# Privacy

*Privacy is just a nicer word for [censorship](censorship.md).*

[Digital](digital.md) privacy is the ability of someone to hide "sensitive" [information](information.md) about himself; nowadays "privacy concerns" are a big part of [capitalist](capitalism.md) [bullshit](bullshit.md), [fear culture](fear_culture.md) and [fight culture](fight_culture.md), and fall under so called [computer security](security.md), yet a greater area of bullshit business. Of course, there are other forms of privacy than digital, for example the physical privacy [in real life](irl.md), however in this article we'll be implicitly dealing with digital privacy unless mentioned otherwise, i.e. privacy with respect to computers, e.g. on the [Internet](internet.md). For starters let's stress the whole business around privacy is [bullshit](bullshit.md) that's wasting energy which could better be spent on actually useful things such as feeding the hungry or curing the ill. Do not engage in privacy hysteria.

{ I have my personal data publicly online and under CC0 for anyone to download and do anything with, including my real name, date of birth, medical info and even nude photos. Literally nothing bad ever happened due to this. ~drummyfish }

Digital privacy can be further categorized. We can talk e.g. about **communication privacy** (emails, chat, ...), **data privacy** (cookies, tracking, medical data, ...), **personal privacy** (intimate photos, sexual orientation, ... ), **individual privacy** (identifying information, anonymity, [spam](spam.md), ...) etc. Privacy is also closely related to **[cryptography](cryptography.md)**, as [encryption](encryption.md) is how information can be "protected" against reaching unauthorized entities, and to [free software](free_software.md), as using safe tools with available source code is crucial to avoid malware. Still, to achieve high privacy additional appropriate behavior has to be adopted, e.g. protection against [spyware](spyware.md), using proxies and/or onion routing, turning off browser [cookies](cookie.md), avoiding fingerprinting, avoiding [social networks](social_network.md), avoiding revealing potentially identifying information etc.

**Society is becoming more and more obsessed with privacy and that is DISASTROUSLY WRONG.** It leads to unprecedented [censorship](censorship.md), people are hiding their email addresses so it's impossible to reach anyone, photos of child faces are wiped from the Internet, more and more videos on the internet now just blur everything that's not the main focus of it, "just in case", people are even afraid to credit other people by name even if they are literally legally obliged to by a license such as CC-BY-SA ([lmao](lmao.md) https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=19322). Everyone is like OH NOES they gonn steal my personal face pixelzzz, MY FACE IS LIKE MY HOUSE. Such [retardedness](retard.md) is beyond words.

{ Critique of privacy on a similar note: https://archive.li/bRiVs#90%. ~drummyfish }

In addition to all this, increasing "privacy" and anonymity are responsible for **immense [cultural](culture.md) damage** as well. Nowadays we live great portions of our lives online, our interactions and relationships live on the Internet, and as we're covering up more and more of ourselves, we **dehumanize ourselves**. We form relationships with letters on the screen, with no face, body language, age, gender, [race](race.md) or country. People conceal who they are and the insane [identity politics](identity_politics.md) all around only adds fuel to the fire by encouraging us to DENY who we are, to pretend to ACTUALLY be what we WISH to be. There is nothing wrong with wishes and desires, but it's important to acknowledge reality too, even if we're not particularly happy about lack power to change it: a 10 year old girl from Sweden can never see the world through the eyes of a 60 year old man from China, a starving African orphan is not the same kind of human as a rich American university student -- who we physically ARE plays an irreplaceable role in social interactions, feeling emotion, falling in [love](love.md), choosing friends and much more. This all has been removed by ever increasing anonymity, we are severely deprived of humanity, everyone's been reduced to a username. This wasn't always so -- back in the times of old Internet people shared their names and photos and even contact information, it's one of the reasons for why the Internet was so much happier and brighter back then.

**Are you scared of being doxxed?** Why? Seriously, please ask yourself: what are you scared of specifically? Identity theft? Stalkers? Do you assume someone is going to murder you in your sleep for opinions expressed on the Internet as soon as there is an opportunity? It's natural to feel afraid when all you hear from the media is scary stories, but it's really the same as never swimming in the sea for being afraid of sharks, never flying a plane for being afraid of a plane crash or never going out our of fear of a terrorist attack, the [probability](probability.md) of such a disaster is negligible and your fears are irrational, planted in your brain by [fear culture](fear_culture.md) and business profiting from it. Consider someone like [Richard Stallman](rms.md) -- he is more famous that you will ever be, holds and promotes countless unpopular opinions (including very controversial ones related to subjects such as [pedophilia](pedophilia.md)) and has enemies among the biggest tech [corporations](corporation.md) in the world. And yet we know all the most "sensitive" data about him, including his full real name, parents, appearance, voice, date and place of birth, signature, [email](email.md), detailed biography, exact dates and places of where he's giving speeches and a lot more. And he's been just fine, just like countless other similarly famous people.

**Accepting privacy inevitably comes with accepting pretense**, i.e. if privacy and anonymity is important, we are accepting the fact that people publicly pretend to be something they are not and only under the mask of anonymity will say what they truly think, i.e. we accept that pretense and public lying is normal. That's a completely fucked up mindset which a [good society](less_retarded_society.md) cannot accept. We have to make it so that people can be who they are publicly, that they can say and act publicly as they act in private.

[Extrapolating](extrapolation.md) the trends to the [future](future.md) can provide a glimpse of where sustaining the craze can take us. If you go outside your house, you'll always have to wear a full body protective cloak, face mask and, of course, the necessary privacy high heels -- your body proportions and height are of course your private data, you don't want to give these away to all the cameras lurking in the streets. You won't be able to converse with anyone, not even closest friends and family in complete privacy -- your information is not safe with anybody, anyone can slip or give it away unknowingly and your privacy is only as strong as the most vulnerable citizen in your proximity, so no, your friends mustn't know your favorite color, pet names, number of siblings, your gender, age, that's all too sensitive, a sufficiently smart AI will be able to deduce your password from it, or connect it with other information flying around, catching you into its net. Better minimize talking to your friend about anything at all, or rather have no friends at all, better not even go outside unless it's a matter of life and death, better stay in your isolated underground cellar, be anonymous and safe, die happy in the darkness knowing no one knew anything about you, as if you never existed at all.

Privacy obsessed [NPCs](npc.md) -- so called *privacists* -- also approach it completely wrong, they are usually nothing more than 105 [IQ](iq.md) victims of the bullshit business, they consume privacy YouTube videos like a grandma consumes ads on [Facebook](facebook.md). They think that [updating](update_culture.md) to the latest (i.e. yet more bloated and fucked up) version of web browser, paying for 7 proxies and VPNs and installing a password manager on their iPhone will allow them to use all the glorious "[modern](modern.md)" tech safely. If one REALLY wants to minimize giving away data, the way is plainly through minimizing use of technology and using old, extremely simple computers where one can't avoid it. If you want real privacy (which you shouldn't, but still if you really really feel the desire), throw away your phone, cancel Internet connection, cancel bank accounts, pay cash only, go live in a forest and if you need a computer, buy a 30 years old laptop that is PHYSICALLY incapable of running modern spyware and which didn't yet have hardware built-in spyware in its [CPU](cpu.md), use only good, [minimalist](minimalism.md) software that, again, isn't even capable of running malware -- if you use text only web browser that can't run JavaScript, you can't get abused by JavaScript, if you don't have any online accounts, you can never get "hacked" etc. If you want to have real time connection to Internet in your pocket, watch YouTube influencers, buy newest games over Internet, play Roblox with trannies and stuff like that, just accept you will never have any kind privacy whatsoever, you are already a slave of the system, you are in their chains, you have zero power over anything -- thinking otherwise is just illusion by which they sustain you in their system. They keep you dumb by making you think you're smart. Real smartness is in doing what they don't want -- abandoning their system, stopping paying for their shit, moving to the forest, using old stuff.

Do you have **"nothing to hide?"** Tinfoil privacy maximalists absolutely love to "debunk" this over and over just like [atheists](atheism.md) love to debunk flat [Earth](earth.md), it's as if it makes them orgasm. Don't take them seriously, by now they're nothing more than a religiously obsessed cult willing to sacrifice everything to a goal whose real purpose has long been forgotten, the goal of "privacy" is now a self serving one and privacists value it above everything, all they desire is to dedicate everything to playing a life long hide and seek game, but most importantly they want to drag everyone into the game. If the question of privacy was once raised to improve well being of the people, privacists nowadays sacrifice well being to achieving more and more privacy for its own sake. Yes, you've probably been forced to have at least something to hide, for example your [password](password.md) -- it's not that the claim would be completely false but how it's interpreted, the fatal error lies in how we read the truth, what implications we deduce and how we react. It's not dissimilar to the infamous claim that "[race](race.md) and gender is a social construct", a technically true statement serving to promote lies. The fact that you have something to hide doesn't imply it's something to accept and embrace or be afraid of, that it's something that couldn't change. Stating "you always have something to hide" is now carrying an unspoken, implicitly implied philosophy of "hide absolutely everything, just in case", but that leads to hell, you accept the dystopia AND start playing by its rules, start supporting it and feeding it, you buy into endless [fear](fear.md) and [bullshit](bullshit.md), just like those who for example spend their lives by hoarding [money](money.md) instead of living -- in the world of privacists there is no such thing as "moderate privacy", no, privacy maximalists will tell you it's of utmost importance to hide absolutely EVERYTHING, even such trivia like your favorite [color](color.md) or your style of speech, because all of this presents data that will eventually lead someone to guessing your password, fingerprinting you etc. No, this is all absolute insanity, the fact you have to hide something at all shows something is deeply [wrong](capitalism.md) with the society -- if anything, you should try to **fix the society so that you no longer have anything to hide**.

Here is **how to 100% solve privacy**: make it moral to make ALL information public, always, without any censorship, "protection", laws and other bullshit. { NO, it's fucking NOT a joke or "satire", I am 100% serious. More like 3000% actually. It's extremely smart, that's why people don't do it. ~drummyfish } This way passwords will become obsolete, which has a nice side effect of also ending a lot of capitalist bullshit such as banking and [intellectual property](intellectual_property.md), people will have to start sharing. Governments and corporations will also start taking extreme advantage of the situation, so people will stop using online technology as much and maybe they'll even finally decide to ditch governments and corporations, another great leap in development of society. People will also stop being concerned about their "private data" -- at first they will be freaking out that everyone can see their dick pics and what porn they jerk off to but since EVERYONE's data will be visible, they will find out that everyone watches weird porn, that everyone has a dick (well, about half of population), and they'll just stop acting like chimps in a while. This literally only has advantages and it solves many of our greatest issues all at once. At this point privacy has been solved. { Leave the Nobel Prize at my door, thanks. ~drummyfish }

{ I'm thinking of a life experiment: start living without a password. In it I would literally make my password public on my website and start to somehow live like that, i.e. I would stop using a bank account, I would stop using social media accounts, would just host my own git repository and email. That doesn't even sound so difficult, I'll probably give it a try one day.

UPDATE: Well, I must admit it IS difficult to do nowadays. Some people even shared their passwords with me now, I am ashamed I still wasn't able to do the same. Some people kindly asked me if I could share my password with them and I have to admit I feel very bad about not being able to share my super secret password, though I tried to share at least my weaker password and a few other secrets. If you're not one of them please don't ask me for it now, when I want to do it I'll do it publicly, it's something that I DO feel anxious about right now because I am not yet ready for this big step, it's an ideal I want to reach one day but am not strong enough to do at this point -- kind of like becoming homeless or even abandoning all earthly possessions, I wasn't strong enough to do it yet, but I still think it's something to aim for that could be greatly freeing. I dislike it when people just talk without acting, but I have to say this is much more difficult than sharing my nudes or releasing all my works into public domain, the system is set up to make this a kind of suicide, and one must take some steps to be able to withstand it, just like one has to train before climbing a high mountain. I am shitty and weak and cannot do everything I would love to do immediately, I really wish to do it at one point. ~drummyfish }

**As of 2023 privacy is impossible to achieve** unless you live in wilderness completely independently of the main "civilization". If you use any kind of computer (laptop, TV, phone, car, camera etc.), you are already being watched: basically all [CPU](cpu.md)s have proven hardware spyware in them capable of bypassing encryption, see [Intel ME](intel_me.md) etc., no matter what operating system you use, and even if you use some obscure CPU without it, you are watched through your Internet activity (even if you use a "secure" browser, which you most likely don't even if you think you do), your browsing habits are watched and analyzed by highly advanced [AI](ai.md) that can track you even without cookies etc., e.g. just from your writing style, patterns of repeated daily activity, mouse movement signature etc. -- all small fragments of information about your activity such as those mentioned above and your locations over time (known from your phone connecting to towers, someone else's phone detecting your voice, street or car camera detecting your face, credit card payments etc.) are connected with other fragments of information (even those of other people) and AI makes a complete picture of your life available to those who need it. You may think you're doing everything right and that they can't find you, but it's enough if e.g. someone from your family posted a picture with you on facebook 10 years ago or if you as a child played online games -- this is enough to know which people you are related to and them being tracked then leads to you also being tracked to a big degree despite you using 7 proxies and living underground. If the government furthermore decides to watch you more (which may happen just because you e.g. try to "protect" your privacy more and start using [Tor](tor.md), which is suspicious), they can just watch you in real time through satellites (even inside buildings) and so on. So you just have to accept you are being watched, and unless we end [capitalism](capitalism.md), it will only be getting worse (mind reading technology is already emerging).

We have to state that **privacy concerns are a symptom of [bad society](capitalism.md). We shouldn't ultimately try to protect privacy more (cure symptoms) but rather make a [society where need for privacy isn't an issue](less_retarded_society.md) (cure the root cause).** This sentiment is shared by many hackers, even [Richard Stallman](rms.md) himself used to revolt against passwords when he was at MIT AI Labs; he intentionally used just the password "rms" to allow other people to use his account (this is mentioned in the book *Free As In Freedom*). Efforts towards increasing and protecting privacy is in its essence an unnecessary [bullshit](bullshit.md) effort wasting human work, similarly to [law](law.md), [marketing](marketing.md) etc. It is all about censorship and secrecy. Besides this, **all effort towards protecting digital privacy will eventually fail**, thanks to e.g. advanced [AI](ai.md) that will identify individuals by pattern in their behavior, even if their explicit identity information is hidden perfectly. Things such as browser [fingerprinting](fingerprint.md) are already a standard and simple practice allowing highly successful uncovering of identity of anonymous people online, and research AI is taking this to the next level (e.g. the paper *Detecting Individual Decision-Making Style: Exploring Behavioral Stylometry in Chess* shows revealing [chess](chess.md) players by their play style). With [internet of stinks](iot.md), cameras, microphones and smartphones everywhere, advanced AI will be able to identify and track an individual basically anywhere no matter the privacy precautions taken. Curing the root cause is the only option to prevent a catastrophic scenario.

By this viewpoint, [LRS](lrs.md)'s stance towards privacy differs from that of many (if not most) [free software](free_software.md), [hacker](hacker.md) and [suckless](suckless.md) communities: to us **privacy is a form of [censorship](censorship.md)** and as such is seen as inherently bad. We dream of a world without abuse where (digital) privacy is not needed because society has adopted our philosophy of information freedom, non-violence and non-competition and there is no threat of sensitive information abuse. Unlike some other people (so called pragmatics), not only do we dream of it, we actively try to make it a reality. Even though we know the ideally working society is unreachable, we try to at least get close to it by restricting ourselves to bare minimum privacy (so we are very open but won't e.g. publish our passwords). We believe that abuse of sensitive information is an issue of the basic principles of our society (e.g. [capitalism](capitalism.md)) and should be addressed by fixing these issues rather than by harmful methods such as censorship.

"[Right](rights_culture.md) to be forgotten" is the stupidest crap anyone has ever come up with.

**So what now?** Should we just literally dump our passwords, home address, phone number and credit card info online? Of course nowadays this would almost equate [suicide](suicide.md), for most it's not possible or advised to make such a huge leap immediately. Remember, LRS advocates slow evolution towards a better state of affairs, i.e. we should firstly realize that the status quo and current mindset are harmful, secondly we should educate others about it and along the way we should start relaxing our fear of losing privacy slowly. Great philosophers of ancient Greece spoke of an ideal stance towards death and told us to not fear it -- do not seek it but don't fear it either; you may not desire death but at the same time you may also not let it enslave you by making you avoid it at any cost. It's similar with our cause: you don't have to commit suicide, just don't let privacy enslave you anymore. Your goal doesn't have to be to achieve perfection in giving away 100% of your secrets; rather make it a goal to become more free from secrecy, even if perfection can't be achieved. You can probably let your real name, face photo and country of origin be known publicly, there is zero danger in this, and by doing so you free yourself a bit more, cure a bit of that phobia. Later on you will perhaps be able to make further steps such as sharing your autobiography and nude photos -- this is very doable. And perhaps you'll find this freedom so good that you will cancel all your bank accounts and social media and then you can comfortably share even your password to achieve absolute freedom from secrecy.

## See Also

- [security](security.md)