I have an extension that can individually disable all the most useless/addicting components of the Youtube site, such as shorts and whatnot. On the search page, I have turned on:

hide Shorts

hide For You

hide Trending

hide 'People Also Searched For'

hide Search Categories

hide Promoted Videos

hide Promoted Websites

hide Suggested Products

Do you know what Youtube has started doing? They are now inserting engagement slop DIRECTLY into the search results, as seen in the image above. It's literally a short, yet it's inserted like a video so you're forced to see it. The only possible way to remove it is by using a privacy frontend, as even on incognito mode, Youtube will look at the three videos you've watched and start inserting shit based off that.

Louis Rossman is right, they all have rapist mentalities... "just let me stick it in"

I live in Canada. My girlfriend is Chinese (also living in Canada), and while we are able to communicate via SMS, her mobile carrier isn't the best, and so there have often been issues for us with regular texting. She expressed a strong preference to use WeChat, at least as a backup option for when texting fails us. While I have some pretty significant reservations, it's not the hill I want to die on. So my question is: what can be done to use WeChat without compromising my whole phone? I'm okay with it if our conversations aren't private, but I'd like to know that I'm not giving unfettered access to all of my phone's systems and data to the CCP. What can be done to limit the reach of this ubiquitous app on my device?

EDIT : Option to vote for Official F-droid Repository https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas/suggestions/47173612-official-f-droid-repository

I noticed that Quad 9 is not able to respond to the spy.pet query:

$ dig spy.pet @9.9.9.9 +short
;; communications error to 9.9.9.9#53: timed out

But Cloudflare DNS is able to do it:

$ dig spy.pet @1.1.1.1 +short
104.26.0.165
104.26.1.165
172.67.74.73

And to be sure, I checked another domain with the same TLD to rule out the option that Quad9 is unable to handle the .pet TLD, but I received a correct answer...

$ dig hello.pet @9.9.9.9 +short
3.64.163.50

Does Quad9 censor DNS queries?

Old post is here: https://lemmy.world/post/14437575

Both OSM and Organic Maps are SEVERELY lacking in businesses. So many places aren't in the directory.

You search for fast food and only a couple pop up. Search for s fancy steakhouse by name, nothing. It shows about half of the weed dispensaries in my area...

Is there a way to update the "phonebook"?

Has shitgle been spending money trying to make all other maps unusable? It sure fuckin seems like it.

The legal situation is more complex and nuanced than the headline implies, so the article is worth reading. This adds another ruling to the confusing case history regarding forced biometric unlocking.

Pi-hole has helped improve my "relationship" with Firefox, or better phrased with Firefox forks like LibreWolf and Tor browser. Cool thing with Pi-hole is that you can watch the query log and see what happened in the background while you were surfing the Internet. I learned that :

• After removing the sponsored shortcuts in Firefox and putting your own shortcuts there Firefox will make connections each time you start the browser. So, if you would have icons on your quick start page in Firefox for let's say EFF, Lemmy, Mastodon, HackerNews, with each Firefox start up, it would query these sites. which I didn't like so much. Since then I've gone back to a complete blank start page, removing search and all those quick start icons, using just toolbar folders with bookmarks.

• Pi-hole defaults to blocking telemetry for Firefox and Thunderbird.

• Signal uses Google servers I saw via Pi-hole. I thought that they were using Amazon servers, but looking at Wikipedia for the history of Signal hosting I learned that Signal went back to Google for hosting.

• Firefox push notification services are hosted on Google servers. LibreWolf removes a lot of Google things that Firefox has by default, but not the push parts. With Pi-hole it is very easy to block that.

The EU's Data Protection Board (EDPB) has told large online platforms they should not offer users a binary choice between paying for a service and consenting to their personal data being used to provide targeted advertising.

In October last year, the social media giant said it would be possible to pay Meta to stop Instagram or Facebook feeds of personalized ads and prevent it from using personal data for marketing for users in the EU, EEA, or Switzerland. Meta then announced a subscription model of €9.99/month on the web or €12.99/month on iOS and Android for users who did not want their personal data used for targeted advertising.

At the time, Felix Mikolasch, data protection lawyer at noyb, said: "EU law requires that consent is the genuine free will of the user. Contrary to this law, Meta charges a 'privacy fee' of up to €250 per year if anyone dares to exercise their fundamental right to data protection."

Does anyone know of an android map app that let's you copy addresses? Waze is fucked and there are like 13 steps to copy it, or you can send someone an enshitification link...

And not google either. Fuck the alphabet

I've never been super-impressed by Rob Braxman. I mean he's never truly wrong in what he was saying in his Youtube videos, but his explanations are over-simplistic, a bit of a shortcut (but fair enough to reach a wide audience I guess), and mostly designed to sell his meh deGoogled cellphones and equally meh privacy services. But all in all, he's somewhat watchable and sometimes informative after I'm done watching all the new videos from the other, more interesting channels I follow.

But lately, his videos seem to have shifted markedly toward unhinged rants and sensationalist conspiracy theory. His latest video for instance is utter nonsense:

Skynet 2024: The Infrastructure is Complete!

I mean yeah, okay, technically he's talking about a real thing. But Skynet? And doomsday Terminator imagery from 1984? Really?

I'm pretty sure the man doesn't have all his fries in the cone anymore. This can't possibly be a conscious strategy to win more Youtube subscribers: this sort of video is going to lose him the part of his audience that has a genuine and technically-informed interest in privacy, and I doubt he's ever going to become a favorite of the sort of crowd who likes conspiracy theories.

Either that or Youtube is a lot stupider than I thought and he noticed an uptick in subscribers when he makes videos like that. At any rate, I really hesitate to click on any of his new videos now.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14393091

NSA ’just days from taking over the internet’ warns Edward Snowden

https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.fennec_dos/

Anyone using it?

If you’re in the US, now’s a great time to contact your Senators. You can either call the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or use the Senate directory to look up your legislators’ contact info.

“Stop the FBI from expanding warrantless surveillance of innocent Americans. The House reauthorization contains the largest expansion of FISA Section 702 since it was created in 2008. Please oppose it -- and please oppose any attempt to reauthorize FISA Section 702 that doesn’t include warrant requirements, both for Section 702 data and for our sensitive, personal information sold to the government by data brokers.”

Is it even possible on android? Is there a FOSS dialer to optionally encrypt some phone calls (non voip) using a pre-shared key with other party?

I'd like to be able to contribute financially to people/communities who run infrastructure, such as nodes, for layers like I2P and Freenet. Where do I find them, and does contributing directly to the projects themselves help in this regard?

Thanks!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14368233

Noob here (and I posted some of this already as a reply o an older post: https://lemmy.world/comment/8190997 )

I actually just installed HeliBoard through Obtainium, and have a bunch of questions.

First of all, I’m confused – I installed HeliBoard_1.2-release.apk . I didn’t really know how HeliBoard_1.2-debug.apk and HeliBoard_1.2-nouserlib.apk were different.

Also, I just installed that and nothing else. It’s giving me suggestions, but no corrections. Is that because I didn’t install any dictionaries? If so, how do I install one – do I just click on the download icon here https://codeberg.org/Helium314/aosp-dictionaries/src/branch/main/dictionaries/main_en_us.dict ? And what do I do then? Sorry, noob here.

On the other languages and autocorrect issues discussed here: https://lemmy.world/post/12769494 – it sounds like it used to have the equivalent of GBoard’s globe icon you could click on to switch languages but not anymore? You have to go to settings and uncheck English and check whatever other language you want to use?

And, it seems like I can do the equivalent of Shift + key on a standalone keyboard (for example, to get 1 instead of Q), but I don’t know how to, or what that’s even called.

Thank you!

Has anyone tried this?

Given the extistence of technologies like Monero and SimpleX chat, I wonder if it is possible for a truly anonymous content sharing platform to exist? And does it?

Use cases:

• sharing pirated content without a link back to you
• journalists or political activists not wanting to be found or caught by a government

The platform should not allow the following to know the details of what you do on this platform:

• users on the platform: should not know the identity of a poster unless they disclose it
• the host of the platform: should not know which content belongs to who, or be able to deduce it via traffic logs
• Intermediates like the ISP, DNS, or your router should not be able to link any content to you. However it is okay if they know that you use the platform at all, just not what you do with it.

Does something like this exist?

Context: my gf mentioned getting a vpn for privacy, and I tried to explain that it "does" help, but it's more like type of windows on a house. It certainly can be part of the package, but it's no where near the foundation.

So i tried to explain the best that i could That if she was worried about online privacy the first step wasn't to mask traffic, but to not submit personal data to anything online like FB, not use Google services that package everything on you together to sell to advertisers, and to limit phone apps to essentials.

But I'm curious on what other steps you guys would consider the "foundation" of online privacy that should be prioritized before a vpn. Any thoughts? Or am I way off base?

Note: this is in context of vpn for privacy. Using vpn to avoid Geo blocking and censorship I see as incredibly valid for those that need it.

I'm taking a long biking trip soon and want to share my live location with my boyfriend in case something happens. Any recommendations for privacy-focused apps that can accomplish this? I'm on Android, he's on iOS.