Adblocking extensions didn't work well on my mobile device, so I set up a pi-hole on my home network. Again, that made browsing the internet seem faster and extended the "better experience" to any device on the network. I think this is what really planted the seed: look at all this information I _had been_ leaking to my DNS provider! At least now I had a local cache that would work across my entire home network and reduce 99% of external DNS lookups. And this was the first cost: others on my home network would complain that "links don't work anymore" (ads), so I had to explain how to temporarily disable pi-hole. Eventually, browsing on guest wifi like hotel was bad enough that I doubled down and run a pi-hole in docker on my laptop in addition to a home network pihole.
After watching "Social Dilemma", I got a bad taste in my mouth for megacorp surveillance capitalism. I stopped using Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp, and Google Search. There's definitely a cost associated with being a little less reachable, but the privacy + mental health gains from reduced social media justified it for me.
One night, I was watching an instructional Youtube video and considered Liking it to save it for later. But then I caught myself: does Google _really_ need to know how much I value cleaning my shower drain? Almost immediately, I realized that hovering over the Like button was probably enough for Google to track this. As a software engineer, I know that it's common to log _everything_ as analytics events and let data scientists/PMs sort it all out later. This level of tracking would have seemed absurd to me 20 years ago, when I was on a 56k dial-up modem. Can you imagine Print Artist, Wordperfect, or other desktop apps "phoning home" on you several/hundreds of times a minute?
This led me down the route of self-hosting. I bought a used Intel Nuc and, using Kiwix, I started hosting a copy of Wikipedia locally. Not because Wikimedia is anywhere close to the worst offender, but because it was a) turn key easy and b) one of my most frequented Internet properties. Next, I tried using NextCloud, ran into issues, and decided that a) vim was fine for text and b) Google can keep tracking my packing lists via Sheets if they want to. I have schemes to self-host Open Street Map but I haven't invested the time. As a compromise, I switched to Apple Maps over Google Maps even though it's objectively worse as a map, and only nebulously better privacy-wise (Apple sure has good privacy marketing). More recently, I've been trying to use my car's built in Sat Nav when possible, and look up routes/turns ahead of driving so that I don't need to rely on my phone for guidance. I also started using my car's MP3 CD player so Spotify can't track my location (and sell it, I presume) and can keep my phone turned off during trips.
And most recently, I'm playing with hostapd to build a home network just for IoT devices to drastically limit their connectivity, Because it's really important to me that Google doesn't know when I raise or lower the thermostat by a degree. /s
This is a huge list of more privacy-focused solutions, but to be honest I reached the point of diminishing returns 20 steps ago with just the pi-hole. But I can't stop! The more conscious I am about my internet/computer use, the more I think I should be blocking. My tinfoil hat is so large that it's causing me neck strain, and I'm sure the time spent on this could be better spent practicing an instrument or reading a book. Also, I acknowledge that despite my best efforts, I've probably only blocked 10% of how I'm being tracked online.
Has anyone else struggled with this? Any tips for how can I learn to stop worrying and love surveillance capitalism?
There are a few domains I own, and registering them leaks my home address, so I signed up for a PO Box. For online payments, I use Privacy.com cards and fill in just my initials and use the PO Box street address (Privacy.com will auth any name/address you supply). I subscribed to Optery platinum for a month to have a large swath of my personal information removed from those spammy people finder web sites.
I switched to Safari because Apple privacy marketing. But content blockers + pi hole didn't seem like enough (just _look_ at all that netstat output) so I installed Little Snitch and subscribed to a well maintained list of rules to block connections to tracking servers.
I don't do any weird stuff like not use my name or not talk about my name online I've seen old passwords I use old usernames a whole bunch of stuff come back in leaks and things like that over the years and I haven't seen anything negative because of that. Google blocks spam on my phone. The only emails I get every day are from things that I know that I signed up for to get but I'm just too lazy to go and unsubscribe and I don't consider that a privacy thing either I just don't give a shit about my email and I know when I'm getting something that's relevant and I don't believe in inbox zero so again who cares.
I just care if stuff on my local network and with my computers and with my online accounts that everything is technically working the way they are supposed to. And right now everything is working on a technical level 100% correctly. So maybe that's something you could focus on instead is to set a bar for yourself for how well you want things to be working for you.
Also it's less the capitalism and the corporations that you have to worry about and it's more those three letter government institutions.
Having a social media is healthy for personal life and work. But have accounts with different emails, names, etc... for political, activism stuff and anything that could be controversial. Keep things separate, giving surveillance capitalism a small and "clean" identity is a good privacy measure
Tor browser is a ready solution to browse anything anonymously
Also you have to think maybe you don't want to give private data to everyone, but for example long term health data from a lot of people, in the right hands, could help you and help others
Maybe start thinking about shared solutions that would help sharing of useful data to be safer and accessible for everyone especially those around you