How DuckDuckGo Helps You Seamlessly Take Back Your Privacy
Many people believe that they can’t do anything to protect their privacy online, but that’s not true. There actually is a simple way to dramatically reduce online tracking.
Tag: internet
I feel like a more productive conversation to have in the midst of “tiktok is spying on you -> every app is spying on you” is to remind people that you still do have power to limit how much data is collected on you. Switch to firefox, transfer your saved passwords to 1password or lastpass, set your default search engine to duckduckgo (I only need to switch back to google for maybe 2% of my searches), install an adblocker, go through your device settings and turn off any permissions that you’re not sure if they’re absolutely necessary. If you want to go the extra mile, only access social media through browsers instead of using the native apps. Spend an hour on your digital hygiene and you’re making your life that much harder to monetize and surveil.
what are you even supposed to do on twitter
every time i use it i get angry at someone every 40 seconds
twitter is like youtube comments without the videos
There’s a post that circulates every so often that encourages people to switch to Firefox over chrome and I just started migrating all my stuff over this week and holy shit. Firefox is a million times more functional than chrome, I can run all my blockers and the 19 other extensions I use no problems and it doesn’t crash when I have more than three tabs open and it has its own built in tracking prevention, honestly 10/10 so far
I do hope soon or maybe that people start to bring back the early 2000s way of the internet. Everything was so much better, people were so nice D:. Early youtube was a creative place without all the drama and weird spam videos. Scene and punk was everywhere as well as everyone drawing,creating things even if they weren’t so good at it. Wish I could go back;-;. What if we all brought it back? Project oldnet?
some people already are! although this is the only example i can think of, scenecore is alive and kicking it on various social media platforms
Y’know, for all the flaws in the 90s Everyone Online Is A Predator Never Say Anything model, it was infinitely safer for kids than the current “your online friends are completely safe and trustworthy, but outsiders are inherently suspicious” model.
Still waiting for the “Most people are basically honest, but people who want to hurt you are really good at pretending to be friendly, so be open and kind but careful” model to take hold.
why cringe culture is dumb as fuck and hurts autistic kids
There’s this kid at my school and he has autism. His special interest is Five Night’s at Freddy’s. He loves it, he spends a lot of time drawing art of it and making characters of it and watching videos of it. He has all the games and knows all the secrets and he’s really passionate about it.
Now, as another kid with autism, my special interest is computers. I’m known at my school for having hacked the wifi and gotten the password to the fast wifi over and over and even getting around to downloading games like Minecraft and other games on the school computers and get passed blocked sites.
My friends are fucking exhausted of me constantly talking about computers and going off on long programming rants and they don’t understand a single fucking thing.
Who gets bullied more? He does. Because of his special interest whilst I’m praised for it. People come up to me and pay me to help them with their game programming class assignments and projects. But him? He is constantly harassed for it. Why? Because FnaF is “cringe culture”
People constantly say “if it was middle school he’d be normal but now he’s just cringy.” and “wow he’s the embodiment of cringe culture”
it’s dumb as fuck ?? He’s literally just enjoying a game ?? Him knowing all the secrets in that one fnaf game is literally the same as all these other kids in class knowing all the hacks in COD or Black Ops or people knowing the ins and outs of some book.
But because it’s “cringe culture” he gets bullied every day. Yes, sometimes he goes off on it and doesn’t stop talking, but he’s so passionate about it and he’s smiling wide the entire time because it makes him happy.
But now he rarely even wants to talk about it. Instead of on the computers, he’s on his phone with the brightness all the way down. He doesn’t draw his ocs or fan art anymore, because he’s ashamed of it because of all the bullying he’s received.
anyway long story short cringe culture is dumb as fuck and it hurting autistic kids who have “cringy” things as their special interest.
THIS!!!
the fact that this only has 3k+ notes is sad. I’m not into Undertale, Fnaf, or any other popular Horror or RPG game because of THIS VERY REASON!
People (FULLY GROWN ADULTS) told me, 15 or 16 at the time, (A CHILD) to commit suicide! What the fuck is wrong with you people!?
That is bad. Cringe culture is bullshit. Fucking pathetic.
Nothing is ‘cringe’.
I hope the poor boy keeps doing what he loves. He should never hide it.
People who do stuff like preserving flash games, making hard-to-get games easier to play, people who make free and open source software… These people can never get enough credit.
most of the time, it is okay. most of the time im grateful for the internet and social media and cell phones and and and.
but sometimes, you see a little girl doing her makeup for twelve thousand instagram followers. she’s nine. sometimes you see a man breaking up with his girlfriend for youtube likes. sometimes you are standing in a room and are in the background of fifty snapchat stories but in nobody’s actual lives.
it’s mostly okay. but so many of us grew up in a time where they basically ignored the internet while teaching us cursive in school. digital literacy was “don’t look at wikipedia”. none of us knew what the next generation was being set up to. we taught ourselves our own rules. many of us, it didn’t come soon.
it’s mostly okay. but the other day, i asked my freshman students: if you could, would you go back in time and take the internet away from yourself in middle school? if so, when do you think is the right time to be exposed to social media?
over and over: yes. yes. yes. i’d go back and never look up those skinny tips. i’d never spend so many weekends in the dark in communities that encouraged me to self-harm. i’d never lose my brother to radicals. i’d never, i’d never, i’d never again.
it’s mostly okay. i’m posting this on social media. but sometimes, you know. i wonder what exactly we’re doing.
As much as I hate leaning on the ‘but muh autisms’ button, the Internet Justice status quo of “You must follow, to the letter, a bunch of social rules that are never codified, periodically changed with no indication and contradictory. Any deviation from these (completely hidden) rules – along with any requests to explain or other questioning – will get you at best dismissed and mocked as ignorant and at worst harassed perpetually with intent to make you commit suicide” is shockingly ableist and strongly echoes the kinds of bullying autistic kids face in school and other social situations.
And like many examples of Guess Culture (where the rules are unspoken and have to be inferred), it’s terrible for neurotypicals too.
ifesbob 