The metadata in the headers can be avoided using Memoryhole and similar protocols which embed the headers inside the encrypted payload. The problem is again barrier to entry. Low-tech users generally can’t even handle app installs on desktops.

When you say “worry”, that’s not the right word for it. My boycott against Google is not fear-driven. I will not feed Google anything it can profit from as an ethical stance. Even if an expert linux tor user were on Google, I’m not sure we could exchange email in a way that ensures Google gets no profitable data. If we use PGP coupled with Memoryhole to strip out the headers, I’m not sure Google would accept a msg with a missing or bogus From: header. But if so, Google still possibly learns the user’s timezone. Though that may be useless if Google learns nothing else about that user. But we’re talking obscure corner cases at this point. Such an expert user would have no Google dependency anyway.

MS/google-dependent friends are generally extremely low-tech. They don’t know the difference between Firefox and the Internet. They don’t know the difference between Wi-Fi and Internet. Linux – what’s linux? They would say. At best, they just think of it as a mysterious nerd tool to be avoided. So what can I do wholly on my end to reach them via gmail without Google getting a shred of profitable data? Nothing really. So I just don’t connect directly with a large segment of friends and family. Some of them are probably no longer reachable. Some are in touch with people who connect to me via XMPP, so sometimes info/msgs get proxied through the few XMPP users. It’s still a shitshow because Google still gets fed through that proxied inner circle of friends and family. In the past when someone needed to reach me directly, they would create a Hushmail or Protonmail mail account for that temporary purpose (like coordinating a trip somewhere). But that option is mostly dead.

I just had to reach out to plumbers for quotes. All of them are gmail-served. All I could do is refuse to share my email address and push them to use analog mechanisms. They are not hungry enough for business to alter their online workflow or create protonmail accounts.

That’s exactly what I did with hushmail. I would tell low-tech folks to get a hushmail account then I would use hushtools.com to do all the key management, putting my key on the keyring and grabbing their key. So the other person did not need to know anything or take any special steps. That was best option of my time. But last time I checked hushmail was still entirely non-gratis.

Protonmail emerged when HM became non-gratis and messed with hushtools. But PM requires every one of their own users to do key management which creates a barrier to entry. I would have to walk a PM user through adding my key to my record in their address book and walk them through sending me their key. That effort is a show stopper for many. I might as well walk them through setting up a PGP-capable MUA. But then if they keep their gmail or MS acct the metadata still feeds those corps.

This simple answer is no doubt the most overlooked; probably as a consequence of the tyranny of convenience… people too lazy to go to the library.

I give out my XMPP address and offer Snikket accounts. Some go along with it and some do not. I lost touch with some friends. Some people are in contact via phone but that’s not ideal some connections are lost as phone numbers change.

I used to push some people toward Hushmail until they dropped the gratis plans. Then for a while I pressured people onto Protonmail but then distanced myself from PM when the brought in Google reCAPTCHAs and killed off Hydroxide. Tuta is a non-starter because Tuta’s variety of e2ee is incompatible with open standards, thus forcing me to periodically login to a web UI (also due to them sabotaging their Android app by way of forced obsolescence pushed in the most incompetent way).

So it’s a shitty state of affairs. 2024 and simply sending a msg to someone has become a total shitshow.

I refuse to fund my oppressors

Bingo. I live by this philosophy.

Although more precisely: I refuse to fund feed my oppressors. The reason for s/fund/feed/ swap is that our oppressors profit from our data too. So e.g. I won’t even email a gmail user because my data would then feed Google (an oppressor because of how they dictate e-mail terms among other oppressions).

The others are right. Trying to stream from a torrent seems wasteful and complex.

But if you must for some strange reason, perhaps it would work to use webtor.io to produce an http-reachable audio file which could be curl/wget-fetched and piped to an audio decoder/player. I doubt you could make webtor fetch pieces linearly from the beginning. You would likely have to wait until the last piece is fetched to start streaming.

I’ve not fetched subtitles in a while but back when I did, I recall all the websites hosting them were extremely protectionist… more so than any other category of content on the web.

Of course the fix is to have torrents for the subtitle collections, perhaps by language.

It basically is saying that if you have more money then you have more “votes”.

That’s simply true. It doesn’t do anyone any good to disregard the facts.

Or to put it in another way: If you have more money you matter more.

That abstraction doesn’t help much. And first of all, it’s more accurate to derive the statement “If you have more money then you have more influence”.

It’s still a shitty status quo, but it is what it is. The worse thing you can do is tell people not to boycott shit products on the basis of rejecting reality. It’d be like telling people not to vote in elections because their vote is a drop in the ocean.

Some people vote for democrats, then they cancel their own vote by getting their internet service from Spectrum, buying fuel from Chevron for their car, shipping their packages using FedEx, getting their phone service from AT&T, banking at PNC Bank, flying on Boeing planes, shopping on Amazon, doing their web searches on a Microsoft syndicate’s site (e.g. DDG), buying Sony devices… etc. They either have no clue that most of their voting is actually for the republicans, or they think that drop-in-the-ocean vote that comes once in 4 years somehow carries more weight than the daily votes they cast with reckless disregard.

Greg Abbott’s war chest is mostly fed by oil companies. If you buy fuel for a car, you help Greg Abbott and other republicans. And if you buy from Chevron, you give the greatest support to republicans (Chevron is an ALEC member).

You might let her know that she can borrow DVDs from the public library at no cost. Another little-known gratis option is freesat and terrestrial broadcast. I recently started using MythTV as a PVR to record broadcast TV and was pleasantly surprised to find no commercial interruptions (but if there are commercials in her region, MythTV can cut them out).

I didn’t see the OP’s pic but these groups generally work against enshitification of the world:

• !asshole_crappy_design@slrpnk.net
• !activist_investing@lemmy.whynotdrs.org
• !escapebigtech@lemmy.escapebigtech.info
• !cyber_activism@sopuli.xyz
• !netneutrality@sopuli.xyz
• !right_to_unplug@sopuli.xyz
• !buyitforlife@slrpnk.net
• !anticonsumption@sopuli.xyz
• !fightforprivacy@feddit.ch
• !offgrid@slrpnk.net
• !foss@beehaw.net
• !privacy@links.hackliberty.org
• !climate_action_individual@slrpnk.net

Notice that none of those communities are on Cloudflared instances (thus also avoid propagating the enshitified portion of the fedi).

Ending capitalism is not the /only/ way. Within a capitalistic system, you can boycott shit. Most consumers are pushovers but it doesn’t have to be that way. I’m boycotting hundreds of shitty companies. Off the top of my head:

• Amazon
• Cloudflare
• Microsoft
• Facebook
• Google
• Apple
• (surveillance advertisers in general)
• (all closed-source s/w)
• HP
• Proctor & Gamble
• Unilever
• all ALEC members (American Express, Anheuser Busch, Boeing, CenturyLink, Charter Communications, Chevron, FedEx, Motorola, PNC bank, Sony, TimeWarner)
• many shitty banks
• Paypal
• AT&T
• GMA members (Coke, Pepsi, Kraft - Heinz, Kellogg’s, General Mills, McCormick, Hormel, Smucker)
• BetterThanCashAlliance.org members (visa, mastercard, unilever) – war on cash
• Bayar-Monsanto
• Dupont
• Hershey
• Nestlé
• Exxon/Mobil
• Comcast
• Koch
• Home Depot
• Lowes
• …etc

Those are all shitty companies that significantly worsen the world. Giving money or data to any of them contributes to enshitification of the world.

Of course it’s an option to stop supporting assholes. Become ethical. Be the change you want to see.

emphasis mine:

Anti-nuclear is like anti-GMO and anti-vax: pure ignorance, and fear of that which they don’t understand.

First of all anti- #GMO stances are often derived from anti-Bayer-Monsanto stances. There is no transparency about whether Monsanto is in the supply chain of any given thing you buy, so boycotting GMO is as accurate as ethical consumers can get to boycotting Monsanto. It would either require pure ignorance or distaste for humanity to support that company with its pernicious history and intent to eventually take control over the world’s food supply.

Then there’s the anti-GMO-tech camp (which is what you had in mind). You have people who are anti-all-GMO and those who are anti-risky-GMO. It’s pure technological ignorance to regard all GMO equally safe or equally unsafe. GMO is an umbrella of many techniques. Some of those techniques are as low risk as cross-breeding in ways that can happens in nature. Other invasive techniques are extremely risky & experimental. You’re wiser if you separate the different GMO techniques and accept the low risk ones while condemning the foolishly risky approaches at the hands of a profit-driven corporation taking every shortcut they can get away with.

So in short:

• Boycott all U.S.-sourced GMO if you’re an ethical consumer. (note the EU produces GMO without Monsanto)
• Boycott just high-risk GMO techniques if you’re unethical but at least wise about the risks. (note this is somewhat impractical because you don’t have the transparency of knowing what technique was used)
• Boycott no GMO at all if you’re ignorant about risks & simultaneously unethical.