Practical Paranoia: Navigating A Hostile Digital Landscape

One of the greatest roadblocks to people making real progress in improving our digital experience is apathy. The all too common refrain “they can get anything if they want” ignores the all-too-real reality that “they” can be more than just governments and intelligence agencies. Given our sad state of affairs, they can be smaller and smaller entities as the stakes rise. You would be shocked at what could come your way if you just became enough of a target. To make matters worse, to the worst offenders, everyone is a target. Governments aren’t just interested in spying on you, but seizing more and more control over your entire life. Recognizing the ‘big picture’ of our technological troubles can help us appreciate the long term objectives. It is far too late to merely make a few simple changes to feel ‘safe’.

Privacy invasions are bad, but dependency is arguably worse. Once people are ’locked-in’ to particular tools, they’re vulnerable to future impositions with less ability to change course. The sheer scale of consolidation in our time makes even relatively abstract abuses have immense impact. Subtle propaganda or ‘dark patterns’ can force behavior change in large groups of people. Making the effort to avoid or circumvent these intrusions can be daunting in the best of circumstances. The situation is dire, but is it worth going against the grain?

In today’s digital landscape, even the very idea of privacy appears entirely out of reach. Flexibility and independence is impractical and expensive for the vast majority of people. This is because many of the encroachments that appeared under the guise of convenience have come at significant costs. Many people struggle to recognize the undesirable impacts of tools and services they use, much less devote time to mitigating them. When one becomes aware of these all-pervasive threats, the natural response is to become entirely overwhelmed. It’s a reasonable question to wonder what’s worth one’s effort and what is more pain than peace of mind.

Deciding how far one is willing to go to secure not just privacy, but digital autonomy and censorship resistance will have a lot to do with one’s goals. While I would hope that you’re sympathetic to these aims, it’s certainly a great deal to expect one to make it their top priority. Even worse, in some circumstances like employment, people often have little choice. Those choosing to refuse to adopt the ’latest and greatest’ are often seen as sticklers or ’luddites’ despite there being very valid reasons to have pause. It is crucial to consider the path we’re on and what can be done to navigate in a more productive direction.

A sizable portion of the public has clear ideas of what should be avoided, but a concrete idea of where to go is generally lacking. The Free Software movement has done a great job providing incredible alternatives, but genuinely radical change is required to make an impact for the broader public. Many great strides have been made in public awareness, but actionable steps are often insufficient and/or require significant technical ability. The fight for a better digital future requires a truly independent vision of a better cyberspace that isn’t aiming to put massive demands on the public.

At the very least, we must recognize where things have gone wrong. Beyond merely adapting to every new imposition, strategic choices have to be made. To make real progress one has to accept that this is not an all-or-nothing affair, but it is a war of attrition. Can our greatest and freest minds build something better before everyone is trapped into selling every neuron in their brain? Can we create, build, and share genuine solutions before people are out of options? Do we have the humility to reach out to those behind before they’re trapped in shame and despair?

The broad strokes

Any attempt at narrowing down what’s worth a person’s time is almost definitely going to be contentious and incomplete at best. Each person is going to have more or less available time and resources available to improve their digital experience. It’s easy to blame people for not doing enough, but much harder to consider what steps could be taken to make the right choices more practical. In my opinion, the optimal balance is to be motivated by deliberate decision-making with reasonable expectations, rather than fear.

Simplify

No matter where you wish to draw the line, complexity is bound to cause problems. A disorganized digital life is as problematic as real-world analogues. Cutting back from non-essential accounts/software/systems can go a long way to bring back some peace of mind. Ruthlessly streamlining your digital life can yield time, money and even security benefits. By focusing on tools, systems, and devices that enrich your life, you can avoid the stress of innumerable dead ends. Above all, it is important to remember that we should fiercely exercise our right to refuse various tools, devices and systems while we still can.

Replace the most egregious options

Things are far worse than the “if it’s free, you’re the product” days. If anything, people often pay for the privilege of a user-hostile experience. When things truly can’t be given up, it can sometimes be worth learning a better alternative until you’re ready to make a complete switch. Don’t let purists dissuade you from making small steps to change your digital life, gradual progress is real change. Ultimately, it’s about asking yourself if the product or service is financially incentivized to give a good experience, or simply collect your data. Sometimes, like in the case of social media companies, they also have a vested interest in manipulating you, potentially making the deal much worse.

Fortify your mind

The information landscape is both incredible and tragic, sadly much of it is getting much worse over time. No matter what technological decisions you make, it’s prudent to guard your mind against undue influence. Manipulating minds is big business that scales to incredibly significant power. Being skeptical of information sources, especially those saying what you want to hear is absolutely vital. It’s critical to take time to understand the incentives that your media, news, and entertainment have. It is intuitively clear that entities with the resources to buy the best influence, PR, and advertising are likely not those providing honest value-for-value. Recognize that your trust is an incredibly valuable prize that you should be very judicious with.

Ask others

Odds are, you likely have trusted friends who have already taken many steps to improve their privacy and/or security. Instead of simply following someone’s prescribed plan of what ‘should be done’, it can be incredibly useful to get feedback on how particular things work in practice. It is very easy to put together lists of theoretically good options, but it’s much harder to spend the time properly evaluating then. Learning how various tools or substitutes actually work in practice is much more useful than stressing over perfection.

The Fine details

The best use of your time is to gradually refine your digital habits to work for you. There are crucial areas where you’ll want to start, but pragmatism goes a long way. You’re not going to be able to change everyone else’s habits once you’ve decided what works for you. Flexibility and compromise are necessary parts of adapting to the world as it is.

Digital sovereignty

Reclaiming control over your work, ideas, memories, and files is a great place to start. Prioritizing tools that allow you to work without the internet is a great strategy for long-term resilience. It’s much easier to predict a system you have some control over than a wide variety of online services competing for attention and market-share. If you can’t do anything productive without access to online services, it’s worth wondering how much of your device is wasted computing power.

Offline or offline-first tools go a long way towards allowing you to be productive in a permission-less way. This is an area where Free & Open Source software provides a great deal of abundance. The less dependent you are on online services the less influence corporations and governments inherently have over your processes. By taking action to protect your information and workflows, you’re also building reliable independence.

Communication

Ensuring that your personal communications aren’t being leveraged against you is a pretty critical objective. Why should your sensitive conversations with friends and family be fed into AI algorithms to precisely market or manipulate you? Healthy boundaries are a must-have in a time where companies are rushing to squeeze everything out of you and governments are desperate to suppress dissent. The trouble with improving your communications is that some level of negotiation with others is required. People may have different priorities and ease-of-use is often a very important factor. Communication is definitely an area where choosing the “lesser evil” is a perfectly defensible choice.

OPSEC

Protecting your data is one thing, but protecting data about you is a whole other challenge. Anonymity and pseudonymity are very valuable tools when interacting online. Speaking from experience, using your real name online for a tiny bit more credibility is not worth the many serious downsides. We are in a time where it’s relatively easy for novices to automate cyber-stalking, and there are other severe threats like ‘doxxing’ and ‘swatting’. When people are more polarized than ever, its never been easier for small organized groups to make an example out of a target.

Consider being very careful about what information you share on public platforms, or with services that collect and sell data. So much is already out of your control that what little you can do to protect your identity online is very valuable. Things can seem innocuous and harmful today, but you never know where the winds will blow a decade from now and what makes somebody a ‘fair target’ for harassment and abuse. Fierce insistence on not only your own privacy, but respect for that of others is absolutely paramount moving forward.

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