Notices by May Likes Toronto (mayintoronto@beige.party), page 2

@alcinnz Thanks for your comment, but I disagree. Even Meta's Messenger has an end to end encryption option. If you're on an instance with a malicious admin, they can (in theory) read everything.

There's no option for privacy unless you self host, and that's not the target audience for a post like this.

@TheBreadmonkey You need to find the videos with the angriest people making roti to learn. The anger makes it work.

(or at least that's what I've been told.)

For full transparency, here are all the bad privacy places I still occupy. It's a lot.

Email:
- Gmail is my primary driver. Slowly migrating things to my Protonmail, but uh.... Yeah.
- Google Calendar runs my life. This is the most important thing to move, but also the hardest for me.
- Yahoo. This is where my commercial spam goes. I don't look here.

Chat:
- Whatsapp. I'll try to move my family, I guess.
- Snapchat. It has no permissions. Rarely use it.

Socials in order of how much I use them:
- Discord. It's where my friends and community are. I'm staying here.
- Bluesky. It's not bad yet, but I'm ready to leave if it is. It's where Canadian politics and product chatter live. The Fedi still has my heart.
- Linkedin. It's a part of my work. I hate it with a passion.
- Facebook. Why I keep it. https://mstdn.ca/@MayInToronto/113790276980179446

Productivity:
- Google Maps. I have it set to delete all data. I love it and I don't know if I'll ever move.
- Google Drive
- Google Meets
- Google Docs (an easy move. I'll do this today.)
- Google Sheets (a harder move. I have scripts.)
- Notion (Paid). I'm honestly not sure what I use this for anymore. I hate the way it does formatting.

Guilty Pleasures:
- Youtube.
- Reddit. I managed to ditch it for 9 months, but this is an addiction. Going to try quit again.

Maybe when I have to replace my hardware:
- Stock Android Pixel.
- Windows 10.

You know, this list used to be a lot worse. Progress!

@Fragglemuppet It's more common in bigger cities. It's a food ordering for pickup service.

Started out really big in Toronto by a complete dipshit. Many restaurants didn't get paid in the early days for months. Got their act together once the investors fired the founder, but then started enshittifying again a few years later. Lots of extra fees.

Used to be a flat 10% charge to the restaurant, which is worth it for most restaurant managers to bypass the work of processing payments and taking orders.

@Fragglemuppet It's strange you heard ads for Shopify on Amazon, since they're each other's biggest retail platform competitors.

Amazon to Shopify is kind of like Facebook to your neopets store. You can make it look like whatever you want, but it's still owned and centralized at the core.

For anyone using #Ritual (the food ordering app), it just got acquired by #Shopify

Shopify is run by Canada's oligarchs who wants to be a Bezos. Delete the app if you have it.

https://betakit.com/ritual-ceo-rd-team-members-to-join-shopify/

#canada #tech #food

I'm also in the middle of cleaning up my own tool suite. This is what I'm moving to as time permits and I can afford it. It's okay if you can't do it all.

I want to fully recognize that this move isn't easy. Decommissioning bad places is more important than choosing the perfect place. One piece at a time.

Legend:
- ✅I've moved
- ⚠ I'm here, but I'm not yet a purist
- ⏱ I'll get there

Communications:
- Socials: ✅/⚠ ActivityPub (You are here!)
- Chat: ⚠ https://Signal.org. SMS is insecure, but also a bit harder to scrape.
- Video ⏱ :
- Signal for friends.
- https://meet.jit.si (sign in required)
- https://p2p.mirotalk.com (No sign in).

- Email:
Note: You might want to get your own domain/host with your email address so that you can keep your email regardless of provider. https://www.icdsoft.com/ was recommended.
Otherwise:
- https://Tuta.com
- https://Startmail.com
- (affordable) https://Mailbox.org
- (affordable) https://posteo.de
- ⚠ Protonmail**

Internet:
- Browser:
- https://LibreWolf.net is what a lot of people recommend.
- ✅https://Firefox.com if you're okay with their move towards AI & advertising.
- Blockers:
- ✅ https://privacybadger.org,
- ✅ https://ublockorigin.com/
- Search: ✅ https://duckduckgo.com/ is probably fine.
- ✅Clear your cookies and say no to their 783 partners who process your data.

Passwords & Authentication:
- ✅https://Bitwarden.com/ for passwords
- ✅Get a non-Google 2FA tool (https://Authy.com, https://Ente.io)

Productivity:
- Docs⏱ :
- https://OnlyOffice.com (more online collab)
- https://LibreOffice.org
- https://Cryptpad.fr
- Sheets: ⏱
- Likely https://nocodb.com for all of those things that shouldn't have been a spreadsheet in the first place.
- Same as above, but I'm still undecided.

Cloud Storage Options:
(Still looking. Likely local.)
- https://cryptomator.org
- https://nextcloud.com
- https://owncloud.com/
- ⚠ Proton Drive**
- (Photos) https://Ente.io

Other:
Maps: https://www.openstreetmap.org
VPN: ProtonVPN, IVPN, or Mullvad VPN (See linked post above).

See? There are not a lot of green checks. This is HARD. The walled gardens are hard to escape. That's okay. One step at a time. You can see how bad my current ecosystem is in the next post.

**Note about Proton:
- I don't want to give Proton more money for political reasons. They're fine as a privacy tool if you ignore the politics. We can't afford to ignore the politics. Reason: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/113834852385021286

It's @skinnylatte 's fav veg! Took a while to remember to buy one.

(Celtuce, for the uninitiated.)

Safety reminders for these times:
- Direct messages on Fedi are not encrypted.
- If your instance is hosted in the US, the admin has to comply with US law.
- Discord text chat is not encrypted. Video is.
- Encrypted group chats are only as secure as the people with access and their security practices.

If you're interested in protecting the contents of your conversations or work, follow the #privacy tag. People posts some really interesting things on there.

Your privacy protects your friends too. Do it for all of us.

An excellent step-by-step executable guide to implementing better privacy. https://www.optoutproject.net/the-cyber-cleanse-take-back-your-digital-footprint/

Recommended privacy people:
- @Em0nM4stodon
- @techlore
- @privacyguides
- @thenewoil

More advice from smarter people:
- Passwords & General Privacy hygiene: https://infosec.exchange/@avoidthehack/113867140078775299
- VPNs: https://mas.to/@joeturner/113867181288155342

Recommended privacy communities:
- https://discuss.techlore.tech
- https://discuss.privacyguides.net

The rest of this thread describes options that I'm considering and my personal privacy journey.

(Thanks to @joeturner and everyone else in the community for your recommendations.)

@steve The SNOLAB is so cool!!! My friend did a co-op there and we heard so much about it.

I consider myself quite the expert on building better organizational cultures in tech companies. You can fix process, level up people, build team work, set and communication better strategies and alignment across the work.

What you can't fix are shitty leaders. Most of the time, people build walls to work around them. Over time, the teams get worse because silos form to protect decent teams.

You can't have an effective team without trust. You can't build a healthy org culture when your leader is toxic.

#organizations #culture

@skinnylatte Such an unlucky number though.

@sundogplanets You don't talk about kids in your posts often, so I momentarily imagined you putting baby goats in the car to go for a drive in the frigid winter.

Great mental image. Would imagine again.

Sources:
- $200 from insolvency: https://london.ctvnews.ca/business/article/canadians-financial-stress-ramping-up-despite-interest-rate-cuts-mnp/
- Economy up 41%: https://www.thestar.com/business/say-what-you-want-about-justin-trudeau-theres-still-no-arguing-canadians-became-wealthier-while/article_bd6afbaa-cc3c-11ef-8a5a-b7468842b9a6.html
- 22.9% food insecurity: https://proof.utoronto.ca/2024/new-data-on-household-food-insecurity-in-2023/
- Foodbank usage up 90%: https://foodbankscanada.ca/HungerCount/

I don't understand this obsession with "growing the economy" in Canada when 50% of all Canadians are $200 away from insolvency. You know, we've been trying to grow the economy for ages, and we have!

The Canadian economy grew 41% under Trudeau. Look how much better off we all are. 🤔

- 22.9% of Canadians experience food insecurity.
- Food bank usage up 90% since 2019.
- Rents have skyrocketed across the country.
- Our wages have barely kept up with inflation, let alone gone up with this economic growth.

So to the politicians promising economic growth, when will the people experience it?

#cdnpoli

@skinnylatte which is the good dark soy sauce?

@skinnylatte Curious, what do you think of when you think of the concept of say, your mom: Sounds? Smell? Words?

Manitoba announces that they're going to get rid of homeless encampments... by finding everyone in that encampment housing and helping them relocate. With a realistic plan.

What a kind, human approach to building a better society. Thanks, Wab Kinew.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/homelessness-plan-encampments-manitoba-1.7430630

#mbpoli #cdnpoli #homelessness

@cwebber Here's what I'm hoping for:
- They raise money.
- Realize what they initially planned on doing is unfeasible / not good enough
- Spend a part of that money making it very public that Bluesky is not decentralized
- Spend the rest of that money building interoperability tools.

Alternatively,
- build out the second relay/appview,
- then (somehow, technomagically) drastically reduce the barrier to entry of setting up a 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc etc.

Hey folx, if you're on #proton anything, time to move.

https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503