People have asked me (since before moving to Windows WSL2 as my daily Linux driver) what I think about MS spying on me for everything. The short answer is “I no longer give a fuck.”
Remember, I actually went through the pain and suffering of using a flip-phone for two years (while I still had five perfectly good smart phones) after seeing ProtonMail’s CEO go on TED and talk about privacy and hearing all of Google’s mistakes trying to hear me talk to my phone and sending very private conversations into their cloud storage. That freaked me out so badly I had to do something.
But that has all changed.
Since January 2020 I have put pretty much everything about my life into a live stream at some point, including things that definitely qualify as TMI. It’s not that my position on privacy has changed, just my personal choice to give it completely up. My wife has done the same as a successful artist in the public eye. This conscious decision is what has driven my ability to not give a fuck about “telemetry.”
Besides, I do most of my research using Lynx (which blocks all telemetry) and then open any GUI web pages that I need using that. But even my search telemetry is totally fine. In fact, it helps Google and Microsoft know about it. And I am making that choice.
I fucking hate that MS is forcing people to give up their privacy just like I hate that my Google Pixel phone can be activated by the NSA within five minutes of deciding to snoop on my. I fucking hate that shit. But that is the current state of affairs and not using the dark magic these services and devices provide is even worse because it would hold back my progress. Like “The Ancient One” from Dr. Strange, I use “dark magic” to fight the worse evils of the world, like our fucked up world-wide educational system, corrupt politics, and all the other true evils. I choose to bring the fight in an open public arena. I know how to fight from the shadows, but I choose to stand and fight in the light these days, using as much dark magic as I can muster, and this means selling some part of my soul to use it.
For what it is worth, both MS and Google have been forced into allowing more controls over privacy. And, of course, I have fucking abandoned Facebook and Linkedin. In short, I do not do anything on the Internet or within range of any phone that I don’t want anyone so see on YouTube someday, and I mean anything. I’ve always hated the “but what do you have to hide” argument because it’s bullshit when you consider things like Trump-ism and what happened to Anne Frank. But in my current situation it fully applies.
Related:
Podcast Episode: How Private is Your Bank Account? | Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/who-peering-your-bank-account
Andy Yen: Think your email's private? Think again | TED Talk
https://www.ted.com/talks/andy_yen_think_your_email_s_private_think_again