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Quai Loh's avatar

Get on Fediverse, get on Urbit, learn how to use FreeNet, I2P, Lokinet and Tor. Compartmentalize your identities. Run all major media platforms from alternative front-ends - such as Nitter for Twitter and Invidious for Youtube. These can be self-hosted too. Use Searx instead of Google - it's many times more powerful if you know what you're doing and you can self-host it as well.

VPN-wise I'd recommend PIA and ProtonVPN- though the former has come under some scrutiny due to recently changing hands. Run your own email server - if it's too time-consuming - Proton and Tutanota are the widely accepted options. If you keep active social media profiles - don't actually visit the website - set it up to send you alerts instead. Same with the news media - use RSS or newsletters. Other messaging app options not mentioned by Curtis include Wire, Tox and Ricochet. Services like SimpleLogin, Blur and Anonaddy can hide your email and Blur can even hide your credit card number(though it'll be compelled to give it out instantly if asked).

If you're in the EU - send everyone GDPR requests. There should be copypasta floating around that can be used as a template. Otherwise, get your data into your local storage and out of their hands as soon as possible. Deleting things does have an effect - storing data is costly, analyzing it even more so. Even if it takes a year for your shit to disappear off their servers - it's something.

Don't use shit like Gab or Parler unless you want every fed and Antifa member at your door in the near future. Also, don't ever, ever fedpost or encourage violence. Don't even insinuate it.

Tell this to every fucking boomer you know. And yes, I was just looking for an excuse to post all that.

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Dr. X's avatar

This is quite good.

50 years ago, I was committing insurrection at the Capitol (51, actually) along with 500 000 other overprivileged cathedral wannabe applicants. My peers who had not achieved draft class II-S status were far, far away. At 5:30 AM I was warming by a fire set in a 55 gallon oil drum. Standing next to me was Benjamin Spock (yes, HIM). He was BEAMING. "These are my children", he said.

Well, I eventually took up work in the now shrinking reality-based sector, and said goodbye to all that.

From time to time over the decades, I have run into one of these idiots. I don't know who coined the term "silver ponytails", but you catch my drift. Some of them have children and even GRANDCHILDREN living out the hippie fantasy - drug addicts, STD patients - most of them don't have Ayers-scale trust funds.

But now, I turn around, and what do I see - they have taken over the STATE.

But now, as then, there is a hidden hand. When I really started to go off the deep end in 1969, I was fortunate to have a meetup with some local and national leaders of "the movement". Peace? Love? Fuggedabout it.

They were the people who supported the invasion of Czechoslovakia. They were Maoists. They were pretty good at shapeshifting then, and I'm sure the people running this coup are still pretty good at it.

Everything old is new again in the Biden Spring. The NPR subscribers are weeping tears of joy.

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