Sooner or later it happens to everybody. To me, it happened yesterday. Before, I was just thinking about it as a funny joke to watch on YouTube.
Do you use Firefox?
Do you know there is an Mozilla-made extension to block tracking from Facebook? Have you ever wondered, why there is no such an extension to restrict Google? Because that will return you to nineties. Search bar, maps, fonts, content delivery networks, logins, analytics, ads, etc. you name it. We are very dependent on Google. And this all not mentioning Chrome, Pay, Cloud Platform, Pixel, Home and other prominent products.
What this all has to do with Hacktoberfest? First of all I want to thank Digital Ocean and Dev for organizing it. I participated for the first time and made some really inspiring contributions(inspiring for me, of course). Yesterday I received a mail about HacktOVERfest. I am sure most of you did. I was on my phone, so I couldn't really enjoy the Twitter part. When I later was on my laptop, I decided to re-read the email, because I was curious what the other people tweeted about the Fest. This was what I saw.
Liquid error: internal
Cool, I thought to myself. Really awesome contributions! Then I went to the service which would cost $1,173 per year to find out the following video on the front page.
Scary, isn't it? Especially, taking into consideration that I haven't watched Simpsons since their movie.
Previously, people were scared of Man in the Middle attacks, and we can try to deal with this concerns. We can also use a mobile VPN, but when it comes with data we entrust to a service? Well, we can only try to lower our dependencies. Use Firefox, at least to show support against the browser monopoly, use DuckDuckGo or Ecosia to support privacy/tree oriented engines, etc.. Just let's not stay indifferent. It's not about the right to remain unknown while surfing for 18+ content or using hatespeech, it's about fundamental right of choice. Everything big companies want to do with your data should be brought to you as an explicit opt-in.
Thanks again for Hacktoberfest, it opened my eyes for many things. Let's support OSS! My next posts will not be as sad.
Top comments (3)
You're sort of talking about the privacy/surveillance problem in general and commenting on that, not specifically expressing concern about Hacktoberfest itself, right?
I'm just trying to make sure I know what you mean in case there is anything we can tell DigitalOcean to do differently with this.
Sure, in general. Your email was just a trigger.
Thank you for organizing Hacktoberfest, absolutely loved it!
Cool cool, I wasn’t trying to defend anything just wanted to clarify. And yeah I definitely agree.
Definitely possible that the meta data of that Simpsons gif triggered some kind of tracking.