CircuitSeuss

Depends on the company.

If small enough, group chats will work just fine with less struggle and overhead.

If larger, possibly.

NextCloud may do much of what you need.

I know this isn't the answer you want, but I sell people on Signal based on the user features. I’ve had great success in getting my friends and family to adopt it.

Signal is incredible user friendly, privacy respecting, the gold standard for encryption, cross platform, etc. Yes, it’s centralized, yes it’s imperfect in many ways, but it’s easy and it’s pretty damn good.

If you want to help the people around you to become more involved in understanding and owning their tech, it has to be an easy and good experience. It has to be tangibly better, not just abstractly better with tangible downsides.

I use XMPP, but would never try to convince my friends and family to use it; it’s too complicated, the user facing apps all suck (Snikket and Cheogram are the best of the bad lot), and the incentives to use it aren't there. As you said, it’s just not attractive to a regular user, since it’s all around a worse experience than what they currently use. The one exception is that I do occasionally recommend XMPP for SIP access via jmp.chat to some of my more technical friends who have a tolerance for clunky user experiences in favor of privacy and affordability. I am holding onto an unreasonable hope that Signal or Whatsapp or others will consider XMPP+OMEO in the future to popularize the standard, but that is extremely unlikely.

Matrix also is an unfortunately terrible alternative to discord (even Element is a rather lacking user experience), so while I have pushed to move groups there before, I no longer recommend Matrix. I suggest signal or nextcloud as alternatives when possible; the remaining large groups who need the closed server forum style system are usually unlikely to move to Matrix anyway.

Use any screen or projector connected to a linux box or AppleTV for streaming. Personally I use an old laptop running Kodi.

What sort of screen? Well, whatever you can tolerate. I use a very old commercial display I got through an e-waste reseller. It’s not great, but it was cheap ans has worked fine for years. If you insist on a “TV” screen or any monitor/projector with connectivity, pick one you can root. As other users have pointed out, simply “don’t connect to the Internet” unfortunately isn’t enough to guarantee your data stays private.

> Proton is a privacy company, though, and what its users pay for is the confidence that the people building it are careful. Shipping slowly and carefully is part of what they’re selling.

Totally agree. I pay for Proton because I choose to trust their business practices more than Google. If Proton continues to move in this direction and hemorrhage trust, they will lose not just my business, but a significant portion of their client base [0]

See also ongoing annoyance amongst privacy community over decisions to prioritize feature bloat over bug fixes [1,2], add to that bad political takes by leadership[3], and some data retention choices which resulted in Proton indirectly supplying user information to US intelligence [4]. Not a good look.

[0] https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas...

[1] https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/how-should-we-handle-pro...

[2] https://youtu.be/831ndXv65CM

[3] https://mastodon.neat.computer/@jonah/113833858219604994

[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20260305204857/https://www.404me...

https://www.tuta.com/ Is the only other major player I am aware of— although they have a significantly smaller product lineup than Proton, and aren’t as viable an alternative to Google for those who want a fully integrated suite. Tuta does Mail and Calendar fairly well, cant speak to their drive product.

The other option is self hosting.

Parent’s point is that economic inequality is so bad that the costs are meaningless to the ultra wealthy.

This assumes that it is possible to actually write truly secure code.

Even of that were possible in the abstract, it would also have to be secure when running on hardware. I personally don’t believe that perfect security can exist or that we will reach that ideal of somehow being ahead of the curve. Patches will get better and faster, so will exploits. The stakes will grow. There will always be a human or budget issue.

The only way I see to mitigate the impact is to reduce our reliance on connected systems.

I just love getting a full body lidar scan by a random corporation while I’m walking down the sidewalk in my neighborhood!

I can’t possibly imagine any bad stuff happening as a result of petabytes of frequent high resolution data being constantly captured in our communities!

Definitely no privacy concerns there, we love IoT connected sensors on all our vehicles! It’s not like anyone has ever used these incidental surveillance systems to target critical infrastructure or assassinate targets before, that would be crazy making. Anyway, I’m glad that Waymo constantly surveils it’s occupants too and snitches to the cops, that’s super chill.

When your project is literally writing a BIOS/ UEFI alternative that exists for the purpose of making base runtime systems open and verifiable and to improve the user’s ability to trust in their system, an opposition to unverified machine generated code seems not only justifiable but sensible. If Leah were not taking steps to mitigate generated code in the project, the project would no longer meet my needs as a Libreboot user.

One requires owning the device you are using (which apple/google has default visibility into, and which becomes a data aggregator) the other does not.

> According to the legal filing, that afternoon, J.C. [an ICE agent] called [the spouse of an individual who had lawfully recorded an ICE detainment] on her cell phone, identifying himself only as "the Department of Homeland Security." According to [the call recipient], he told her she "should encourage" her spouse, [the observer], "not to do anything like that in the future because people who are doing things like that might get added to a domestic terrorism watchlist." J.C. testified in a deposition that he warned [the observer’s spouse] she would be arrested if she “continue[d] to do this.”

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone following US news, but we should be angry about it. Textbook intimidation.

> Government attorneys asserted in a court filing that [agent J.C.] denied referencing a “domestic terrorism watchlist.”

And then they lied about it!

This could also be achieved so many other ways for a fraction of the price

There is at least one attempt [0] of input manipulation I am aware of, but it was several years ago, unproven, and I have to assume that input data manipulation vulnerabilities are unlikely to be present. If a new destructive attack could be found by visual data input, mass simultaneous deployment would be the most effective use of it, the logistical issues of which are a substantial barrier to efficacy.

Changing stickers or vehicle color would have little effect since they would all be read normally: you change your clothes daily but that does not have any impact on the database itself or the cameras. Swapping or covering plates is illegal, and even things like ghost plates [1] are just misdirection and would do nothing to combat the surveillance system itself.

Wrapping tour vehicle in a custom tailored adversarial pattern [2] may work, but this is mostly unproven technology in the field, and it would only work until the failures it caused became part of the training set, at which point you would need to re-wrap tour vehicle. It would also be a lot of effort and expense to do something that wouldn't make any impact on the surveillance systems themselves (by definition the best case scenario here is that object detection does not work on the wrapped vehicle, but it could still be recorded and you would not be doing anything to combat the surveillance itself).

Ultimately, our best bet is to start with the end goal: stop the data from being collected in the first place, don’t just try to hide from it. Social and political campaigning is probably the most effective path currently. Map your neighborhood on deflock.me, put flyers on your local streets, talk to your neighbors, attend city council meetings, and call your reps incessantly. Change the incentives… If you are independently wealthy, offer your county or PD a donation (via their PAC or a grant) in exchange for signing an agreement for X years to not use these technologies. If you work in governance, tie funding to privacy agreements. Make individual donations to groups like the Ludlow Institute or EFF, or ask them about grant funding for your projects. If we are able to pass better privacy laws, it’s possible that a private right of action would make it prohibitively costly for private companies to create programs like this which mass infringe on personal rights.

Some individuals have taken to the more expedient solution of direct action, physically disabling cameras with spray foam, tin snips, etc for a more expedient solution (vandalism is obviously illegal, don’t do crimes, that would be bad and naughty).

[0] https://www.ioactive.com/sql-injection-in-the-wild/ [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq9860162dj2o [2] https://sandbox.norecognition.org/

I think it might be symptomatic of broader tech illiteracy: People don't know anything else or anything better. They want their software to Just Work, and ultimately the decision is made by an executive who decides that microsoft products are “the most stable” or “easiest” route.

What a terrible fucked up system.

Chaotic neutral behavior.

I think parent is within bounds to complain here. This is a pretty horrendous font that is an accessibility issue not just a “tangential annoyance”— this is also a uniquely nauseating multi color font with flicker effects that is both interesting in its own right and hardly common.

If you’re in the area, check out the Connections Museum too! https://www.telcomhistory.org/ConnectionsSeattle.html

Not all problems are best served with technical solutions. This is a political problem.

Eerie how easy it is to leverage these always on network connected sensors we keep putting everywhere to get precise data profiles

I have a pipe dream that Apple will pull a 180 and offer support for GrapheneOS.

Age verification continuing to chart hitherto unheard levels of absurdity.

> “Internal posts also reportedly pointed to AI agents making “large-scale, disruptive actions that humans are unlikely to execute” and leading to a 40 percent increase in major technical and security incidents compared to the prior year. Employee time spent resolving those problems increased by as much as 70 percent. Meta declined to comment on these internal posts.”

FTC study, Jan 2025 https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/p246202_surveil...

Frequently sited investigative video journalism on grocery delivery prices (and more): https://youtu.be/osxr7xSxsGo

Airlines: https://fortune.com/2025/07/16/delta-moves-toward-eliminatin...

Insurance: https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/technology/gm-l...

Frankly, it’s everywhere— if a company is large enough, they will leverage consumer data to increase profits as much as the consumer will bear. There are many other examples, but I’ll just link you this as a jumping off point if you want to go further: https://epic.org/krogers-surveillance-pricing-harms-consumer...

Ongoing US house oversight committee investigation http://pallone.house.gov/media/press-releases/pallone-launch... https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Lette...

See also: https://lpeproject.org/blog/surveillance-pricing-exploiting-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_pricing

If you have time and are interested I highly recommend reading Privacy Is Power by Carissa Véliz https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442343/privacy-is-power-by-c... https://annas-archive.gd/md5/11585979e43939b8175e1cba336bc9f...

If you don't have time, you can find brief but less compelling argument here: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/why-privacy-matters/

Yes, but typically only on the retailer/ Point of Sales side. Your bank is not selling that information. Of course, things get weird when you have additional intermediaries like Apple or Google pay. In principle at least, there should be some measurable difference vs credit.

Would be very curious to see studies on this if anyone finds one!

This ignores the aspect of consumer data. Credit issuers generate profit through issuing rewards programs in part due to the sale of their customer’s behavioral spending data. Cash and debit users largely retain their data privacy here.

It’s hard to put a real world number on what the cost to the consumer is for losing this data ownership, but it is not zero: these data are increasingly used for targeted pricing practices which extort additional margins from the consumer at a later date.

The scale of wealth imbalance, the scale of money in politics, the scale of grocer prices, the scale of data collection and abuse of targeted price manipulation, the scale of climate catastrophe, the scale of electric bills, humming noises, draught conditions. It’s about realizing the scales are uneven, and seeing a tangible incarnation of that being built. All those problems are starting to seem awfully close to home. You can’t reach the trillionaire, but maybe you can keep it out of your back yard, so you protest the data center.

Things are getting literal… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49442998