Faithful Followers.
Here is a write-up highlighting points in the recent video I made here, available on Odysee, aka LBRY.
Some of you have perhaps already noticed that I no longer publish content on YouTube. When it comes to privacy, I am walking my talk. YouTube does not honor privacy; they want full surveillance of who you are and what you watch.
With that, I will now be taking more steps to share everything I know about how to protect and preserve your online privacy.
Generally speaking, with most of these services, you are the product if you are not paying for the product. That means big companies profit from capturing your attention and spying on you.
We are already almost in winter here in the US. Halloween may be behind us for this season, but the Big Tech industry remains spooky all year round. They are lurking in the dark corners watching your every step.
Privacy and freedom in the digital world ought to be your right. Using your information should require your permission every time, but Big Tech has been very sneaky in taking what really belongs to you. Technology itself is neutral, basically as much good as it is bad. It is the actors using it who make it good or bad.
For example, technology is the medium that gives us conveniences such as recipes, news, information, a connection to the world, and education about things we all want to learn about.
How good is that? It’s awesome. But in the process of this convenience at our fingertips, we are stalked and followed by the tech giants. Now that’s spooky, and we have to work hard at not being observed.
I, for one, don’t want to be secretly followed or stalked by anyone. You may not realize that’s happening to you, but it is online at every moment!
People recognize in the physical world that serial stalkers are criminals, right? And yet Big Tech are exactly that. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, every cell phone provider… They are not-so-secretly serial-stalking the entire world while promoting themselves like they are the good guys.
They did not ask my permission to record all my activities. Did they ask you? Did you give them permission? And what are they doing with what they learn about you? They will never tell you that. Is that a problem? I think, YES!
I never noticed it that much, but I realized that technology has played an enormous role in our lives in ways that unknowingly hurt people more than anyone knows. Just think back over the last few years. We became so fearful of each other and forgot that we all are naturally supposed to have differences. That is a good thing that we used to respect. The more that is learned about us now by BigTech, the more information is used to manipulate and transform our right-thinking unnaturally into whatever they want us to believe.
This is done with videos and information filtering planted through social media and mainstream media.
For example, suppose you are not wearing red lipstick. In that case, it could be decided that you are to be feared and canceled based on BigTech’s decision about this lipstick that day. Then you will be de-platformed or censored because you are giving the audience an unpopular nudge to choose a “misinformed” lipstick decision.
Obviously, the lipstick is a metaphor, but not too far from how sensitive everything is regarding freedom of choice nowadays.
What happened to our freedom? We used to respect and accept different thoughts and opinions and our differences.
I traveled a bit in lockdown and met my fair share of people, both masked and unmasked, and to tell you the truth, it didn’t bother me at all either way. I even witnessed people fight for all kinds of silly reasons. That’s when I realized that people are afraid and fearful and technology certainly played a significant role in our fears and doubts.
Another example is when you “google” something. Google gives you back special “curated” search results because they psychologically have profiled you and want to influence your search activities to benefit them in some way. But you want something that is best for YOU, you have to learn not to Google for your information. You must learn to search different and stop going to Google because there are better solutions.
Once I understood that fact, my journey began searching for privacy and freedom.
Privacy and Freedom. Remember these two words; you own it; therefore, it is your responsibility to protect it. Be ready to fight for it or lose it forever. Tell everyone you know to share with them. Now, if you want to stop being spied upon, you will want to take careful note of what I am about to tell you.
As in Orwell’s book, 1984, if you disagree with the orders you receive, you are accused of committing “thought-crimes.” That’s the society we have here today.
Does this sound like the Land of the Free, home of the brave of the United States?
What happened to our freedom-of-speech, or democracy? We used to welcome different opinions and views; we had room for acceptance regardless of all the differences. Now, people are persecuted if they merely state they are opposed to wearing masks or have a different opinion about their health decisions.
I am not here to debate but to state my opinion. I believe everyone should be free to express their views, opinions, and thoughts without fear of being attacked, canceled, or judged.
Many have already found out (the hard way) that it’s impossible to fully or directly express opinions or thoughts on YouTube because we’re either canceled or de-platformed if we do. Many successful YouTubers lose their channel for reasons never explained to them.
If you go over to LBRY or Odysee, you will begin to understand the difference in content and how different it is from Youtube, where you can’t be censored or canceled.
So, if you feel like you want to own your privacy and freedom, then stop.
Start saying brave-it instead of saying google-it.
Step #1, vow to be a part of the new privacy club. The first rule of getting into the privacy club is never to ever use anything controlled by Google, Apple, or any other giants… That includes products like Gmail and YouTube, which you will not see me on anymore but head over to LBRY or Odysee instead.
So if you don’t search with Google, how can you search?
I gathered a few private search engine gems for you.
I’ll give you my top picks for privacy, then leave links below for you to learn more.
The most manageable switch from using Google search is
Duck-duck Go
I use this every day… I can easily recommend this one for the simple reason that it does not track you and that the search results are pretty good in my experience. An easy switch from Google it is.
The other one I will tell you about is searX.
If you go there, you can see many different options for using searX.
It gathers results from popular search engines and combines them while not spying on you or manipulating what it gives you.
Searx keeps your search private by removing every identifying thing about your request so that Google and other search engines receive the search phrase as an anonymous request.
Ha! there you go… the best of both worlds. Use all search engines at once and privately. Go have fun searching privately now. Be sure to check out the advanced settings that give you extra powers.
A few more.
Mojeeck https://www.mojeek.com
Mojeek was the first privacy-oriented search engine with a no-tracking policy introduced in 2006. Maintaining user privacy promises no tracking or profiling of your search history, IP address, or click data.
Another few which are lesser-known:
Gibiru- US founder and active for more than a decade. Gibiru’s mission is to provide its users with “access to information outside of Big Tech’s censorship bubble and do so privately.”
Presearch – this one is cutting edge
Presearch uses a decentralized network of node operators. Searches get anonymized by removing your device information and any tracking codes.
Metager powered by renewable energy. https://metager.org/
The search engine pulls results from different sources on the web. Every result tells you which search engine it was sourced from and gives you the option to open the result anonymously.
– Peekier – This one has a cute owl mascot.
Peekier’s name is derived from letting you privately peek at the pages listed in search results before visiting the site. It does this by generating a preview on its servers and then sending it to your browser as an image. Since Peekier shows this preview, any tracking analytics or cookies are stripped out before you view it.
To wrap it all up, I wanted to share these two sites that give you fantastic information that cannot be found in mainstream news about privacy, and I love how much I am learning while horrified about what corporations are doing to people. Learn as much as you can and take back your privacy online to stop it from getting worse.
– reclaim the net
– tech lore
That’s it for today. See you in the following video about private browsers. Stay tuned. See you soon
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