I'm old enough to remember when software that sent records of everything you did and websites you visited was called "spyware".
How times have changed.
And I don't mean that spyware has gone away.
@sennomo Yeah. Makes it sound all sunny and nice, doesn't it?
@jgoerzen "Don't mind me, I'm just doing telemetry!" 🔭 🔍 🔎 🎙️ 🔬 📡
@jgoerzen Oh, I remember that as well.
We even had local web-proxies for filtering out this crap from websites, mostly marketed as "adult filters". It had the funny side effect of blocking our Swedish branch of the company as their CEO was named Dick. :)
@harald I know! Problem is, if you used those same criteria now, you'd be removing or blocking Google, Windows, Facebook, Android.... Things "everybody" uses
@jgoerzen Spyware 2.0 ;) https://ar.al/notes/spyware-2.0/
@jgoerzen When such stuff was about to get built into Audacity, people were telling me that I was overreacting because other applications that are definitely much better such as... Discord, or whatever, actively utilize it.
Maybe it's nothing these days, in comparison to video games that consume your entire kernel.
@n0toose Ouch. I use #TrackerControl on #Android . It's amazing how many trackers are in all sorts of apps. Really makes me consider switching to #Graphene or something. https://trackercontrol.org/
@jgoerzen I just started using it, this is literally the best solution of its kind that I have used so far. THANKS!
@jgoerzen Join the club! Me too. Spyware is now the new advertising, so I guess.
@jgoerzen the advertisement world is the new web now and content is forgettable after a flick of the finger.
@jgoerzen its insanity. Browser hijacks, spyware, etc, are mainstream, and the culture itself seems to have moved beyond caring about any of it. Its stunning. My job description used to include defending clients against what is now mainstream. Capitalism turned my internet into *this*.
@Milkman76 Well put. I absolutely agree. It is encouraging to see attempts at alternatives - #Gopher, #Gemini. And more broadly, #Matrix / #Element, #Signal, #NNCP, #Nextcloud, #ssh, #Syncthing, #OpenPGP / #GnuPG / #GPG, #OpenStreeMaps, and so forth. But obviously, while these are all growing, aside from maybe Signal, they are tiny compared to the spyware we all tolerate daily.
I talked about some of these topics here: https://www.complete.org/recovering-our-lost-free-will-online-tools-and-techniques-that-are-available-now/
@jgoerzen "telemetry"