Notices by ar.al🌻 (aral@mastodon.ar.al), page 12

I'm not sure if I've ever done this in my life...

1. 🌐 Download a web browser
2. 🔍 Check every setting
3. ✔️ Change nothing, except...

--

First, guess which browser?

--

I only changed *one* thing by enabling the Better filter with this terminal command:

gsettings set org.gnome.Epiphany adblock-filters "['https://better.fyi/blockerList.txt']"

I love what this browser ships with out of the box

Thanks to @aral for Better and thanks to the @gnome team for Epiphany

@spoon thank you for the link. You raised another important issue. Those "Advisors on Privacy and Civil Liberties" are mostly from American universities. Academia showed its true colors after Aaron Swartz was arrested near the Harvard campus by MIT police. Those clowns said nothing to help Aaron during the next 2 years (!) of prosecution, not a single word. Academia represents corporate interest not public. Everyone should watch The Internet's Own Boy documentary.

@aral
#privacy #freedom

@neoncipher @aral

Privacy conferences certainly don't mind having the likes of Google, Facebook, Palantir, and Acxiom among their sponsors (https://fpf.org/about/supporters/). Prominent privacy researchers don't mind serving on the board of Palantir, either (https://www.palantir.com/2012/11/announcing-the-palantir-council-on-privacy-and-civil-liberties/)

@wolftune @Shamar @cwebber … New America fired Barry Lynn when his Open Markets criticised (New America sponsor) Google on antitrust grounds. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/anne-marie-slaughter-new-america-google.html

More personally, Linda and I resigned from the Code Club board when we were told not to criticise (sponsor) Google: https://pando.com/2014/08/27/code-club-cofounder-resigns-after-being-ordered-not-to-criticize-google/

It’s all well and good to assume that these companies are benevolent and that their.m money comes without strings but it’s just not true.

I was wrong about Google and Facebook: there’s nothing wrong with them (so say we all)

https://ar.al/2019/01/11/i-was-wrong-about-google-and-facebook-theres-nothing-wrong-with-them-so-say-we-all/

It’s always difficult admitting you’re wrong. But sometimes you have to in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So, today, I admit that I was wrong about Google, Facebook, & surveillance capitalism in general being toxic for our human rights and democracy … it simply cannot be true given how they are endorsed by some of the most well-respected organisations in the world.

You have a limited amount of time in this world. You decide whether to spend it being “neutral” (legitimising trillion-dollar surveillance capitalists) or working with those of us trying to raise awareness about their abuses so we can actually regulate them and get funding for ethical alternatives that don’t rely on them. If you’re doing the former don’t you dare criticise those doing the latter. We’re not the ones punching down and we don’t owe you an explanation for doing the right thing.

What @conservancy is doing here is unconscionable: https://2019.copyleftconf.org/sponsors/

Just wrote to RMS to try and understand what the fuck is going on and why the FSF logo is being used to whitewash Google and Microsoft.

#InstitutionalCorruption #SurveillanceCapitalism

Copyleft Conference… sponsored by Google.

https://2019.copyleftconf.org/sponsors/

Kindly go die in a fire.

#SurveillanceCapitalism HT https://mastodon.social/@desikn/101381009594236926

DRM is never in the interests of individuals. I’m lookin’ at you, USB-C.

From the Any Application That Can Be Written In JavaScript, Will Eventually Be Written In JavaScript Department*

Node-OS: http://node-os.com/

OS.js: https://www.os-js.org/

* See Atwood’s Law and The Rule of Least Power

#javascript #nodejs

Capitalism:

1. Fund entities whose sole purpose is profit
2. ???
3. Achieve social good

And this was the final archive (~17GB), which I downloaded before deleting my account.

… Google+ Circles, Google+ Communities, Google+ Stream, Groups, Handsfree, Hangouts, Hangouts on Air, Home App, Input Tools, Keep, Location History, Mail, Maps, Maps (your places), My Activity, My Maps, News, Posts on Google, Profile, Purchases & Reservations, Reminders, Saved, Search Contributions, Street View, Tasks, Textcube, Voice, and YouTube data.”

And that’s just Google. Not what Alphabet, Inc. has on me. No data they bought from brokers. No derived data.

#SurveillanceCapitalism