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In a series of articles at Gizmodo, Gizmodo Writer / editor Kashmir Hill blocks Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon for a week each, then she blocks all five simultaneously. The last article was just published on Feburary 8th.
This wasn't a casual experiment. She literally had an expert block every known IP address by said companies and banned technology from these different groups for that particular week. In the last week, she couldn't even use DuckDuckGo because it was run on AWS (found in the conclusion).
- Introduction
- Blocking Amazon
- Blocking Facebook
- Blocking Google
- Blocking Microsoft
- Blocking Apple
- Blocking All Five at Once, Conclusion
Selected paragraphs from the introduction:
The common retort to these concerns is that you should "just stop using their services." So I decided to try.
This is a story of how, over six weeks, I cut them out of my own life and tried to prevent them from knowing about me or monetizing me in any way—not just by putting my iPhone in a drawer for a week or only buying local, but by really, truly blocking these companies from accessing me and vice versa. I wanted to find out how hard it would be—or if I could even do it—given that these tech giants dominate the internet in so many invisible ways that it's hard to even know them all.
It's not just logging off of Facebook; it's logging off the countless websites that use Facebook to log in. It's not just using DuckDuckGo instead of Google search; it's abandoning my email, switching browsers, giving up a smartphone, and living life without mapping apps. It's not just refusing to buy toilet paper on Amazon.com; it's being blocked from reading giant swaths of the internet that are hosted on Amazon servers, giving up websites and apps that I didn't previously know were connected to the biggest internet giant of them all.
...
To keep my devices from talking to the big five's servers, and vice versa, Dhruv built a virtual private network, or VPN, for me, through which I sent all my internet traffic. He then used the VPN to block my devices from being able to use the IP addresses owned by Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and/or Apple, depending on the week.
On a normal day, as measured by the VPN, I tend to send two million data packets out onto the internet and more than half of them (60 percent) go to the tech giants. That meant that over half of my normal internet usage was going to grind to a halt—including virtually every way I communicate with my friends, family, and colleagues.
...
You have no idea how hard it is to find a phone that's not touched by Apple or Google.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday February 11 2019, @04:16PM (4 children)
Perhaps you should start a VPN service for people which does just that -- block the big 5. I suppose you could give users a checkbox list so they could ban some or all. I don't doubt there'd be some buyers out there.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @04:50PM (3 children)
no no no. it might work but the spirit of doing what you propose is the same spirit that governs the "big 5".
you "do think" FOR the user, without the user having a clue. and after being abused enough by (l)users (knowingly or unknowingly),
bills will have to be paid and then the hunt for profit begins and the spirit grins like a mischievous pixy and ejaculates all over.
-
the point is that computer USERS have to understand the power that comes with a internet connection and make use of it, not
just hand it over to someone else to manage.
today it might sound like a impossible thing, but the strange thing is that the seed of empowerment and knowledge dwells within the internet itself -aka- How-tos and FAQs. DO NOT FEAR MISTAKES!
i don't mind if people/sheep are oblivious to this but i don't want the (physical) internet to change, pointing only to "five points of abyss" with routing/connection from the edge to edge becoming dog-slow or even impossible (without having to dive into the abyss first)?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday February 11 2019, @06:38PM (1 child)
I'm pretty handy with computers -- started in about 1982 with a CoCo -- I'm easily in the top 1% of users skill wise, which means I know enough to know that there's a HUGE amount of stuff I don't. To really do this right, I'd probably have to quit my day job and spend the next year studying but even then, without extensive real world experience and a lack of a security background, the chance I'd screw it up would be high. I don't want to give up my income and lose my house. I would like to be able to pay reasonably trustworthy sources for the service (with my own personal understanding that you can never really trust).
This whole buckle down and DIY thing is just unrealistic when you consider facts of the world like snow, wind, food, water, septic, etc. and it annoys me that it is such a common theme. No person can know everything there is to know anymore, but people still want to make use of specialists because specialists can give us something valuable (and we them in areas they don't know).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 12 2019, @01:15AM
I think you overestimate the difficulty, for the reasons below
1. define "right" in the "do this right".
2. look at the price of failure to do it "really right"
For the first point, the starting assumption on the thread is " how to avoid the big data-sucking blackholes on the internet" - doesn't take THAT huge amount to do it if you are willing to drop some convenience. Yes, there will be others to leak data about you, so it won't ever be perfect... but do you really need perfect?
For the second point, even if you utterly fail in stopping the deluge of private info about your private life, you'll be no worse than before (except some time invested in the process - put it on the account of "life-long learning") - which means not only you will survive just fine but live your life like before.
Me thinks is just a "perfect is the enemy of the good" post-factum justification on the line of "I'm not gaining enough for the HUGE effort".
Note that I'm not arguing your choice is wrong, the "I really can't be bothered to do it" is an OK choice to my mind.
I only have minor issues with the reason you avoid to admit your choice and rationalize it blaming circumstances outside your control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @08:21PM
A general purpose computer does not seem to be what most people want nor is it something they have a use for.
What most people want is to be able to fool themselves into thinking they are temporarily embarrassed millionaires. The entire thing is predicated on magical thinking. That is, if they have the same talisman the real millionaires (millionaire = middle class these days or for Marxists petty bourgeois), then they reason that must make them a millionaire in truth, despite their embarrassing net worth.
Your advice will only ever be for hobbyists and existing professionals. If I understand your larger concerns, that is important but when it's time for the ruling class to bring down the hammer on the internet (will have very convincing excuses in the mainstream propaganda but real reason will be to prevent the working class from organizing), well, China is a good example of what to expect.