You’re smart. That means that you’re concerned about how social media companies are tracking you everywhere, selling your data, and basically stalking you — even when you’re not logged in.
Stalkers. Bullies. ICE agents.
The problem is far worse for traditionally oppressed populations: women, non-white people, LGBT and gender-nonconforming people.
What can we do about it?
1. Keep Yourself Safe.
Do not use social networks that are based on selling your personal data. If you have used them in the past, stop now.
Support alternative approaches that are anti-surveillance — and beyond that, only use services that do not sell your personal data for the purposes of advertising. Remember: “advertising” online is just a nicer word for “surveillance”.
Our social networking project explicitly does not want your personal data. We don’t track you, so we don’t even have the data in the first place. Your private messages are encrypted. As of 2018.09.10, we’re working on end-to-end encryption — that means that ideally, no one but you will be able to decrypt the data at all.
2. Defeat Trolls.
First, recognise that they’re not “trolls” anymore. Trolls can be harmless and cute. Bullies are not. Bullies intimidate and hurt vulnerable people for fun, to build an imaginary sense of power.
Here’s the easiest way to defeat bullies online. Hint: it’s the same as step one.
The Starpunk social media project does not collect your personal data or ever sell “advertising” (read: intrusive surveillance). Instead, you pay a small fee every month, upfront. You know exactly what you pay, you can easily get a refund whenever you want, and you can help us build the service you want to use.
Bullies, however, are banned. The ban matters, because it hurts: every time a user is banned, they can’t get a refund for that month. If they want to come back, they have to pay again. Every ban also doubles in length: if the first ban is for 24 hours, the next one is 48 hours long. Eventually, a bully will either disappear or just go back to Twitter and Facebook where they belong.
See? There’s only one step.
Find out more about the Starpunk project on Twitter: @starpunkzine
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