I just want to say the only reason I didn’t donate sooner were:

1. I needed a friendly reminder (the lemmy post was that reminder for me) because life got busy
2. I didn’t know that Lemmy didn’t already generate enough to cover the costs of two developers

I couldn’t be happier to donate! The work you’re doing is amazing! It’s helped me kick my 15 year long reddit addiction & reminded me of the original promise of the Internet

I didn’t say it was exactly the same as FF, I said it immediately improved my experience of the Internet

Auto logouts are IMHO better for society. Putting friction between users and addictive algorithms is a simple way to encourage healthier and more mindful habits. It also encourages better security education

If people have questions like this it’s a good thing. It will make them aware of how much privacy they are giving up so they have to make intentional choices about how they design their digital life

Capitalists have really ruined the culture of UX by making it all about what’s good for keeping people hooked & helpless rather than what’s in our collective best interests

Well I was a Firefox user since 2005 and I’m really glad people responded with top answers to my questions like the one above. We all deserve better than the status quo.

I’ve been using LibreWolf for weeks and it hasn’t broken a single thing yet… not sure what you’re on about

I’ve yet to find anything that it broke after weeks of use… and anyway it takes two seconds to disable that for a few mins in the rare event it’s necessary.

Overall an unambiguously better internet experience on LibreWolf coming from years of FireFox for me.

I’m sorry but that’s absurd.

Switching to LibreWolf after YEAAAARS of Firefox took me less than five minutes. I’ve encountered exactly zero downsides and my experience of the internet immediately improved.

Nobody changes operating systems of any sort with such little friction.

Thanks! There really isn’t any reason for me to be targeted so I think I’m fine personally. Privacy is a collective value though, so I wish to maximize it as an expression of my values.

Yeah totally fair thanks for clarifying! I would love to minimize the use of SIM cards in my life. Maybe using a faraday bag. But I also won’t be travelling to the US or ME…

IMEI number is out there and associated with home.

But if I remove the SIM, put it on airplane mode, and then travel, how can they detect my IMEI in a new location? Only by seizing the phone physically or perhaps if the emergency services settings leak it without a SIM right?

Interesting stuff tbh. At the end of the day I don’t have strong reasons for hiding except simply not liking the invasion of privacy. So I’m fine. But it does make me want to ditch my phone entirely sometimes.

That makes sense, thank you! I’m not expecting any issues with LEO so I’m fine. But out of principle and interest I like to still understand what I’m giving up and minimize how much privacy they take from me.

Thanks anyway, it’s good info for anybody reading!

Cell towers can use the SIM card to track your IMEI number which is specific to your device and may link to your identity depending on how you purchased it and your carrier.

Generally there’s no perfect solution to this short of not using a phone. But as a compromise some people opt to never add a SIM card and instead keep their device WiFi-only while always using a VPN, MAC randomization on in settings, and airplane mode.

Some apps such as simplex allow you to sign up without a phone number for your texting & calling needs. Of course it’s not perfect and I assume almost anybody would want a real number somewhere (perhaps on a different device or landline).

For me it’s reasonable to not have cell service on this phone because it’s only one of several phones I own.

For sure, that makes sense and seems to be mentioned often. I’m curious to understand different risks than that though…

Conversations like this is why Lemmy feels so much more refreshing than Reddit, so thank you for that… I hadn’t realized how desperately I’ve missed the old internet

Sure I can agree with that.

However, I think that is sort of a special case that’s easy to resolve. It only comes up when they are already in the business of learning logical proofs & will likely be looking to learn from someone or a textbook who will most likely clear that up for them…

Chances are that person already has a baseline level of competency in logical thinking, or, if they don’t, they soon will learn and are open to it. They’ve at least additionally already mastered the colloquial meaning of the phrase and are simply a bit overzealous with it’s use (which should be reigned in as you aptly point out).

On the other hand, when people don’t understand “you can’t prove a negative” in social situations unrelated to formal logic, it’s generally observed they are up to their eyeballs in conspiracy thinking and are so lost in magical thinking that they’ve abandoned even informal rule of thumb levels of logic.

Those are truly sad situations with deep (inter)personal, social, and political consequences, especially if they go on to harm others based on their misunderstandings.

Ironically it seems we both have less faith in the competence of others, albeit in different ways lol

When people colloquially say “you cannot prove a negative” they are usually referring to the fact that absence of evidence can not be used to deduce non-existence of some phenomena (“a negative”), whereas the factual discovery of a phenomena can be used to deduce that the phenomena exists (“a positive”).

They are therefore not referring to formal negation but rather making a point about deductive vs. inductive reasoning and the asymmetry of these two related questions (existence vs. nonexistence).

There is a bit of nuance to add here in that practically speaking you can’t really “discover a fact” by direct observation. But again this is a colloquialism as most laypeople will accept what is directly observable under their noses as factual rather than a noisy data point of one.