Putting Money Where Mouth Is

Protecting our privacy and maintaining principle comes at a price. However the true cost is much less than the alternative.

Putting Money Where Mouth Is

The growing awareness of how dangerous and invasive big tech has become should spark at least some change in all of us. This week I have been putting my money where my mouth is.

I have been replacing all the 'free' services that are needed to operate a successful and growing website because the price is too high!

Free means we are the product and protecting our privacy from these data harvesters has to become a priority. The conduct of the tech firms has become unconscionable.  Giving up some information seemed a reasonable tradeoff in a more innocent age but no longer.

They have started to use their platforms and our data against us; against free speech and against freedom of mainstream political expression.

I don't trust them and suggest you don't either.  That's why every service provider for Confidential is now a privacy oriented, paid supplier. It's costing a lot more money but the price is definitely worth it to protect our principles and our community.

The tech giants next step is crystal clear.

Your online profile will be used against you. If not immediately then at some time in the future. As someone who now has a small operation functioning exclusively on the internet, there is a very real risk that big tech may decide to shut it down at some stage.

That's why I am working to make Confidential independent of the oppressive tyrants of technology and not dependent on their search engine results or advertising income.

Every business built around Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter or any of the other virtual monopolies is vulnerable, even if they aren't currently in a 'targeted space'.

Right now, it's the conservative voice that is in their crosshairs but who's to say it won't be another group later? You can virtually guarantee they'll move on to other targets after they have beaten the conservatives into submission or shrouded in the cloak of digital invisibility.

When Confidential was launched in 2020, the subscription model was a risk - mostly because it wasn't widely used.

It has always been much easier to build a community using freely accessible content and fill the website with advertising and invasive tracking. After all, that's how it had been done 'for ever'.

The brazen behaviour of technology companies in recent months supports the wisdom of taking a different path. We simply cannot afford to be vulnerable to the whims of unscrupulous censors and political partisans who have all power and no responsibility.

Eighty years ago, groups of people were targeted by an inhuman government. Their rights, liberties and lives were taken.

It prompted this poem by Martin Niemoller.

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Martin Niemöller

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