Sophocles

I kinda have a niche/weird view on keyboards; I use the default aosp keyboard firewalled for no internet access and with spell check turned off. I find it annoying when it changes what I say, and if Idk how to spell something I look it up and try to remember it for next time. I have typos here and there but mostly I don’t mind and I feel it makes me more deliberate in my use of language.

There are also plenty of open source and generally privacy-respecting keyboards on FDroid like Urik keyboard, so no compromise is needed imo

Heres a little list of things that matter to me personally. I’m sure others would have similar takes.

Medical Practitioners:
Privacy I’d part with: Everything, begrudgingly
Reason: it’s better than dying

Job Sites:
Privacy I’d part with: gov docs, job history, financial history, identity
Reason: Having a stable income is worth giving up a little more privacy than usual. I would never give them computer usage info or biometrics, but having income to eat, have shelter, and help others is important.

Youtube:
Privacy I’d part with: usage data, contact info.
Reason: I do use frontends like invidious and grayjay to get around using the site itself, but I fear one day there won’t be any working alternatives seeing how Google is cracking down so hard. Peertube is great too, but most of my favorite content creators don’t use it. It’s also one of my main sources of entertainment and also knowledge like cooking tutorials, building, woodworking etc.

Google Maps:
Privacy I’d part with: usage data, contact info, maybe even location if I’m traveling.
Reason: I use Organic Maps for navigation, but google maps has far superior information on local business, reviews, pictures, etc. Nothing else like it and probably never will be realistically. I use it via sandboxed browser, and to find cool places to travel to and eat.

Discord:
Privacy I’d part with: contact info (and that’s it). They can pry my ID from my cold dead hands.
Reason: My friends litteraly refuse to use anything else 🤷‍♀️

Windows 10/Easy AntiCheat:
Privacy I’d part with: kernel level access for non-important device
Reason: Certain games are allergic to linux so I still keep windows around and begrudgingly allow kernel level anticheat. These specific games make me happy and are good for my mental health, which offers more than having one out of my many devices secured. I can just use other locked down devices if I need to do more important stuff. I would also never install Windows 11, that’s a hard line for me.

Aside from these, I’ve essentially FOSSified all of my other apps/devices successfully.

TLDR: I would sacrifice elements of my privacy for:
Happiness/Mental Health
Friends/Family
Medical /not dying
A job
Knowledge/Entertainment

In my own experience, it’s less that they spew out politics and more that they are just so defensive and argumentative. A lot of good lemmy communities are based on discussion and sharing cool stuff, while the denizens of those instances and the like are more online to debate, nitpick, and criticize. Like there could be a post of a dog picture and their comment would be critisizing the owner or introducing some political argument that is distantly related. Like bro, just enjoy the dog picture

I wrote/played an instrumental for my mom and she didn’t like it, despite it being high quality and well practiced. Not in a mean way or anything, I just don’t think it’s a good gift in retrospect and it wasn’t her thing. And if you generate it with AI, it might seem effortless/cheap on top of that.

Everyone is different, but I think people like having something in their hands, like a work of art, or a written letter, while a song is more abstract than that.

I personally use Lemmy for 2 things really, tech/foss/privacy news & discussion, and as a social media replacement (memes). When I used to be on the crappy socials, I would only really use them for memes, and left when I started to care more about privacy rights. The very first community I followed was 196 when they migrated away from reddit, so it was essentially what I came here for initially, and then found that the whole platform was miles better for discussion as well.

Anki is what I use; it’s solid, simple, and tracker-free. It’s also on FDroid