As a complete outsider to this conversation who has gotten caught up in the fearmongering mentioned, but who is too ignorant to really have strong opinions either way, thanks for having this conversation.
It's scary, being in the Too Much Information age. It feels so easy to be misled when it's hard to devote the time to properly understand complex topics like this.
I don't know if I feel any more confident in my browser choice (or anything else related to cybersecurity), but... thanks, still? Acknowledging how little I can know about any one thing feels so destabilizing... hoorah for existential crises?
Personally I do still believe privacy is very important. I often take up the devil's advocate position on Hacker News because there is a lot of groupthink on this site. The issues are rarely black and white, and almost never come down to "X is evil".
My advise is to stay aware of the issues, but don't get consumed by them. In almost all cases a site's privacy policy will tell you exactly what they collect, and you always maintain the power to block that at the browser level if you want to.
eg. I use an adblocker to remove social media widgets. I find them clutter and I don't care for the tracking. Otherwise though my settings are pretty light.
It's scary, being in the Too Much Information age. It feels so easy to be misled when it's hard to devote the time to properly understand complex topics like this.
I don't know if I feel any more confident in my browser choice (or anything else related to cybersecurity), but... thanks, still? Acknowledging how little I can know about any one thing feels so destabilizing... hoorah for existential crises?