this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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Privacy

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Which privacy services would you donate to? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Charger8232@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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Due to financial problems, throughout my privacy journey I have only used free tools to enhance my privacy. I was recently thinking about the question: If I had the money to give back to the services I've used, which ones would I donate to? Here is my personal list, which is still a WIP:

I will definitely donate to (13):

I am very likely to donate to (11):

I will most likely donate to (7):

I may donate to (11):

I may add more as I think of them. Please leave your ideas!

Note: I'm trying my best to avoid turning this into just a list of privacy tools, but that may end up being what it becomes.

Honorable Mentions (10):

There are some services that I support but either don't use or have not matured enough to donate to.

Some math

I realized I never actually specified any amounts that I would donate to each service, so here is most likely how I will spread my money:

For the services I will definitely donate to, I will donate $50 to each services.

For the services I am very likely to donate to, I will donate $40 to each service.

For the services I will most likely donate to, I will donate $30 to each service, for the ones I decide to donate to.

For the services I may donate to, I will donate $20 to each service, for the ones I decide to donate to.

For the honorable mentions, if they ever become part of my official donation list, I will start with a $10 donation and increase it from there.

For those thinking those are small donations, note that if I were to donate those amounts to every service it would be a total donation of over $1,600. That is at least a start, and once I am able to donate I will likely donate the same amount every year.

By no means am I doing this for publicity or congratulations, I am just making my thoughts public and hopefully sparking others to donate to some privacy services. Lots of these services run off of donations, so please try not to take them for granted!

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[–] LWD@lemm.ee 25 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I would encourage people to withhold donations from Mozilla. They have plenty of money rolling in, and in the past year they used it to overpay their CEO disproportionately, and to buy an AdTech company with private data that they sell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary-performance_correlation

https://www.fakespot.com/privacy-policy (search "personal information is sold")

[–] Matt@lemdro.id 8 points 6 months ago

Plus donations to Mozilla cannot even be used for Firefox development due to the structure of the foundation and corporation.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yah, let's make sure to shit on the company making the only browser that even tries to preserve user privacy because the company does 1% of the shitty things Google does.

If we try hard enough, they might succumb to the constant attacks from Microsoft, Google and Apple and we'll be left with the browser engine we deserve.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 5 points 6 months ago

I want Mozilla to make a browser that preserves privacy. They keep making it worse. And I don't see how giving them money is helping them improve.

And my comment won't cost them any money either, as @Matt@lemdro.id pointed out:

Plus donations to Mozilla cannot even be used for Firefox development due to the structure of the foundation and corporation.

[–] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the info! A lot of the services on my list offer paid services that are used as a source of income, but I want to support those just the same. Mozilla has been an iffy choice to add to my donation list. They are the developers of Firefox, which has been forked to create the most private browsers (Tor, Mullvad, etc.), but on the other hand their business practices (Google as a default search engine, Firefox Pocket, etc.) are not very good. As such, I will move them to the honorable mentions section (since I don't actively use stock Firefox) until further notice.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I don't think Mozilla should be deprived of money, and Firefox (or a lightly modified fork like Librewolf) is and probably always will be my default browser... But they're getting plenty of money from elsewhere, so they probably don't need ours.

[–] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 months ago

If Firefox no longer got maintained, it would be very difficult for downstream projects (Librewolf, etc.) to keep up, because they would be doing the work of hardening the browser AND fixing bugs that are upstream (that Mozilla would otherwise fix). This is one of the reasons GrapheneOS is as good as it is, Google does the heavy lifting of developing AOSP, and GrapheneOS hardens it and makes it as private as they can.

[–] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

A good chunk of that money is google ad money... I personally would like to see a Firefox that has no Google money in it at all.

Edit: Typo