blog-thenewoil-org-1zbu4k.txt (8916B)
1 [1]The New Oil 2 3 Changes Aren’t Permanent, But Change Is 4 5 January 21, 2024 6 7 As a veteran, my approach to healthcare and job opportunities has always been 8 different than most. I’ve always been in reasonably good health, never been 9 much of a thrill seeker, and have a pretty robust immune system. Other than a 10 hardcore sweet tooth, I generally take at least some care of myself. As such, 11 that meant I could be a little riskier, allowing for a successful freelance 12 career. But then, I got married. Suddenly, the math changed and I had to start 13 considering health care when I considered employment. This is hardly a unique 14 situation: after adopting pets you have to consider who will feed them when 15 you’re on vacation, or when you have kids you have to consider what will happen 16 to them if anything happens to you. 17 18 Yet, for some reason, people in the privacy community have a hard time wrapping 19 their minds around change. To some extent, I get that. I think at some level 20 we’re all a bit resistant to change. Change can sometimes make us feel out of 21 control, or sometimes it’s just the plain old “fear of the unknown.” Sometimes 22 there’s a valid reason here; for example, I’ve successfully managed to get 23 nearly everyone I know using Signal. If Signal turned out to be unsafe tomorrow 24 for any reason, it would be a monumental nightmare to not only pick a service 25 that’s as polished, stable, and feature-rich but also to convince everyone to 26 move over. It’s also unwise to simply rush into the latest new service blindly 27 because it’s new. It’s always a good idea to slow down and first see if these 28 services even stand the test of time and second wait to see what the experts 29 think (or to examine the project yourself if you are one such expert). 30 31 But other times, I think we just get stuck in our habits. When I got into 32 privacy, iPhone was clearly superior to Android in the privacy/security front. 33 At the time custom OS’s were nearly unusable for a normal person and Android’s 34 security was a joke. But while I advanced in my personal privacy journey, the 35 entire Android landscape matured and soon Android became an increasingly 36 appealing option for me. Making that change represented a huge disruption for 37 my existing day-to-day life. I mean sure, at the end of the day a phone is a 38 phone and they all more or less function the same, but anyone who’s ever made 39 the switch or even temporarily had to use the other OS that isn’t their daily 40 driver knows that it’s a bit of a shock and it takes some time to get used to 41 the differing menus, capabilities, or thought that went into the design. In the 42 case of Android specifically, I also had new apps, features, and possibilities 43 to explore. 44 45 It is vital that as a community we become accepting of change because it will 46 come for all of us whether we like it or not. There are plenty of recent 47 examples. Encrypted messenger WickrMe was [2]fully retired this year, but even 48 before it was shut down it was on a downward spiral. Michael Bazzell claimed he 49 had detected it sending telemetry back to organizations such as Microsoft and 50 shortly thereafter Wickr was sold to Amazon. Two more recent, salient examples 51 include the sales of [3]Raivo OTP (once recommended on The New Oil) and [4] 52 Simple Mobile Tools. In most cases, there is little or nothing standing in the 53 way of negative changes, whether it’s as simple and (arguably) innocuous as 54 introducing telemetry that you disagree with or full-on shutting down or 55 selling out. 56 57 In the world of writing, aspiring writers are instructed to “kill your 58 darlings.” That means no matter how attached you get to a work, you must be 59 willing to set those feelings aside and do whatever it takes to make it the 60 best possible version of itself. That might mean cutting a part you really 61 like, rearranging some sections, or just throwing out the entire thing and 62 starting over. (I did a large amount of that in writing this very post.) In 63 privacy, we must have the same attitude. 64 65 Compromise and “[5]enshittification” are extreme examples, but I would argue 66 they’re probably the least common culprit forcing us into change. I’m willing 67 to bet that by sheer numbers, simple life circumstances and growth are. As 68 mentioned above, getting married changed a lot of things for me, privacy 69 included. Prior to being married, I didn’t even own a TV. Now we have two smart 70 TVs because my wife loves to consume streaming content. As such, we also use 71 ProtonVPN on our router because they promise to work with streaming services (a 72 promise that thus far has been kept). But if I were still single, I would 73 probably be using IVPN or Mullvad on my router and I would also be far more 74 aggressive with tracker blocking. A single woman dating may download one of 75 those safety apps that shares her location with trusted individuals to stay 76 safe on dates. A parent may decide that – at least while their children are 77 younger – it’s worthwhile to enable location tracking their phones (or to give 78 them phones at all) in case something bad happens. They may also decide to use 79 certain mainstream, less-private services to better control their child’s 80 content intake. I’m not condoning helicopter parenting, for the record, but the 81 internet is a vast and dangerous space and it would be pretty reckless to just 82 let your young children run wild on it without supervision. 83 84 Another example might be outdated devices. Perhaps you were quite happy with 85 stock Android so long as it was still receiving security updates, but if you 86 suddenly found yourself in possession of a device that has reached “End of 87 Life” and you didn’t have the funds to upgrade, the math might change. You 88 might decide that it’s worth it to flash a custom OS so you can still receive 89 at least some updates. 90 91 And of course, there’s always growth. Many of us never stop to consider this, 92 but for most of us we make a lot of changes when we first start our privacy 93 journeys. We go from Windows/Mac to Linux, SMS to encrypted messaging, Gmail to 94 encrypted email, Google search to private search, and more. Sometimes we even 95 make multiple changes, testing out several messengers, email providers, Linux 96 distributions, and more. Why then, once we settle into a suite that works for 97 us, do we suddenly decide that this is it, finality, the end, there can be no 98 room to improve after this – at least, not significant changes like the ones 99 that got us here? This is ridiculous. It’s called the “End-of-History 100 Illusion”: the belief that you have experienced substantial change or growth up 101 til now but now things will just be the same forever from here on out. 102 103 Change can be scary, but it is vital. As we go through life, different services 104 will come and go and in some cases services that are perfectly fine will no 105 longer fit our needs. We shouldn’t be afraid of change. Change allows us to 106 grow and improve, but it also allows us to live fulfilling, full lives. Privacy 107 is a human right, but so is food, education, and shelter. Despite this, most of 108 us don’t spend all of our free time learning about water quality, teaching, or 109 construction and architecture. We appreciate these things and want to have a 110 functional knowledge of them (how to spot bad water and buildings we should 111 absolutely steer clear of) but most of us have other hobbies, interests, 112 priorities, and desires. Privacy should be no different – it should protect us 113 and our rights, but it shouldn’t prevent us from getting the most out of our 114 lives the way we want to. I’ve written on this subject before, so I won’t 115 rehash it here. I’ll just leave with the parting thought that time waits for no 116 one, so it’s best to accept the impermanence of everything in life, especially 117 technology and ourselves. Don’t be afraid to embrace evolution and change up 118 your privacy strategy as needed. As the band [6]Rush so famously put it well: 119 “changes aren’t permanent, but change is.” 120 121 You can find more recommended services and programs at [7]TheNewOil.org, and 122 you can find our other content across the web [8]here or support our work in a 123 variety of ways [9]here. 124 125 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 126 127 published with [10]write.as 128 129 [piwik] 130 131 132 References: 133 134 [1] https://blog.thenewoil.org/ 135 [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20240115224640/https://www.404media.co/wickr-closed-down-is-dead/ 136 [3] https://youtu.be/Z0IkcyGUqKc?si=uMOEdhSwbX2Tjjfc&t=60 137 [4] https://youtu.be/dnVOdOC3E9c?si=dfzc6y6s-fv8kgDF&t=1005 138 [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification 139 [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auLBLk4ibAk 140 [7] https://thenewoil.org/ 141 [8] https://thenewoil.org/en/links/ 142 [9] https://thenewoil.org/en/support/ 143 [10] https://write.as/