I hope that so far I've managed to share some good ways to make your computer, cellphones and other devices safer, more secure and more private..
Today's Privacy Cookbook is the opening salvo on a cause of immense concern and which affects many of our lives especially from the privacy angle: Social Media.
I have heard this so many times
I have no choice and need to be on social media or I can't catch up with my family, friends or local sports team.
BS that people think and say
It always makes me cringe! After all, wouldn't life be so much better without the privacy invading social media apps on your phone or the messenger services on your PC and all the other 'delights' that come with them?
So how would it be if I told you that can get your social media fix, in private and on the go and on all your devices??? How cool would that be? your computer!
Let's start with Twitter!
There is a great way to follow all important twitter accounts via nitter! Yes it's that simple, nitter.net is basically twitter. It pulls twitter without any side effects and shows you what you need to know!
Let's make this even more interesting, of course you don't want or need to open every single twitter account over nitter, one by one. Use RSS!
So
https://twitter.com/DecentralToday
becomes
https://nitter.net/DecentralToday
and via RSS
https://nitter.net/DecentralToday/rss
This means you can use an RSS reader like feeder on Android or Reeder (iOS) and, of course, Thunderbird on Windows, Mac and Linux and have all the tweets you need, just without the unwanted add-ons!
Now you'll want to tell me that you can't tweet! Yes, that is true, however, there are a couple of options.
Option 1 is by using twitter for your daily personal tweets in a container on Firefox at:
And, Option 2, which is even better, IMHO, just read your tweets then jump on to Mastodon...great people, great information and you get to 'toot' instead of 'tweet'...way cooler!
Now for Facebook
I have to admit there is no real solution here but again you can use the Firefox container option.
Mozilla Firefox
However, before you continue using Facebook, perhaps you should read this:
As a messenger and WhatsApp replacement, get your tribe on to Signal or Riot. If the argument is but they only have that.. and they wont download any other messenger, then frankly, they're not serious about privacy. Signal download takes 5 seconds and if people are not willing to download that then why should you need to be willing to trust their already proven to be compromised messenger app! That said, we should also all, as a matter of respect, observe a 'code of conduct' whereby we respect a.n.other's choice of privacy app, don't drop their contacts in groups without their permission and don't bombard them with stuff they don't need or want. You know your friends!
Coming to YouTube
In fairness, we all pretty much love YouTube! Well, should we say that we love the idea, the concept behind it!?! Yes, the app is great, but not so much the web interface! Use invidios as a replacement, it is YouTube, just without the ads, the logging, the monitoring and the harvesting of your data.
Read more about Alphabet here
There is another app available on Android called NewPipe which even allows you to subscribe to YouTube channels, without an signup and even without having a Google account! NewPipe is not just streaming YouTube but also PeerTube so you have even more fun and greater usage options than on YouTube itself.
Remember, in previous Chapters, we have published our great blocklist that ensure you are safe from the original social media and tracking companies! Check it out and apply it the way you feel fits best for you and your devices.
Last, but not least, what about your friends foodie pics on Instagram?
Or checking what Jennifer Aniston has to say and sharing that with Friends ;)
There's a site for that and it is called Bibliogram.art and pulls just like Nitter (for Twitter) the Instagram feed that you're looking for!
So, in conclusion, the really good news is that you can redirect all of these in the way you want to use them!
For example, someone send you a twitter link and it opens automatically in Nitter or an Instagram post on Bibliogram or a YouTube on Invidios...perfekt!
On Firefox, you achieve that with Privacy Redirect
Simon Brazell
On Android, you can do the same thing with the same add-on if you use Firefox or Fennec, but you can and should also install NitterizeMe, which will handle all these requests for all of your apps.
Once again, I would like to invite you again to become more privacy focused and less of a corporate commodity! That is exactly what you are when you use Google and co! Join us on Mastodon, Riot and Telegram. Connect and share your privacy tips and/or send us links related to privacy, decentralization and the blockchain.
The future won't be centralized! So start to decentralize.today :-)
