking, drinking and other risky behaviour. I make a similar plea and argument in Digital Vegan [1] as is made in the blog post. Like plenty of other thinkers now (Newport, Doctorow, Kingsnorth, Vaidhyanathan, Kardaras, Tufekci, Rushkoff, Lanier, Véliz and Oddell) I framed surveillance capitalism, social media and smartphone addiction as a public health issue. This is now the dominant emerging frame. People who use drugs and alcohol use the same sunk-cost fallacy: "Hey, I've been doing this for years now, what's the point in quitting?" The point is that ANY reduction offers an immediate health benefit. You don't have to become an Olympic athlete to eat a little healthier and exercise a tiny bit more. By the same token, any improvement to your digital lifestyle is worth making - whether that's refusing to give personal data, not participating in the "cashless" society, buying quality, durable digital goods that reduce e-waste, getting a dumb phone or quitting social media... they all count. That's why I think the diet metaphor is very powerful. [1] https://digitalvegan.net https://digitalvegan.net

deadbeeves 5y ago
>any improvement to your digital lifestyle is worth making Are they, though? What tangible benefit does one actually get from refusing to give out personal data one doesn't care about?
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  > any improvement to your digital lifestyle is worth making >> Are they, though? Yes >> What tangible benefit does one actually get from refusing to give out personal data one doesn't care about? Being loved and respected, and more successful in life. People who care about themselves are generally better liked and so gain social advantages. Self-care does not mean being selfish. If you treat yourself like someone you are responsible for, others see that you are the kind of person who can care for them too. You should care about every part of your person, including your data, as if it were your literal personal hygiene.