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admin | Jan. 25, 2025, 10:12 p.m.

Content warning: This post will feature jarring mentions of fascism, genocide, currently unfolding political traumas, and Orbeez.

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Wake up.

Check phone.

Check notifications.

Get instantly locked into one of four apps.

"Climate change is destroying everything. The president is coming to murder you personally."

Swipe

"Guys I filled my bathtub with Orbeez, and..."

Swipe

"Today we're giving one thousand burgers to a single poor person, but he has to eat them all in one sitting."

Swipe

"The president has deputized law enforcement personnel in all fifty states to act as deputized immigration agents."

...

...

swipe

The internet is broken. It is ruining your life. And given its role in the repression of activism and the elevation of demagogues, it is killing our futures as well.

There are a lot of really smart people talking about really good solutions. What we want to offer here is just two little things that, if used together, could be really useful for weaning off of the technofeudal dopamine drip.

Way back before everyone had a podcast, everyone had a blog. If you were around for that era, you might remember something called RSS.

RSS stands for "really simple syndication." It's basically funny-looking file with a predictable format and an ecosystem of apps that can read them. Why am I rambling on about this? Because if somebody makes their website put out one of these funny-looking files (like, say, https://cooperationdenton.org/rss.xml, then you can download any RSS reader, add that url, and never miss an update from that creator. That's it. No passwords, no two-factor shenanigans, nothing to worry about. Just download an app, find the url of the RSS feed, add it in and stay in the loop forever.

Why does that matter? For starters, our simple website doesn't have gobs of metadata about you. It doesn't use psychological tricks to lure your into a downward spiral of FOMO, self-loathing, and doom. It's just the thing we wrote and hit "Post" on, delivered in chronological order to your device. If only you weren't getting your IP logged every time you hit the server...

So, there's this browser called Tor. You might have heard that it's "extra private," but you don't really know why. Imagine that you are sending a letter, but instead of sending it straight to the person you want to read it, you place your note in three envelopes, one inside the other like little nesting dolls. The outermost one is addressed to a person in another city. They open it up and send the letter inside to the next person. That person then sends the innermost letter to your desired recipient. Nobody but the recipient is able to read your (hopefully signed!) letter, and nobody along the path would be able to tell where anyone else is in the chain. This is what Tor does, but with math and other boring stuff.

We've gone for a walk here, so let's bring it back. There's an app called Orbot. It's the official Tor proxy app for your phone. So, you turn on Orbot, download an RSS reader like Feeder, and you sign up for some feeds. "But wait, now it's screwing up my logins for my favorite data harvesting app! What do I do?" We're going to assume here that you're not going to stop using your emotional support NSA asset. In that case, you can configure Orbot only for Feeder, or for whatever combination of apps you would like to use privately. It's super flexible like that. Just remember that it's only as private as the app and the operating system allow it to be!

So now we have something interesting when we put these two things together. If I publish a basic blog site like this one and show my friends how to install Orbot and an RSS app, then they can stay up-to-date without either of us having to shovel over data each time we sync up. And what if people don't want to take those precautions? Then they can access the same site through Firefox if they want (but not Chrome). Or they can follow you on your socials that you cross-post your blog page to. Or they can go buck wild and host their own RSS feed aggregator. There's no way to lose here. Everyone can get as much safety and/or convenience as they see fit.

Speaking of convenience, if you live in the Denton area and you need help with any of the following:

• personal and organizational digital security
• creating a blog with an RSS feed
• getting set up on Denton.Social, the ad-free social app for Denton
• automated cross-posting to socials

reach out and we will gladly help you. You're not alone!

Thanks for reading! We'll keep posting helpful tips in addition to our other forms of outreach. Be sure and subscribe to us in the RSS reader of your choice! We can also be found at all the places in our contact page.

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