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I mean when I first came across it (which was linked from a mass text advertisement from Truth Social in January), this is the quote that stood out to me:

Developing American First investment vehicles is another step toward our goal of creating a robust ecosystem through which American patriots can protect themselves from the ever-present threat of cancellation, censorship, debanking, and privacy violations committed by Big Tech and woke corporations.”

Notably the word “ecosystem”.

I saw this a while ago and wonder if it’s related at all

No they’re telling people to be non-violent and to wave the American flag and not the Mexican flag

Hmmm maybe not, but i guess for me its part of doing my part to stop big tech from using our info.

The big question here is how does big tech use our info that makes it important to keep them from having it? Here, political orientation has a large impact on importance, for example:

Ads: Nobody loves ads, but some people tolerate them more than others. Liberals might see them as a necessary evil to provide services at a good cost. Libertarians might say they have the right to use their own hardware as they please and block them out of convenience. Progressives might say that they promote consumerism, and leftists might go further and say that they are one of the ways capitalists keep their control over society. So since data is used for targeted ads, that’s one area that can be argued based on political orientation.

Product improvement: Overall depends on their view of the company’s impact on society. Conservatives and leftists both see big tech as it exists currently as morally corrupt, others may see them as providing a useful service. If they think that big tech has a positive influence on society, then they are probably okay with their non-security critical data being used to improve the product, otherwise they might be more likely to want to avoid that happening.

Finances: Data can be used to personalize prices for large expenses, which is something that threatens everyone. The cost of healthcare, housing, education, and transportation is a major concern across all political orientations (and is why the Democrats lost the election by not doing fucking anything while the Republicans kept telling people that they would fix it by cutting government spending). However, people might also think that there’s nothing they can do about their data being used to make things more expensive or that if they try to resist that then it will cost more for them, so that’s an obstacle that needs to be considered as well.

Law enforcement: If the person is a target of the Trump administration and knows that, then their data being used against them is one clear motivation if they don’t think it’s too late to do anything. Otherwise, it depends on how much the person trusts the government and current law enforcement.

So overall, I would consider where they fit in this political categorization and use the reasons that align best with this. Challenging their political stances is also an option but requires a lot of other things to consider and probably won’t work well since a lot of it is rooted in fundamental values that are difficult to change.

They need to have a reason to care. Are they or people close to them in danger if they don’t put effort into increasing their privacy? What steps do they need to take to switch to alternatives, and does what they gain from taking those steps outweigh what they lose? Is your advice oriented around the context of their own lives, or are you telling them to do things because a bunch of people on the internet told you to?

These questions themselves are also very contextual, especially with different political orientations. For instance, if someone distrusts the government, then their definition of “danger” may include the government reading their conversations, which in this case it is a lot easier to convince people to switch to FOSS or more secure platforms like Signal (and I’ve convinced nearly everyone I know to use it, both conservative and progressive/leftist, because they distrust the government and large tech corporations). Whereas if someone thinks the government is alright, then they won’t give a shit. So I’d say that considering and discussing their political beliefs and making sure they align with valid reasons to make changes is an important step before telling them how they should do things.

Wow that’s depressing. Apparently also Firefox makes it very difficult to install extensions that aren’t signed by Mozilla, which I learned when a pro-Palestine extension got removed from the Mozilla store and we were discussing alternative ways to distribute it. It’s an issue in LibreWolf as well, although there might have been less hoops I had to jump through to disable that.

The worst part about the Firefox AI stuff is their provider selection is shit. No Deepseek, no OpenRouter, so I have a stupid pane and a stupid popup button every time I select text that only works with models that are either inferior or closed off.

1.Email

FastMail, IceDove (GNU debranded ThunderBird), FairEmail

2.Cloud storage / file sync

Syncthing, Nextcloud for sharing and browsing files, I store my files using TrueNAS and a RAID Z2 configuration with Backblaze B2 for backup

3.Maps & navigation

OsmAnd with Brouter (FastBike-VeryLowTraffic profile) for ebike, my local transit app for public transit, Magic Earth the rare occasion I use a car, Uber rarely, I still use Google Maps for searching because everything else sucks

4.Search engine

Kagi, nowadays I usually use Deepseek R1 model with either Kagi Assistant or OpenRouter but might self-host LibreChat

5.Web browser

LibreWolf for searches, FireFox and FireFox PWAs for sites I regularly visit but planning to switch to Floorp. On Android, Cromite for random sites, Vanadium for sides I stay logged in to, IronFox with extensions for searches.

6.Calendar

Etar synced with Nextcloud using DAVx5

7.Contacts management

GrapheneOS contacts app synced with Nextcloud, the Fossify app has given me problems

8.Notes / to-do lists

Tasks.org synced with Nextcloud, Logseq for random notes, Markdown or comments in Typst documents in certain contexts

9.Office suite (docs, spreadsheets, etc.)

Typst or LaTeX for documents I make myself. LibreOffice or Collabora app for MS office documents.

10.Messaging / chat

Signal (Molly) and Discord (Vesktop, Revenge) most of the time

11.Video calling

Signal or Discord for personal, Teams for business stuff

12.Social media / microblogging RSS reader / news

Lemmy, Reddit, Instagram

13.Music streaming / podcast app

Tidal for my own playlists, Spotify for playlists from other people, YouTube when I want to randomly listen to something, ListenBrainz and Last.fm for scribbling. I want to set up Navidrome again but last time I did it was a disaster.

15.Password manager

Bitwarden/Vaultwarden

16.VPN / DNS / Firewall

InviZible Pro and Privoxy (uses Tor and I2P). I should probably get Mullvad or AirVPN.

17.Launcher / Android OS (if you use custom ROMs)

Kvaesitso

18.App store / APKs

Obtainium for FOSS, Google Play for proprietary

19.Photo backup / gallery

Syncthing-Fork, Aves Libre

20.Weather

Weather.gov, Windy which tends to be more accurate for more specific locations

If the 20% they don’t support is the absolute most basic of human rights, then as far as I can tell they actually support 0% of what I want.

You should tell Germany to stop arresting and banning people who post anti-genocide stuff on social media

For documents I started learning Typst and LaTeX a while ago and now I greatly prefer either of them over LibreOffice. Being able to write comments that don’t render in the PDF is also very useful (i.e. when I do my homework in LaTeX/Typst I’ll put class notes there as well)

Not too long ago I would have agreed with you. But at some point, I realized I grew up in the same environment they did, surrounded almost entirely by Republican Christian nationalist propaganda, and I saw past it by listening to the people it was targeting. They might be brainwashed, but they can still choose to listen to other people also, but they don’t, so their ignorance is their own fault.

I used to never close tabs and they would accumulate as I kept doing more web searches and other activities. Now when I need to do stuff I usually open a new window instead for different tasks and if I need to free up RAM then I start closing other windows for tasks I’m not doing anymore so it closes all of the related tabs at the same time

I just did my first ebike ride in moderately light rain and so far so good

the 50501.chat lemmy instance also blocks lemmy.ml users which is not suspicious at all

Center right? You’re giving them too much credit

Insurances don’t like paying people, if Cybertrucks become expensive to insure then they’ll charge more to Cybertruck owners

There’s a lot of fake versions, the real one is on Telegram and YouTube

Good thing InstaFlow exists