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