Last year when Steemit took the crypto world by storm and caused a massive upheaval, I signed up for an account but decided to observe rather than partake. I liked the idea and could see the value that it brings to the table. However, unless it caught on and had staying power, I was not going to invest any time producing content on the platform, only to have it disappear.
Fast forward to this past week [March 20, 2018] and it seems that the masses have finally had enough with Google Alphabet and Facebook being CIA fronts (or at least partners with In-Q-Tel) and are leading with the battle cry hashtag of #deletefacebook, which I hope is even more successful than the #taxationistheft meme campaign from a few years back. It would seem that Steemit is now in a fantastic position to start growing the platform to take share from those two NGO's. I now have high hopes for it and will start to contribute as much as I can to help it succeed (whatever little I can do).
I tried to get away from them (Google & Facebook) about 5 years ago, but no one seemed to care then. Perhaps this time is different. There seems to be some viable alternatives now. DTube is an excellent replacement for YouTube. MeWe, (though not decentralized like Steemit and DTube) is very nice https://mewe.com/i/norman.bauer with mobile and desktop interface that is very user friendly and clutter free. They are privacy focused which is something that has been lacking in the mainstream.
And why is privacy so important? I had a friend of mine post one of those "One word answer" quizes of the 25 things you may not know about me. After reviewing her answers, I noticed that about 30% of the questions were ones I had seen before in recovery questions for things like bank accounts, credit cards, and so on. Immediately I responded to the post about what had observed. Then it hit me, Google and Facebook already know or have enough meta data to browse through that they alone or anyone that had access to that data, has that information at their fingertips. And that is a scary thought if you think about it. That puts them (those with access to that data) in a position of near unlimited power. And we just handed it over to them without a second thought about it. They are everywhere with you because our smartphones are everywhere with us.
In line with the revelation above, a practice I've been doing for the better part of a year now is not taking my phone with me into Confession. I'm a practicing Roman Catholic. I attend Mass Saturday evening and I go to Confession at least once a month. However when I do go to the Confessional, I do leave the phone outside of the booth (and now I have started leaving it in the car). I don't have much if anything that is scandalous that I confide in my Priest with. However, I do think that there are places that the phone or the smartwatch should not breach and the Confessional makes it to the top of the list.
Ditching centralized social media in favor decentralized and uncensored media, is a great leap forward in the pursuit of truth. If we can slay that dragon, we can then begin to slay the real privacy monster, our smartphone OS.
Is there somewhere that you take your phone with you that you think you shouldn't? Comment below.