I only really got into taking privacy more seriously after Trump got kicked off everything. Big tech has waaaay too much power, most people are fine with it and many people think cancel culture is ok. It was clear I needed to up my privacy game not just because of current trends, but because it will make transition to a federated internet easier. I only found out about the fediverse thanks to Null, but I think it's pretty much going to be the only viable internet in the future as everything else will be sterile as fuck. Especially if Biden fucks with certain laws, which I assume he will. It's best to learn about things now before corporations try to smear or conceal tools people use to protect their privacy. We already have screeching about the fediverse not being something they can censor.
But there is pretty much no avoiding a total invasion of privacy at this point in time, given shit like the intel management engine is built into most chips, AMD has a similar thing iirc, and neither has been fully deactivated yet afaik. Built in, unavoidble spyware. Also I'm going to say avoid lenovo. I owned a lenovo laptop and it was creepy as fuck given Lenovo have a history of putting malware on their pc's, and I literally had kaspersky (I know some people dislike AV due to privacy, but still) saying there was a lenovo program trying to access my webcam. Fuck that. Remember to tape up your webcam, or if building a PC, don't fucking install one, just have a USB plug in. I hate how laptops all come with webcams and microphones built in. On that note, fuck normies for making shit like Cortana a thing on everything. I need to figure out how hardware works to rip out the microphones and just use a usb, there is no way in hell MS isn't spying on people. Just like Amazon and Alexa, or was it siri? Either way waaaaay too many spying machines sold as things of convenience. Wow so hard to type something into a searchbar, the built in, always on microphone makes things so much easier.
