428

Most of you said you’d switch to Proton Mail for the privacy, even if it meant giving up some of the convenience of Gmail.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago
[-] shifty@leminal.space 13 points 3 days ago

Some food for thought, (excerpt from Louis Rossmann's reply to the top pinned comment):

"with regards to products: if you want to only buy shoes, razors, cars, caulking materials, etc, made by companies & people who support all of your political beliefs, you're going to lose that game very fast. you will waste your life doing the following:

  1. researching every item you buy to death
  2. making these items yourself once you realize it's impossible to find each item you want made by someone who mirrors your ideology
  3. give up & live in a cave

The moment you go down that road of throwing away software products and services because they are made by people whose political beliefs do not reflect yours, you are going to end up living in a cave. That is a lonely world. It doesn't even work!! People who bought the Tesla Model 3 a few years ago would have Ford F-250 Turbo Diesel drivers speed up in front of them and roll coal in their face. And now that same person is getting called a Nazi!!!

the political beliefs of the software i use are irrelevant to me. They only become relevant when these questions arise:

  1. does it stop me from using the software the way i want?
  2. do their political beliefs keep them from being able to make a functioning product?

for gnome, #2 is yes. gnome was bad 10 years ago,it was bad 5 years ago, and it's bad now. i used gnome for a very short time period earlier in 2024 out of morbid curiosity. my machine had 128 gigabytes of ram, rtx-2080, threadripper 2950x processor and gnome still lagged. XFCE just worked! on top of that, gnome sucked to use. i am not using gnome: whether it's "woke" or "anti woke" or whatever else.

if we're at a point in the world where we choose our web browser by the political views of its programmers... we're screwed"

[-] lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

This argument is so weird to me.

Maybe I’m a huge nerd, but I love researching who I’m supporting behind the products and services I use, just in general. If I happen to learn someone has weirdo politics it’s not “researching everything to death,” it’s being careful with my hard earned money.

[-] jmf@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago

I understand you perspective completely. I assume it is a similar battle to achieving digital privacy. It is a good fight to fight and research, but a balance must be found between moral purity and actually living life. It's great when you can get them to align as much as possible, but you could always go further and cut more out, to the point of greatly reducing your quality of life. Maybe you should be reducing your quality, I don't know.

[-] sem 3 points 3 days ago

Like most things, it's not so black and white as Louis paints it. What products you buy and use absolutely is a political choice, but perfection isn't the goal. No one has to be a "perfect" consumer to avoid the low hanging fruit like Chick-fil-A or today's Tesla if those are important issues to you.

[-] eestileib 2 points 3 days ago

This argument is really weak.

"If you're not going to do crunches, pull ups and marine pushups, there's no point in going for that walk."

Yes there is! Don't let the best be the enemy of the good.

this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
428 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy

2326 readers
235 users here now

Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.

Rules

PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!

  1. Be civil and no prejudice
  2. Don't promote big-tech software
  3. No apathy and defeatism for privacy (i.e. "They already have my data, why bother?")
  4. No reposting of news that was already posted
  5. No crypto, blockchain, NFTs
  6. No Xitter links (if absolutely necessary, use xcancel)

Related communities:

Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.

founded 6 months ago
MODERATORS