I love Social media. Let me take that back. I love the idea of Social Media. I despise the way it is implemented by/on Google, Gmail, Chrome, Facebook and Twitter.

In the last 2-3 years I have had numerous posts deleted and I have been threatened with account suspensions on Facebook. Why? Mostly for posting about our great economy when it was soaring. The problem is the truth triggers snowflakes and Millennials and any other age group that doesn’t truly understand how our economy works. Since it goes against their teachings and the fake news they have been brainwashed with they report my posts as offensive and Facebook backs them up. I have since stopped posting about anything other than my cat and where I live and family stuff. Plus the Facebook app on my iPad needs restarting sometimes multiple times a day.

In the last 2-3 years I have been threatened with account suspension on Twitter for retweeting someone else’s “Offensive Tweets”. One of the tweets was a retweet of something President Trump tweeted. The Twitter app on my iPad is slow and I can’t get rid of some ads and warnings that I used to be able to.

For the last 5+ years I have had Gmail scan my private conversations with my friends and family and immediately sell that information to Facebook, Twitter and Google ads. Within seconds of reading an email from a friend, I am presented with ads on Facebook, Twitter and Google ads here on 2AHawaii which coincide with the subject matter of my private conversations. At first I thought it was funny and annoying. But now I am starting to rethink the personal information I agreed to let them scan for and sell to their partners. The Gmail app on my iPad crashes at least once a week and sometimes twice a day.

For the last 6 months or so I have noticed when browsing the web using Chrome, I started seeing ads for the same items every where I went thereafter. That means my browsing history is being used to sell to partners. Including ads from company’s from my location. Meaning they are not only selling my browser history but they are selling my location at the time I was browsing. Chrome on my iPad crashes at least two to three times a week and loses my website list.

The final straw hit me when I drove to Walmart one day. Before I went inside I logged into Facebook to check a message a family member sent to me while I was driving there. I was in Walmart for 5-10 minutes. When I came out I was plastered with ads for Walmart. Facebook used my location from where I logged in to from and sold that info so they could plaster Walmart ads every where Google ads are used. And they sold that tracking info to Twitter as I was plastered with Walmart ads there as well. I am being tracked.

Call me paranoid but I am no longer amused. I realize I agreed to let them do this, but I didn’t realize how far it would get out of hand until now. Then I finally got to watch the documentary called Social Dilemma on Netflix. That literally enlightened me. While I again knew some of what is going on, I did not know the depth of everything these tech giants are doing to me. And if they are doing it to me, they are doing it to the rest of you who use any and all of the above named software products.

After seeing how these tech giants also support the Democrats and the media, I have decided to no longer allow them to make money off of me, invade my privacy and sell my personal information and track me. First I started by finding a private and secure email provider. And it is free for the most part. They don’t scan my emails and they don’t sell my private info. They make money by providing a barebones email account and then charge you for their premium account if you want the extra features. All of the sudden I am no longer plastered with ads for replacing my windows, or real estate ads, etc. Not only that their app has not crashed once and runs quite fast on my iPad. Moving from Gmail to my new mail provider will be painful and slow but so far it has gone smoothly.

I have also made sure to use DuckDuckGo exclusively now. There were times where I would click on a link somewhere and instead of DDG it would use Chrome and I didn’t pay attention. So now everything I browse I use DuckDuckGo. All of the sudden I am no longer seeing ads that relate to my browsing. DuckDuckGo is also as fast as Chrome but it also has not crashed on me.

Today I deactivated my Twitter account. I am on Parlor now. After a few weeks I can say I have not seen any signs of censorship nor ads.

Facebook is next. This will be a long hard and painful transition but I am on MeWe right now and still learning the platform. So far, no fake news and no censorship.

I am also on WhatsApp which is owned by Facebook. So far I am not seeing targeted ads based on my discussions on WhatsApp. But Facebook has threatened to start placing ads on this platform soon. When they do, I am out of there as well. Signal seems to be a good platform to use in its place.

But above all I am mostly seeing only random ads and very few targeted ones. So far my transition from the tech giants to better products has been slow and painful and a bit of a learning curve. But successful so far. The problem is I am distancing myself from my family which still use these platforms. I am starting to convince some to change when I do. But the ones that are too far gone already and buy into the tech giants brainwashing will never move. 

I experience the same things albeit I did delete Facebook over 10 years ago now. I no longer follow friends on social media because it is not what it appears to be. The filtering is not done by the social media companies but by my friends. Many don't realize that we do it but what we present online is vastly different from what is really experienced.
There's a large psychological aspect to social media that companies are leveraging. I was in chat rooms, bulletin boards and done meetups with so-called hackers (mostly script kiddies who knew a bit of VB) and I find that online personas were largely inflated in the early 90s. Nothing much has changed in the human online psyche since then. A sense of anonymity and that other personality/ego comes alive when we are behind keyboards. We all experience it. No inhibitions. It's like alcohol; digital courage. I think that ego/personality factor is the driving reason why a lot of emotionally charged issues are gaining momentum today.
Along those lines of privacy I've been exploring ways to stay off commercial radar. Looking at Graphene OS for a mobile phone and looking at alternatives to DuckDuckGo (I still don't trust anything). I always turn off BT and WiFi when out of the home but I know apps are running in the background, hence why I want Graphene. Problem it only supports up to a Pixel 4a (not 5g). I am not savvy enough to develop my own mobile phone OS. If someone is in the know pass it forward.
The chair is against the wall....

we were talking about chess during thanksgiving dinner
my youtube suggestions yesterday had many chess videos...

"They" also listen. We've had ads pop up after talking about said product.

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we were talking about chess during thanksgiving dinner
my youtube suggestions yesterday had many chess videos...

Chess or chest.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

I experience the same things albeit I did delete Facebook over 10 years ago now. I no longer follow friends on social media because it is not what it appears to be. The filtering is not done by the social media companies but by my friends. Many don't realize that we do it but what we present online is vastly different from what is really experienced.
There's a large psychological aspect to social media that companies are leveraging. I was in chat rooms, bulletin boards and done meetups with so-called hackers (mostly script kiddies who knew a bit of VB) and I find that online personas were largely inflated in the early 90s. Nothing much has changed in the human online psyche since then. A sense of anonymity and that other personality/ego comes alive when we are behind keyboards. We all experience it. No inhibitions. It's like alcohol; digital courage. I think that ego/personality factor is the driving reason why a lot of emotionally charged issues are gaining momentum today.
Along those lines of privacy I've been exploring ways to stay off commercial radar. Looking at Graphene OS for a mobile phone and looking at alternatives to DuckDuckGo (I still don't trust anything). I always turn off BT and WiFi when out of the home but I know apps are running in the background, hence why I want Graphene. Problem it only supports up to a Pixel 4a (not 5g). I am not savvy enough to develop my own mobile phone OS. If someone is in the know pass it forward.
The chair is against the wall....

nope, no one on this site does this...

Chess or chest.

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chest is my IG suggestions...

we were talking about chess during thanksgiving dinner
my youtube suggestions yesterday had many chess videos...

Is that why I keep getting porn ads all the time? 

I experience the same things albeit I did delete Facebook over 10 years ago now. I no longer follow friends on social media because it is not what it appears to be. The filtering is not done by the social media companies but by my friends. Many don't realize that we do it but what we present online is vastly different from what is really experienced.
There's a large psychological aspect to social media that companies are leveraging. I was in chat rooms, bulletin boards and done meetups with so-called hackers (mostly script kiddies who knew a bit of VB) and I find that online personas were largely inflated in the early 90s. Nothing much has changed in the human online psyche since then. A sense of anonymity and that other personality/ego comes alive when we are behind keyboards. We all experience it. No inhibitions. It's like alcohol; digital courage. I think that ego/personality factor is the driving reason why a lot of emotionally charged issues are gaining momentum today.
Along those lines of privacy I've been exploring ways to stay off commercial radar. Looking at Graphene OS for a mobile phone and looking at alternatives to DuckDuckGo (I still don't trust anything). I always turn off BT and WiFi when out of the home but I know apps are running in the background, hence why I want Graphene. Problem it only supports up to a Pixel 4a (not 5g). I am not savvy enough to develop my own mobile phone OS. If someone is in the know pass it forward.
The chair is against the wall....

I’ve had a run-in or two with some script kiddies.    They don’t know what they don’t know. Sound familiar? 

I think I am a fairly realistic person with realistic expectations. I basically have nothing to hide since I don’t do anything illegal. What gets me is that I am allowing the tech giants to profit off me while they donate money they make off of me to politicians who are against my right to keep and bear arms. I think it is time I make a stand against them and this is my way of starting.

in the middle of installing this: https://pi-hole.net/

Also works on other machines via Docker.

in the middle of installing this: https://pi-hole.net/

Also works on other machines via Docker.

Oh, and I forgot to add I will eventually add a VPN to the mix eventually. I want to upgrade my iPad first since the one I have is quite old and pretty slow as it is. I don’t want to slow it down any more than I have to.

Chess or chest.

"Cheat" would be a popular topic.....j/s

Social Media has morphed from a free bulletin board for individuals to reconnect and businesses to advertise into a Big Brother monstrosity.  They know what you're thinking about before you even go online to do a search.  The have so much info on us, they can model what the majority of users with the same profile is apt to be interested in, and POOF!  You suddenly get ads for that.

Some say Amazon's Echo devices are listening in on conversations, which might explain the "chess ads".  I think it's more likely that someone in the conversation did a Google or Amazon search for chess or chess sets, and by virtue of their location at your home and being social media friends, you are also interested in chess.  That's one scenario.  I do know if you Google a widget, you'll start seeing embedded ads in FB, Twitter and other apps for widgets.  They are all connected, and they know what you like.

After I saw the direction the SM giants were headed in 2012 after Obama was reelected, I closed my FB account and started using Twitter more.  Soon, that became a cesspool of "gangs" going around the site reporting anyone they didn't agree with of some vague violation of the TOS.  Trolls try to get you mad enough to retaliate with name calling after being called 1000 names by the trolls, and that one tweet gets reported by 20 trolls in their gang as offensive. 

By getting people banned and angry enough to just give up, they are creating a perfect bubble of Liberal-Progressive-Socialist propaganda which really only represents about 5%-8% of adults.  But the MSM uses Twitter as a source to create their "news", lazy do-nothings that they have become.

There are other SocialMedia sites that offer better treatment of its users than censoring only Conservatives, but even those are being infiltrated by Liberals, too.  They troll and create havoc just like on the other sites, just to mess up the experience for others.

in the middle of installing this: https://pi-hole.net/

Also works on other machines via Docker.

I've been using pi-hole for a few months installed in a Docker on my UNRAID server.  Super easy to install and set up. 

The only minor problem I had was when the UNRAID server went down during a power outage.  My network stayed up, but the UPS connected to the server had more of a load on it and didn't have enough battery to last as long as the UPS with only a cable modem and router attached. 

I had all end devices pointing to the UNRAID server's IP for DNS resolution which meant if the server is down, I have no DNS server.  I changed the devices back to look for the router, and then I set the router to use the UNRAID server's IP for DNS first, and added the IP address for the public Google DNS server 8.8.8.8 as an alternate.  Now if my UNRAID Pi-Hole server is down, devices can still resolve IP addresses via Google.

to add I notice that in my GeeMail account all emails with conservative or gun topics are moved into the spam folder.

in the middle of installing this: https://pi-hole.net/

Also works on other machines via Docker.

The nice thing about Pi-Hole is it's not app or device centric.  The program blocks ads from known sites from making their way onto your internal network at all by blocking those DNS addresses.  So, no matter if you're on your PC's browser, a SmartPhone app, or your Amazon FireTV streaming device, if the Pi-Hole list sees an ad, it'll get blocked before reaching the device.

 

Never heard of piehole. Will have to take a look. I use Quant as a search engine because duckduckgo often censors results for left leaning bias, but at least neither of them track. Also using Brave as a browser really helps cut down on the adds and I no longer trust Firefox. Cancelled FB years ago and never regretted it once, but it is frustrating that 2a orgs still do their political organizing on there. I want to sign up for Parler but waiting until I get a burner phone because of concerns over someone buying the company and handing over information to The Party.

What is crazy about this election fraud thing is that the DNC already knows who is never going to vote for them because of partnerships with all the big tech platforms, so figuring out how to disenfranchise people on their Naughty List is just a technical problem. With mail in voting how would we know?

But gargoyle does not even have to steal votes to influence the election. Their regular unapologetic abuse of power is a direct danger to a free society.

https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/tucker-dems-used-the-power-of-big-tech-to-win-presidential-election

Wow, just ordered esstac mag holders and a review now pops up on my YT

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Wow, just ordered esstac mag holders and a review now pops up on my YT

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Google owns YT.  So almost anything you Google will show up in the YT ads.

FB and Twitter also share those cookies.

Clearing cookies can be one way of getting rid of targeted ads, but you will get ads unless you have ad blockers of something like Pi-Hole.

Wow, just ordered esstac mag holders and a review now pops up on my YT

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Just wait until you start realizing that they are tracking your movements through your log-ins to the various SM accounts. For me that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.