Part of it is that we buy into it, literally. If you want to stop it, stop buying into companies that are compliant and sell you out in their technology choices.
And 3 steps after that you’ll have to go live off grid in a cabin in the woods.
As romantic as it sounds, the one single purpose for for-profit companies is to produce shareholder value, and very few of them see shareholder value in keeping a legal department specifically designed for fighting constant and endless attacks on our privacy.
The absolute vast majority of the population don't care one bit about their privacy.
If they did, Google and Meta would be out of business. The only thing they really offer is for advertisers to target really, really specific groups of people thanks to the data they collect from those groups (EVERYONE, except a handful of HN readers and other dissidents) which everyone voluntarily hands over, because they simply don't care.
Of course, it's just a symptom of the problem.
Refuse to believe all you want, but have a deep think and consider whether the average person cares about his privacy. Even if they say they do.
Freedom doesn't sell anymore. Outsourcing virtually every single aspect of your life to a corporation that Just Knows Better(tm) does. Everything is a service. Most of the tech you own is a service, not a physical item.
And both things can't be true simultaneously, you can't crave freedom while outsourcing absolutely everything to someone else. Freedom requires you to take over the responsibility over your life, which far too many people simply aren't willing to do. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this is where the society has ended up in.
born too late for homesteading to be a skill exercised and shared by a meaningful portion of society; born too early for homesteading to be made accessible via better technology.
but a hundred years from now i do think “have to go live in a cabin in the woods” will be more like “get to”. because if that was something everyone could easily manage, i have no doubt i’d find myself in some cabin-in-the-woods community full of all the other wackos like me.
It is highly likely that it's still possible today. All you need is a bunch of other wackos, like you say.
Alone? No chance whatsoever.
Bundy standoff worked, after all. Of course it has the prerequisite of being willing to die for the cause, which I doubt many people have, aside from the very select few for whom the most important mission in life is to live free.
Me? I thoroughly admire such "wackos", but I enjoy the finer things in life way too much for this to be a feasible option for me.
I like your vision here, but the average person living in the USA cares about two things - sports and social media. This is an exaggeration and don't get me wrong, I love a good football game here and there, but there is some truth to it.
Over the years I've received so many odd looks when I bring up privacy that I've stopped and just accepted that my vote or email to my representative is all I can do. I hate to be cynical, but this train isn't derailing anytime soon. EFF is doing God's work here, but the American citizen will continue to be hypnotized until things get bad enough for them to care, in which it will already be too late.
