Saturday Morning Security Audit

 

It's become a fairly regular thing for me to spend Saturday mornings making coffee and catching up on articles I've been meaning to read. Often, this leads me to doing something to strengthen my online security standing.

 

One of my least favorite things is the mega corporations who own the current state of social media. I've been eager to jump ship from the big leagues to countless alternative social media platforms, testing out any site that comes up, so long as there is some level of conscientious copy on the homepage.

 

Is satellite.earth the next one that will be forgotten by me, due to lack of use, interest, or any of the other reasons they have all faded in the past?

The crushing reality of my experiences with these new websites is that the tech oftentimes required to sign up (crypto! wallet! ethereum!?)– while fun for me, is the deterrent for the majority of people. We can wax poetic all we want about the basic tenets, why it's good, how it keeps us more safe / private - but at the end of the day, asking users to learn new terminology, let alone install third-party apps (browser extension wallets, for instance) is always going to stop the average person from signing up.

 

But, why? New stuff is cool! Learning is fun! Sure...

I can admit that I don't know the first thing about web security. I just know that I don't trust corporations with my data, and I'm tired of justifying it just so I can keep in touch with the people I care about. That sentiment isn't quite enough to make me delete those accounts, though. Their hooks are deeply sunk into society's skin. The pandemic has exacerbated that horror substantially. There are hundreds of out-of-work chefs trying to spin up a new business idea from scratch, where their Instagram page is their only online presence. They use Venmo to facilitate payments. I can't fault them for that! How can you pass up a sprawling network of people addicted to viewing it? I just wish there were better tools, and that our society was not so dependent on those big corporation social media sites.

 

For now, all I can do is keep signing up for the alternatives, trying to pass it on, and probably using it- that's most important!