I give up… Privacy is a fool’s game and it’s a losing one at that. We are slowly entering a world where more and more requirements are made on people to own a regular non-hipster cell phone. There are places you can’t even buy parking or look at a restaurant menu without having a proper cell phone.
Maybe the answer is not to flash some obscure on life support operating system on your Google pixel but rather… maybe the answer is to work within the system and simply adjust privacy controls as allotted?
The problem is there are lots of places where fighting makes sense but you have no control. 99% will turn all their info over without batting an eye.
I was invited to an event recently on Partiful. If you’re unfamiliar, this is the company founder by a bunch of former Palantir execs. The only way to RSVP or see the event info or get updates or anything else is to turn over your phone number. I told the person who invited me that I wasn’t comfortable giving these people my info and they responded along the lines of “okay, don’t come”.
I went to a food truck a while back and they wouldn’t even give me a menu or accept my order at the window. Told me I needed to download, order and pay through their shitty app.
Anyone who has my contact information volunteers it in it’s entirety to any shitty app that asks for it. They upload pictures of me (along with the according metadata) to surveillance databases without my consent or knowledge, thinking nothing of it.