Everyone says this kind of stuff about any and every social issue. It drives me insane, do people not realize that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy? If everyone I heard say "there's no point fighting it" got together and fought it, they'd easily win.

There is a 3rd argument which I think is a bit more valid in "I value the service I receive in exchange for my personal data"

Using the internet without an adblocker, noscript, and whatever else is really nasty. But even if you aren't on these platforms, marketers are still building profiles on you. Honestly we need data privacy legislation and some real talk about marketing and the costs of using the internet as a society.

Maybe you can help me out.

I see lots of folks here who are programmers or have a ton of knowledge on ways to get around the big 5 to maintain privacy, but as a layman with only so much time in the day, it's hard to avoid taking the path of least resistance when using the Internet.

I am a musician with a public profile on Instagram, and many of my friends who are also artists use TikTok or YouTube to get their exposure. It's kind of a necessity if you want to simply book a gig at a venue (they will ask for your social media handles to see how many followers you have to determine if it's even worth having you on).

As artists we are also not flush with cash to pay for all the privacy software or VPNs. On top of that, so much of our information is already out there, I'm not sure how we'd even start reeling it back in.

Yeah, like people say 'I already use windows/google search/whatever, so it does not matter if i switch email provider/ whatever'.

What?? I so hate this mentality: 'If you cant eliminate / change it fully, then why bother?' Bruh, small steps can go such a long way man...

I'll never give up. I'll shove my 256-bit AES encrypted USB stick so far up the glowy asses they start vomiting shit and USB drives. I still use YouTube and shit tho. I try and convert people. I've been successful getting quite a few people on Signal. The problem is that if there isn't interoperability and everyone's friends aren't on it some forget to even check the app or don't get notifications. If you leave message contents in notifications you're fucked anyway. Lol I feel their pain, but I wish I could get people to care before bad things happen. I mean, bad things have happened. We just gotta keep it up.