I value my privacy and I do whatever I can to protect it. One of the tools I use to protect it is uBlock Origin. I haven’t noticed this until today, partly because I usually don’t follow news, and somehow I wasn’t shocked at all. Google is forcing users to stop using uBlock Origin and other privacy tools.

Apparently, Google is phasing out Manifest V2 in favor of Manifest v3 on its web browser, Chrome, and as a result, extensions using Manifest V2 stop working. Google is excusing this action by claiming the Manifest V3 enhances security and privacy of the users, which we know is false since Google’s tracking of users and violation of their privacy is what makes them money, and benefit is the only ting that drives them forward.

Chrome, and its parent project Chromium, are Google’s arms to impose its control and force on the web. They are what Google uses to force its “standards” on to web and control how users are able to browse it. Sadly, they have been successful so far, as Chrome (and Chromium-based browsers) are leading in usage share reports.

Extensions such as uBlock Origin are essential for people like me, who value their online privacy and are unable to tolerate the web today. I remember not having a tracker-blocker for an hour last year when I was setting up a new browser on a new computer I was going crazy.

Well, this doesn’t currently affect me as I never use Chromium-based browsers. Even ones such as Brave who advertise themselves as privacy-respecting are no good for me as I believe no matter how good they are, they eventually are empowering Google. I use Firefox-based browsers to, as little as my part is, fight back against monopoly-empowering web browsers.

You could switch to Firefox as well. It’s backed by nonprofit Mozilla Foundation and doesn’t miss a feature you’d get on other web browser. It’s also respectful to your freedom, published under a free (as in freedom) license.

I know Mozilla have not been acting so well recently but currently it’s the only choice we have Also, what we should do is not to boycott Mozilla, but forcing them to act in favor of the community, specially when it comes to choosing between what they offer and what Google has.

Web is already going to hell but it’s not too late. We still can take it back, and we should do whatever we can to take back control, for the sake of freedom, security, and privacy.

Simone’s post “Outside the Wall” is inspiring. I’ve done it some time ago and I still revisit my password manager from time to time to check if there’s anything left I can delete. I first started this when I decided to limit my presence on social networks and service sites.

We should start such trend. Let’s de-bloat our online/digital life and post about it on our indie personal blogs to inspire others. We don’t need all this online presence and we need to take back our control on our digital life and freedom.

Of course, if you really need to use one of the silo accounts, I understand but we are mostly becoming addicted and slaves to these giant services and networks. Let’s take back our rights, freedom, privacy, and life. We spend so much time maintaining our presence on these networks and it needs to stop.

Let’s do this.

About a week ago, on my day off from work, I was in a car with a friend and we were stuck in traffic when something interesting happened.

When we hit the traffic, my friend instantly took out his phone and opened Instagram to watch some videos. It was interesting because we weren’t even fully stopped when he pulled out his phone from his pocket and he did that while still driving.

I was worried about our safety at that time but what concerned me more later was that is social media, specially short and random material like those on Instagram, making us impatient? I was interested in that and tried to watch my friends more carefully. Most of them had YouTube and Instagram installed on their phones and I realized how much people are addicted to these materials.

And I tried to further my semi-investigation by trying to show them a longer video, about 20 minutes long, and surprisingly they got impatient about 8 minutes in. They also have problem watching movies, I realized. Can’t put away their phones without constantly checking their notifications, messaging people, or even checking short videos. WHILE WATCHING THE MOVIE!

This semi-experiment made me concerned because I like to watch these random short videos sometimes. Of course I don’t have Instagram or any other social network on my devices so I think I’m less affected but it still made me worried.

So now I try to watch less of these videos, read more books and articles, and watch movies without checking my phone. I try to avoid opening YouTube links, avoid random short meaningless material, and even write more to take my mind off things.

It’s really worrying how toxic these social networks can be. Aside from the material we see on them, the impact they have on our brain is stressing.

I think the way Google+ worked was the nicest between social networks. Remember the circles? We would add every friend or person in a circle and we could choose what to share with each circle.

Sometimes some people were included in various circles and we could choose to share stuff with various people based on what information or material we wanted to share. That was nice. It was a replica of what we actually have in real life regarding our friendships.

I think social networks and microblogging services often try hard to give us a real-life experience and Google+ was the nearest we had ever.

But it was a social network after all and it was operating under Google so it was a nightmare regarding privacy and user rights, I still wouldn’t use it but the concept was very nice. If I had to use a social network, and there was a Google+-ish option, I would definitely choose it.

I don’t know how common is this around the world but I’ve recently been to a lot of restaurants where they’ve stopped giving people a physical menu! Now I see QR codes everywhere where I have to scan to see the menu.

I’d like to see myself as a tech guy but this is nonsense. Give me the menu. I don’t want to scan some QR code or be forced to give away my phone number so I can order some coffee or eat some cake.

Maybe I don’t have a smartphone, maybe I don’t have cellular or Wi-Fi connection, or maybe I simply don’t want to scan some random code in a random place and visit a random web site. And I was almost tolerating all of that until I was told that some cafes and restaurants force people to sign up on a third-party web site to get the menu and they are forced to pay online for the meals.

It’s wrong at every level. I want the printed menu. Maybe some people are fine with this or even like it but I’m not and I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people like me so even if you’re doing this privacy-violating menu thing, have some printed normal menus so concerned people like me can eat. We pay you too, you know?

OpenAI says it’s ‘impossible’ to create AI tools like ChatGPT without copyrighted material. While corporations are doing everything they can to restrict people from downloading or using anything copyrighted and refuse to release stuff under free licenses, they want us to wave all our rights so they can re-sell (and more importantly impose their proprietary licenses) to us what we already own.

People are still being fined, sued, and threatened by various punishments for simply downloading a 20-year-old movie yet are expected to provide their material to these giant corporations for free and even if they don’t, they can’t do anything about it as we see thousands (or millions) of examples of copyright violations by these corporations and copyright infringements every single day regarding AI training.

It begs the question that what privacy and data regulators are doing about this and how people can protect themselves from these data-hungry violators. I’m amazed about how advanced and intelligent computers and programs have become but I care more about my rights than a computer program being able to replicate people’s material, manipulate them and create something (supposedly and allegedly) new.