A while ago I reached a point in my privacy journey where I simply felt bored. It’s not a result of going too far in privacy, but simply my threat model has caused me to let go of a lot of things that used to entertain me (games, movie streaming, short form video, etc.) The entertainment landscape in privacy seems pretty bleak, since you no longer own the movies you watch, the games you play, and lots of proprietary software along the way. I entertain myself through FreeTube, physical copies of movies, and offline installations of games like Minecraft, but it’s still a step down from how it used to be.
What do you do to keep yourselves entertained in a privacy conscious way?
Hiking, camping, fishing, outdoor activities.
Woodworking, painting, knitting, blacksmithing.
Basically anything that’s not connected to a screen.
Go to your public library and just sit there and read a book
Buy a book with cash. Read the book.
The entertainment landscape in privacy seems pretty bleak, since you no longer own the movies you watch
It’s the other way around.
They have cameras in the bookstores with facial recognition
then don’t go to those bookstores with cameras 🤦
not all bookstores have cameras
I was being facetious to make a point. There is a limit to the amount of privacy that one can achieve while still residing within a modern society. As with all things, it’s a personal choice. Everyone has a limit up to which they are comfortable surrendering their privacy. You can be tracked and recorded even walking the streets in many cities, and in most retail stores. How far is one willing to go to be private?
Poor point poorly made
Ok, I’ll give you that. But don’t you agree there are certain aspects of privacy one must forego to live in a modern society?
Who does?
You can own movies by pirating them. same goes for games etc
But games will still have the built in invasive telemetry I think.
unshare -ncNot my problem.
When people get games from e.g. fitgirl-repacks, do they play them offline? (just curious, I don’t play games)
Online features don’t work on pirated games in 99% cases (it says “connection error”, “failed to connect to insert the developer company name here servers” or something similar) but I’m afraid the telemetry still works.
False, a pirated game is still anti-libre software.
Pirate movies, shows, and music.
That and I play old games. SMB 2 rn.
Emulation is a great for offline gaming. You can also find some great FOSS games on flathub like srb2, srb2k and Mindustry. You can also get old books for free on Project Gutenberg and audiobooks on Librivox. In Germany (and other European countries) there is state financed tv which has free drmfree adfree and (relatively) privacy friendly streaming services. Newgrounds also is a treasure trove, especially for music. Also there is piracy
Go read at your local library, you don’t even need to check the books out if you read them there.
Minetest in creative mode with Radio Free Fedi’s comfy channel playing in the background 🤌
I just get a separate device with a fake identity and no personal data for games and proprietary software. Short videos are hosted by very invasive companies and don’t have any APIs or anything to make custom privacy-friendly frontends so it’s out of the question (fortunately imo because that things are addictive and can degrade a person in months). Idk much about movies because I’ve never used a paid movie service like Netflix but since they’re paid, privacy is very questionable there.
Unfortunately digital entertainment is very privacy-invasive overall. You can fix some of the privacy issues by the cost of convenience but some things will remain too invasive to be viable in many threat models.
Short videos are hosted by very invasive companies and don’t have any APIs or anything to make custom privacy-friendly frontends so it’s out of the question (fortunately imo because that things are addictive and can degrade a person in months).
If you view tiktok content thru ProxiTok, it fails to be addictive because things like autoplay and recommendations are disabled.
ProxiTok
Never heard of it but if a client with proper profiling mitigation exists, it’s awesome. Though (as I understand) since there’s pretty much no useful content on TikTok (unless it’s a shortened copy of a YouTube video or something), good recommendations are really needed to keep the user entertained so privacy-focused clients without total profiling kill the point of the app.
Motorcycling. Nearly all modern bikes have no ability to touch the internet, so you can get into a really fun hobby with practical benefits without being spied on.
