
Ask HN: Privacy vs. benefits of social media etc. - lainon
Where do you draw the line between wanting privacy&#x2F;anonymity and wanting to reap the benefits of social media, dating sites etc?
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PaulHoule
Privacy is not the only tradeoff.

Facebook seems to be about as good for your mental health as smoking
cigarettes is for your lungs.

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brudgers
{caveat: I don't use dating sites}

Mostly, I try to minimize advertizer tracking. Social media get bespoke
identities using Chromium (not Chrome). General browsing uses Firefox that
wipes history and cookies on restart and "shopping" type browsing uses a
'private' window from that. It doesn't eliminate cross site tracking but it
seems to bring it down to a less obnoxious level.

All with the caveat that I assume that nothing that happens on the internet
(or tor) is private or anonymous against a modestly funded mildly determined
actor.

The benefit of social media is that it makes the maintenance of loose social
connections easier. No holiday cards, no email, no maintaining a written
address book. When I wonder what someone I know is doing, I can just look.
That includes across political divides and strained family
relationships...i.e. connections with complicated meat space dynamics.

Good luck.

