Privacy
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Internet and associated technology has become the dominant force in our world and we have next to know regulation on it and the stuff we have is targeted at individuals rather than corporations like it should be. I hat to through youtube links around but this guy has a pretty good one on price fixing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdWSUIdtu6E
we can have the patriot act but for like online. That's wicked. People so smart.
Congress is an organ of the ruling class and always has been. When they (rarely) do something seemingly against ruling class interests, it is still a strategem to best keep the capitalism boat afloat (it tries to sink every 5-10 years).
Sure, Congress is corrupt, but it always has been. The system is working more or less as designed. And if you want to oppose this design, the system is also designed to fight you to the death. And funneling all of your capacity into sheepdog voting is how your masters tell you you should oppose them. So if you want to oppose this system, you must become informed as to how it functions and join up with like-minded individuals to develop actually effective means of resistance.
Just because you are in the minority doesn't make the system corrupt.
That's true! I'm glad I didn't say anything like, "the system is corrupt because I'm in the minority".
PS, the ruling class is a minority.
This is a whole lot of conspiracy bs with no sources provided. But it includes the usual keywords "the system", "design", and "ruling class" so you can get your upvotes from like-minded fellows in your bubble.
Have you considered that politics and economics is a little bit more complicated and a lot of gears make the machine? But "the elite pulling the strings" is much easier to understand and you conveniently get an enemy.
This is a whole lot of conspiracy bs with no sources provided.
It's not a conspiracy, it's out in the open. I don't know what claims you would want sources for. Feel free to ask.
But it includes the usual keywords "the system", "design", and "ruling class" so you can get your upvotes from like-minded fellows in your bubble.
You might notice that this is a public community on a non-socialist instance. So, the opposite of what you are saying. Personally, I expected a mix of responses.
Have you considered that politics and economics is a little bit more complicated and a lot of gears make the machine?
Complexity vs. simplicity means nothing in this topic. What matters is identifying dominant powers and the mechanisms by which they function. Many of those mechanisms are somewhat complex, though not that complex that anyone can't read about them and understand them if they actually want to.
Have you read any socialist theory?
But "the elite pulling the strings" is much easier to understand and you conveniently get an enemy.
Class conflict is actually something that emerges from base social interactions that constitute the primary economic system: how and why we work. The dominant class does have more realized power, by definition, but it is still subordinate to the mechanisms of the economic system itself.
For example, you cannot simply choose to be a nice business owner that pays everyone as much as they deserve. You will, eventually, get outcompeted by the business owners that will keep pay lower and profits higher. While small businesses are still commonly owned by petty tyrants, their loss to big box stores is an example of how a larger mass of profits can be leveraged to destroy the competition (initial low prices), then using monopoly status to earn even more profit by cutting wages and increasing prices.
The political class is just the functionaries of the state that serves the dominant class's interests. You can call them elite because they personally get a bigger piece of the pie and have power on paper, but they are several rings lower on the hierarchy.
Such as?
Learning media criticism, history, political economy, and how past groups have organized takes a decent amount of time. Namely, socialist theory. So does unlearning the ideological falsehoods that cloud our ability to think and investigate. And so does recognizing what builds power, what actions are effective, what cooption looks like and how to counter it, etc. So I don't recommend just doing one thing, but instead working from where you are to be closer to a stronger consciousness. I suppose the closest thing to a single recommendation I can give is humility and curiosity around all of the aforementioned topics and to give people grace IRL when you begin working with an organization.
If you are interested in reading recommendations and info about your thoughts on politics I'd be happy to think of something you might appreciate. Or if you feel like you're ready for action and are in the US I can recommend some orgs that are reasonably good to "start" with (many stay in them and that is also fine!).
84% of Americans want something they are unwilling to vote nor do anything for, but they sure as hell will complain about it.
They want comprehensive legislation that everyone agrees on. It isn't asking much.
I also want a dragon.
"I want"
does nothing for it
Voting will fix it, it's worked so far. /s
Decisions are made by those who show up.
No they're made by those who possess economic power. That's a tiny sliver of the US population.
It's elections are nothing than political theatre, with a side goal of creating the illusion of democracy, and building consent for the dictatorship.
That's defeatism. You especially should believe in the collective. We are not just innocent little playtoys of powers beyond our comprehension. If that were the case and we had no free will, then what's the point of living? If you truly believe you control nothing in your life, then why still walk this earth?
A single ant cannot destroy a tree. It's the work of countless ants that achieve that.
Why would the capitalists let you vote away their wealth or power? What incentive do they have to do that?
That's defeatism.
No, it's a historical reality that voting is not an effective method to undo class society. Even the ancient greeks knew (before the Marxists rediscovered this and dealt their own death blows to representative government in the 1800s) that voting in an aristocracy is nothing more than theatre, because only the rich and entrenched families have the resources to fund campaigns, and get themselves elected (or appoint political puppets to do their bidding).
Political power is a reflex of economic power, and the rich will not allow you to use the system they control, to undo it.
single ant cannot destroy a tree. It's the work of countless ants that achieve that.
Many socialist / communist parties did just that, and they weren't deluded enough to try to accomplish it via voting in a system controlled by the ruling classes.
So you're completely ignoring the rise of fascism due to voting? The second world war happened because a bunch of nazis stormed the German parliament and took control of it by force? What do you think populism does?
Of course you can change the system from within. Le Pen, Höcke, Meloni, Wilders, Trump, and so on, they aren't "part of the establishment". They latched onto a populist narratives, got financial aid from the radicals in their countries, and gathered votes to get themselves into offices .
The left-wing parties in France united to pose a unified front against the national assembly (le RN) in France. And it worked. They got the relative majority to vote for them, but as soon as they won, they were beset by infighting. Such is the common reality of left wing parties - they are their own greatest enemy.
Either you chose to ignore it or you were unaware, but the latter is much less probable, so I'm going to say you chose to in order to fit your narrative of "voting doesn't matter" and imagine that class warfare (or how Marx would put it "Klassenkampf") is the only way out.