A while ago I reached a point in my privacy journey where I simply felt bored. It’s not a result of going too far in privacy, but simply my threat model has caused me to let go of a lot of things that used to entertain me (games, movie streaming, short form video, etc.) The entertainment landscape in privacy seems pretty bleak, since you no longer own the movies you watch, the games you play, and lots of proprietary software along the way. I entertain myself through FreeTube, physical copies of movies, and offline installations of games like Minecraft, but it’s still a step down from how it used to be.
What do you do to keep yourselves entertained in a privacy conscious way?
Never mind the security cameras, and the drones, and the smartphones, and the satellites…
Where I live, there are security cameras all over the buildings and the lamposts and the traffic intersections and the parking lots, plus Ring/Nest doorbells everywhere. There are more cameras outside the buildings than inside. Everybody is carrying a smartphone and I see people taking pictures or video with them all the time.
Drones and satellites are really only outside.
So I don’t agree with your conclusion.
Buy a book with cash. Read the book.
The entertainment landscape in privacy seems pretty bleak, since you no longer own the movies you watch
It’s the other way around.
Board games with friends and family. My brother rotates hosting board game night with his friends and it’s great fun.
You can own movies by pirating them. same goes for games etc
When people get games from e.g. fitgirl-repacks, do they play them offline? (just curious, I don’t play games)
I just get a separate device with a fake identity and no personal data for games and proprietary software. Short videos are hosted by very invasive companies and don’t have any APIs or anything to make custom privacy-friendly frontends so it’s out of the question (fortunately imo because that things are addictive and can degrade a person in months). Idk much about movies because I’ve never used a paid movie service like Netflix but since they’re paid, privacy is very questionable there.
Unfortunately digital entertainment is very privacy-invasive overall. You can fix some of the privacy issues by the cost of convenience but some things will remain too invasive to be viable in many threat models.
Short videos are hosted by very invasive companies and don’t have any APIs or anything to make custom privacy-friendly frontends so it’s out of the question (fortunately imo because that things are addictive and can degrade a person in months).
If you view tiktok content thru ProxiTok, it fails to be addictive because things like autoplay and recommendations are disabled.
ProxiTok
Never heard of it but if a client with proper profiling mitigation exists, it’s awesome. Though (as I understand) since there’s pretty much no useful content on TikTok (unless it’s a shortened copy of a YouTube video or something), good recommendations are really needed to keep the user entertained so privacy-focused clients without total profiling kill the point of the app.
