Tech companies and their executives have, broadly, moved to align themselves with investors and adopted a posture of, often, disdain or outright hostility towards their users and employees. If tech companies don't value you, why provide value to them? If they back political positions hostile to your interests, why not return that hostility?
Oooo, been doing as much of that as I can for years.
When facebook wanted us to use our real names, instead of our screen names… welp, Euell Ooluu (“you lulu”) was born. My alt account there also has an equally ridiculous name.
Got an app for that? Ehhhh. no. My iThing is too full with photos, so it’s the browser only.
It’s old, so I need an ad-blocker in it to get pages to load… same for my ancient computers… the newest hardware I have (and am using right now) is from 2010… was a dumpster dive discovery.
Nice!
Unsupported installs only. Add a stout firewall, NoScript, a tassel of privacy tools and stay away from the dark corners of the interwebs… am good.
Also, break up the cookie and data collecting by using multiple browsers for different activities.
It’s NOT on the machine I am on right now, but for porn, I have Chrome on a different computer (also a dumpster-dive find) and google can sort whatever data my filthy porn habits tell them about me. (I also hit some really hardcore European gayporn sites to throw a real bit of spice into the mix… data mine THAT you cyberstalking fucks!)
For banking and anything financial, I use Opera.
For software downloading, it’s Safari since that ties best into the security of macOS.
Social media and general out and about… Firefox with ALL the privacy and security tools in.
All of it underpinned by Dan Pollock’s hosts file, (someonewhocares.org) that I have been using since the list was 2 pages long. (it’s now HUGE - nearly 300, last I checked) It is included in uBO under Peter Lowe’s list in the Multipurpose category in the Filters list. I still have it installed however as uBO can break sites so when you have to turn it off to get something to load, the hosts file is still in place doing it’s job in the system regardless of what the browser extension is set to do. Which is nice.
Email is two throwaways on the older services… my ISP, and one Gmail that is online storage (no one has EVER been given that address… ever) only and my “official” google account linked to the throwaways is The World’s Oldest youtube account from before Google bought the website.
Have been born on January 1, 1960 since I came online. Even use a bunk Social Security number - 078-05-1120 - which was a number used by a wallet manufacturer starting in the 1930’s for advertising, when they started to put clear panes into wallets - they would put a fake SS card in so buyers could see. The IRS knows it is non-valid. Online data scrapers don’t. Have at it gents.
The thing is, you can easily discover if your efforts are working by simply turning off the ad-blockers and taking a quick trip across the internet to check… If you don’t see ads that are relevant to you, or aimed at your age… you know it’s working. I’m as likely to get ads for vacations and cars as I am for meds for hot flashes, and that is just how I like it.