de-FAANG your life

(manifesto/resource/rant originally posted on tumblr; crossposted here for longevity.) 

I’ve been on an unintentional mission this year of reclaiming my tech.

Wouldn’t say I’m particularly passionate about tech other than believing in the  old school principles of “you own your tools and data; you should be able to expect a reasonable level of privacy, and also expect freedom of speech through art as a human right”.  Given my last faithful mac laptop was from 2009 ... it was a little unsettling to see how much of that is not the default these days, when I needed to switch to a new machine.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was a combination of (a) apple actively censoring queer apps and artwork on those apps, (b) social media (and payment processors) increasingly deciding that kink art (or any kind of controversial creative work) is an Undesirable [gestures @ tumblr], (c) apple, again, trying and “pausing” a picture-scanning (and reporting to the authorities) scheme that smacks of the “protect the kids” defense.

for somebody who’s read a lot of books on old radical, leather, and queer artwork and the common tactics of censorship by the State, and how it starts slow ... a lot of this felt very not new in intent, but the methods were something to keep an eye on as it evolves. It always starts with “protect the children” and a curious strident call for the ban of “inmoral, degenerate, overly sexual” creative work, like, hey, what’s happening now in certain US states and internationally. The only thing truly different this time is that any platform that depends on an outside advertising funding source is vulnerable - and ultimately I think - a slow poison.

Best to make sure your whole tech stack is reliable, not just switching to a different social media site and calling it a day when it inevitably bans you (or else you run into the same problems over and over again). 

I ain’t taking that laying down. What I’m using, right now, versus before;

• (hardware) custom built laptop from system76, a super cool ‘we’ll build your own linux machine, no brain cells required’ US-based company that also is a big supporter of right to repair. 
• I ran into some weird edge case problems trying to install linux on a different machine and couldn’t find anyone IRL to help (IT support at the dayjob sheepishly admitted I actually got further than they did lol); love the fact that S76 has support right there to walk you through should anything go wrong (nothing has yet - and I’ve been using this thing p hard for a few months now).
• (OS) ubuntu - pre-installed by S76; the “feel” of it honestly feels like the best of both worlds from mac/win as somebody who’s used both fairly often over the years - and I was totally flabbergasted to see how it “just works” down to the wacom tablet.
• krita for drawing (a shockingly lovely mix of photoshop/SAI that’s open source), firefox for browsing with duckduckgo as search, inoreader for the few social media feeds I want to keep tabs on (i believe that following folks should be private, so you’re free to explore different opinions and worldviews than what’s “blessed” by the current party line), and dreamwidth as an online journal that I would bet will outlast every social media platform.
• my personal site as a back up for art sharing if I ever want to walk away from twitter/tumblr/dA for good - neocities being another fantastic platform to build a site on if you’re unsure about how to start.
• ( personal sites are almost the most important thing in this stack; likewise bonus points if you have a bookmark page to link to your other friends and favorite creatives and tools. )
• (email - still testing) protonmail for email along with their VPN and drive, I wouldn’t endorse this yet, but it does look promising with a free tier to play with, and I like the fact it seems like it’s not in a 5eyes nation.
• zines! literal paper zines are some of the most durable, physical, censorship resistant wee lil’ buggers these days. I’m not talking about polished fanbooks, but punk/queer/kink zines especially have a lovely history used precisely to get around censorship.

I mention this to show that you don’t need oodles of money or be ~a tech professional~ to actually have the ability to get ownership of your stuff back. No,  the above is not “perfect” (don’t expect it to protect you from the CIA :P); but like deterrence theory, every layer adds a little more friction of making it harder to siphon data, and every layer makes it harder for others to actively censor you.

I expect myself and my creative work to be treated with dignity and integrity - not a passive resource to be violated for endless data and money. And I expect the same for you.

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* (note: I use “FAANG” here not just for those specific tech companies, but also other offenders like adobe, microsoft, financial, telecom, and other unethical companies.)